I looked at the seriousness on his face, and for a second my mind stalled.

Davina showing up late at night to lecture me.

It had happened far more than three times.

At first, she knew she had Oliver wrapped around her finger and didn't bother hiding it.

I never argued with her, so she'd use the late hour as her excuse and simply stay the night.

Later she started staying past midnight, standing over me as I knelt for some supposed breach of etiquette.

She'd even drink from Oliver's glass right in front of me, just to provoke.

Afterward she'd brush it off with a casual "Oh, I grabbed the wrong one," and that was that.

The most recent time, she leaned into him on purpose.

Half a glass of water spilled right down the front of her, plain as anything.

Oliver didn't even glance at me. He went straight to the bedroom and came back with the most expensive set of pajamas he owned.

His voice when he handed them over carried that easy indulgence:

"These should be about your size."

"Make do with them for now. I'll have new ones ordered for you."

One thing after another, all so natural—as if it had always been his job.

I stood there, limbs going cold, drawing one long breath until my eyes stung red.

"Alright, you know what you did wrong. Fix it, and don't beat yourself up."

He glanced at me, his tone turning cold.

"Instead of sulking, spend that energy learning from Instructor Henson. Learn what it actually looks like to be a considerate girlfriend."

"And stop with that resentful look. It's unpleasant for everyone."

My head snapped up. A laugh scraped out of my throat.

"Learn from her?"

"How to linger at someone else's house in the middle of the night, or how to seduce another woman's boyfriend?"

Oliver froze for a beat, irritation flashing behind his eyes.

"What nonsense are you spouting?"

"I mean you should learn from how willing Instructor Henson is to put thought into things for me."

"Those love-confession cakes that are popular online right now? She made me one the other day. I liked it."

"This year, you're making me one too."

He paused, his gaze settling on me, steady and unblinking.

"Didn't you say birthdays should be spent with the person who matters most?"

"So Instructor Henson and I will eat the cake you make. Consider that you celebrating with me."

The moment the words left his mouth, my hand flew to cover my mouth, choking down the wave of nausea.

"Bringing this up now—you don't find that the least bit ironic?"

I still remembered. Every detail.

Four years ago, Oliver with his arm around another woman, not caring who saw.

His friends egging him on, and him smashing the cream cake I'd baked myself onto the floor, face dark, dropping a single line:

"Don't bring out something this unfit for the table again."

Every stare in the room hit me at once, hard as thrown stones.

No one breathed. No one spoke.

Only Davina, holding out a tissue with a smile:

"It's not worth getting this upset over. Send her to me for some etiquette training. I'll give you back a whole new woman in six months."

That day, my tears weren't even dry before I was put on a plane.

Behind me, Oliver's friends and their weightless laughter:

"That woman's been spoiled completely out of control. Not an ounce of manners."

"You know what she gave Young Mr. Vance for his birthday? Guess."

"A little cake she made herself. Tacky, cheap-looking, and an embarrassment to the entire Vance family name."

He paused. "Honestly, step it up. Who knows how long she'll hold his interest."

"She's being groomed as the future lady of the house, sure, but if she can't get with the program, that engagement is done sooner or later."

That night, I was held down in a bathtub filled with frosting for three full hours.

They watched me thrash and laughed, ignoring the contact allergy tearing my body apart.

My vision kept going black, my hands swelling, every breath harder than the last.

With the last scrap of strength in me, I keyed in the number I knew by heart.

I hadn't expected it—the first thing I heard was a woman's laugh, light and flirty.

"I baked these cookies myself—stick a candle in and that's your birthday party!"

Then his voice, lazy, half-smiling: "I'm busy right now."

"Anything else, call my assistant."

Before I could get a word out, the line went dead.

Panic flooded my chest. My fingers were shaking, already moving to redial.

The screen barely had time to light up before the night-shift instructor seized the back of my neck and wrenched me away from it.

Her face was cold. She glanced at my lock screen and sneered.

"Missing your man in the middle of the night?"

"Just as shameless as Ms. Henson said."

"You don't even know your place, do you? Chasing after him, clinging like a leech. He's unlucky he ever met you."

At the same time, Oliver posted a set of photos on his social media back home.

Burnt cookies on fine porcelain, so charred they could have been anything, warm candlelight pooling over two clasped hands.

The live photo carried the faint sound of a woman laughing, sweet and pleased.

"You promised! You said this was the most heartfelt gift..."

I shook my head hard, dragging myself back to the present.

When I looked up, my gaze ran straight into Oliver's.

He saw me looking and glanced away. His fingers curled once, unconsciously.

He didn't manage a single complete sentence.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, turned, and went back to my room.

I'd barely closed my eyes for a few minutes when someone started slamming on the bedroom door.

Davina ignored Oliver's low attempts to stop her, her voice sharp and accusing.

"You've got this completely wrong! I have a boyfriend—why would I ever do something like that?"

"And you're my student. How dare you be so out of line, making these vile accusations about your own boyfriend?"

