Scarlett hadn’t moved.
She was still on the bed, still completely naked, watching me with an unhurried ease. One leg crossed over the other. Head tilted slightly. The faintest curl of amusement at the corner of her mouth.
Then I saw the note on the floor. Camila’s name was written on the outside in Scarlett’s handwriting.
I picked it up and read it, even though I already knew what it said. I read it anyway, because I needed to be certain, because some part of me was still searching for another explanation.
There wasn’t one.
I looked at her. “You sent this to her.”
Scarlett examined her nails. “Mm.”
“Why.” It came out flat. Not a question. A last attempt to understand something that I already understood completely.
She looked up then, and the amusement was gone, replaced by something colder and more deliberate. “I already told you, Jason.” Her voice was even, almost bored. “I want her out of your life. You come to me — every time, whatever I ask, however I ask it. That is the arrangement. And you keep forgetting,” she smiled, thin and precise, “that I am the one who decides when the arrangement ends.”
The rage came up so fast it blurred my vision.
Six months. Six months of this — of fielding her messages in the middle of dinners, of lying about gyms and walks and work calls, of carrying this rotting secret through every ordinary good moment of my marriage and letting it contaminate everything it touched. Six months of looking at Camila’s trusting face and calculating how long I could keep her safe by keeping her ignorant.
And Scarlett had ended it in one note slipped under a door. Because she could. Because she wanted to.
Because she had always intended to.
“You were never going to stop,” I screamed. “Whatever I did. You were always going to do this eventually.”
She didn’t deny it. Just held my gaze with those cold, beautiful eyes and said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
I picked up my blazer.
“Go to hell, Scarlett.”
I said it without heat, without drama. I said it the way you said something you had been meaning to say for a very long time and had finally run out of reasons not to.
I walked out and pulled the door shut behind me.
The corridor was empty.
I stood with my back against the wall, jacket still in my hand, and closed my eyes. One second. I gave myself one second — for the rage, for the grief, for the image of Camila’s face in that doorway that I knew was going to live behind my eyes for the rest of my life.
Her expression hadn’t been what I’d expected. I’d braced for anger and tears. What I’d seen instead was stillness. A terrible, absolute stillness, like something going out.
I opened my eyes.
I straightened my jacket. I looked in the direction she’d gone.
And I ran.
CHAPTER 8
JASON
The stateroom door was unlocked.
I pushed it open and already knew, before I crossed the threshold, before my eyes had adjusted from the corridor light — I already knew she wasn’t there. The room felt cold, although the sun was streaming in through the open windows. I knew Camila had left, and taken all the warmth with her.
I stood in the doorway for a few seconds and tried to take in what I was seeing.
