prologue
BREE
It always starts like this.
Not with yelling, slammed doors, or cruel words. Though, they always come later, after the tension winds tight enough to strangle the air right out of the room.
It starts with silence that settles in my bones and curls cold fingers around the back of my neck. The kind that makes me careful. Makes me small.
I was just in Scotland for a week with my best friend, Juliette, pretending life was all castles and cobblestone. Only the magic evaporated somewhere over the Atlantic and now I’m back in Kentucky. I’ve been home less than an hour, and yet I still smell the sea salt, my cheeks hurt from laughing too hard with Juliette and her boyfriend, Knox, and I’m feeling that good kind of tiredness that only comes from feeling free.
I spent a week breathing.Reallybreathing.
Now I’m back in a house that makes me feel like I’m holding my breath.
Dillon’s pacing our living room again in the same worn path between the couch and the window. He runs both handsthrough his hair, fingers tugging hard at the strands like maybe, if he pulls hard enough, the thoughts crowding his head will scatter and offer him peace.
I want to reach out and pull him into me the way I used to. Run my fingers over the muscles in his shoulders and kiss the space between his brows, hoping my touch will bring him back.
I should’ve let it go. I should’ve smiled, nodded, swallowed whatever stupid thing I’d said to tip him over the edge this time. I don’t even remember what it was, but it was something harmless and ordinary. It’s never because of some earth-shattering betrayal, like you’d expect. It’s always the little things, like the way I leave my coffee mug on the counter instead of putting it in the dishwasher. Or commenting about his mom’s birthday party. Or, god forbid, questioning our future together.
I draw in a shallow breath. “Dillon,” I say, my voice barely more than a whisper. “Please talk to me. Whatever it is, we can work through it.”
His pacing stops. For one hopeful moment, I think I’ve reached him.
“Work through it?” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. Just that hollow sound I’ve come to dread. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
I reach for his arm anyway, fingers grazing his sleeve. “Please, Dillon. Just sit down with me for a minute?—”
It happens so fast. His arm slices through the air, the back of his hand catching a vase and sending it skidding off the mantle. The crash comes a beat later, the vase exploding against the wall.
I flinch, my arms covering my face instinctively. When I lower them, he’s frozen, his hand hanging midair. His brow furrows, as if even he doesn’t recognize what he’s done. He never apologizes in moments like this, though. He just stares at the destruction.
My eyes drop to the scattered pieces, tracing the jagged curve of blue and white ceramic against the wood, and something in my stomach twists hard enough to hurt. The vase had been a housewarming gift from my mom when Dillon and I moved into this place, and I thought we were building a life together.
Now it’s nothing but another mess I’ll sweep up.
“Dillon…” I say softly, but he doesn’t acknowledge me. Not even a twitch in his shoulders, no sign that he’s heard me at all.
I never wanted him to become a police officer. Not because I didn’t believe in him but because his soul, hisheart, was too pure. I loved how deeply he felt. How fiercely he believed in people, in second chances, in goodness even when it wasn’t easy to find. I used to think his heart was the safest place in the world, but now that feels like a lifetime ago.
One terrible night on the job two years ago stole him from me. He had been the first on the scene during a high-speed chase that ended in a car wreck that involved a family with a child no older than five. He couldn’t save them. He tried, but by the time he got there, it was too late. The trauma of that night followed him home. He didn’t speak about it, but I could see the way his eyes seemed permanently shadowed by something terrible. After that, he shut down.
The man who used to hold my hand like I was his whole world vanished in an instant, leaving a hardened, distant stranger in his place.
I’ve tried to hold him together with nothing but shaky hands and good intentions. To be soft when the world turned him hard. To believe, with every stubborn beat of my heart, that love could be enough if I just stayed patient enough, quiet enough,carefulenough.
The trouble is, on nights like tonight when the alcohol takes hold, there’s no reasoning with him. No hopeof finding the man I used to know beneath the layers of anger and pain that envelop him.
He’s never laid a hand on me, but it’s been close. And close is a funny thing because it worms itself under your skin. It makes you flinch before there’s a reason to. It keeps you up at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering how long until it’ll turn into something else entirely.
No one else knows what he’s going through, and he’s made it painfully clear I can’t tell anyone. So for the last two years, I’ve become a master of disguise. Smiling when it hurts, being bubbly when my insides are crumbling, playing the part ofnormalBree when nothing feels normal at all. Keeping up the act is exhausting, like wearing a mask that gets heavier with every passing day and every aching hour. But how do I leave him? How do I walk away when he’s drowning? He needs me. I’m the only thing tethering him to this world. Even if loving him feels more and more like letting myself sink right alongside him, I can’t walk away.
“Clean this shit up, Bree.” His voice cuts through the air like a blade that doesn’t care where it lands. “I better not step on a goddamn piece of it.”
The words don’t sting anymore. The empty threats have become so familiar and woven into the fabric of our days that they’re just another part of our routine.
I draw in a breath that barely makes it past the tightness in my lungs, the thud of my heartbeat loud enough to drown out everything else. I don’t risk a glance in his direction as I cross the room to pull out the broom and dustpan from their spot by the garage door.