Outside the door she kept apologizing to Oliver—telling him she'd failed as a teacher, that she shouldn't have let me turn out so unhinged.

I had no intention of engaging.

But her voice kept rising, louder and louder, as though she were the one who'd been wronged beyond all bearing.

If I hadn't heard those sounds with my own ears earlier,

I might actually have believed I'd misunderstood everything.

I still remembered exactly how Oliver had used me as a cover to help Davina deceive her boyfriend.

The call on the other end had barely been answered before the room behind me filled with ragged breath and stifled moans.

"Thrilling, isn't it?"

She probably hadn't expected me to open the door.

Oliver's shirt was soaked through at the chest. His arm was still around her waist, not yet pulled back.

"You... why did you open the door?"

Davina instinctively looked at Oliver, reaching to hold on tighter, but he shoved her away fast.

I looked at the two of them and raised an eyebrow.

"Showing up at someone's door in the middle of the night to cry. Swearing you're innocent with one breath and crawling into a man's arms with the next."

"Weren't you the one with all the rules? What happened—those only apply to other people? You don't follow a single one yourself, and somehow that's not a joke?"

Oliver's brow was knotted tight, his voice raw with a fatigue he couldn't mask.

"Maddie, I don't know how things got to this point."

"But it's a misunderstanding. You believe me, don't you?"

He glanced toward Butler Whitmore, signaling him to take Davina back first.

I turned to go back to my room, and he caught my arm.

His voice was low, threaded with impatience. "You haven't answered me."

I pried his fingers off. "The answer doesn't matter anymore."

"My sincerity doesn't come around twice for the same person."

The color drained from Oliver's face. His hand locked around the door handle, knuckles white.

"I won't let you talk like that."

A scream came from downstairs.

"Sir, Ms. Henson's twisted her ankle."

Oliver looked at me, one hand already loosening his tie, voice thick and low.

"I wasn't going to deal with her, but…"

His eyes darkened, as if he were waiting for something from me.

"That's your business."

I turned around and shut the door.

Noise filtered through from the other side, and I could just make out Davina's teary, wounded voice.

"It's fine, really—I can walk. Don't worry about me."

"This whole thing is my fault…"

Oliver let out a long breath.

He hesitated, then went downstairs after her.

Almost instantly, a text came through.

"She only showed up tonight because you can't follow the rules."

"I can't just leave her out there."

"Don't overthink this. If you need to throw a tantrum, go ahead."

The front door slammed shut.

I stared out into the black night.

I closed my eyes, and somewhere in the dark I could almost hear the crickets again.

That night had been so still it felt like something was wrong.

I'd just come out of dance class when I found Oliver slumped against the dumpsters, soaked in blood, a photograph of a woman crushed in his fist so tight his knuckles had gone white.

He was hunched over, gasping like each breath might be his last.

I saved him.

I only learned later that it had been the anniversary of the woman in the photograph—his mother. She'd given the Vance family one son in all her years of marriage, and that alone was enough to condemn her: she'd failed to carry on the line, broken the rules. Then his father's mistress started coming for her, again and again.

His mother had a breakdown and took her own life.

Oliver always said the Vance family's rules killed her.

He used to watch me through the studio glass while I danced, just standing there, lost.

All that dazed panic in his eyes would go quiet the moment I nodded at him, then flicker back to something like hope.

Soon after, the family took him back.

And then strange accidents started happening to me, one after another.

When I asked why, his face went hard, but all he said was not to overthink it.

After that, I barely saw him.

The only way I knew what was going on in his life was through the tabloids.

One of Oliver's brothers once dropped a stack of those headlines right in front of me. Cold and blunt about it.

He and I were never going to end up anywhere.

Later I confronted Oliver with the articles.

He waved it off. "None of that means anything. Stop listening to people."

But I kept receiving photos of him in bed with different women.

At first I refused to believe it. Then a recording arrived.

"She's pure, sure. But once you've had her, the thrill wears off pretty fast."

"You know she was set to be the next great dance master, right? All that shine, all that talent—and now she just sits in the palm of my hand."

I fought with him over that recording. I told him we were done.

Oliver thought I was making a scene.

His brow knotted, and his tone went ice-cold.

"All this over a recording you don't even know is real?"

"Is our marriage a joke to you? Or do you just not understand rules—what you're meant to hear and what you're not?"

He sent me overseas and let strangers look down on me, nitpick me, discipline me however they pleased.

I watched those same people drop the cruelty from their faces in an instant and fawn all over him the moment he walked in.

And I watched how he looked at the marks on my body with that flat, unmoved expression.

"These people are here to help you. Don't be so guarded."

Davina called it "emotional desensitization"—showed me flirtatious messages between her and Oliver, compromising photos, one after another.

She made me practice the correct responses for every kind of humiliating scenario.

The rift between Oliver and me kept growing.

I asked for a breakup more than once.

Oliver never answered. Every time, he just slammed the door and left. And every time, the only thing that followed was another trip overseas for more etiquette training.

By then, I could barely tell where my own mind ended and the fog began.