At the engagement party, the hotel went dark.

I stepped on a shattered champagne glass, and the cut on my ankle bled instantly.

Around me people gasped, and without thinking I called out for Denys James.

He heard me. I know he heard me. And he went straight past me, rushing down to Hailey Winfield at the foot of the stage.

When the emergency lights came up, I saw him with her gathered against him, his voice low. "Did it scare you?"

The emcee froze onstage, then offered quietly, "Mr. James, Ms. Fox is hurt too."

Only then did Denys turn.

He saw the blood by my feet, and his brow barely twitched.

"Hailey's claustrophobic. Could you not fight for attention at a moment like this?"

In that instant, the whole hall went silent.

Denys was famously cold in the industry, and Hailey was the one exception.

They'd grown up together. One word from her that she was afraid of the dark, and he'd walk out on a seven-figure contract to get to her.

I'd been engaged to him for three years. I'd helped him care for his paralyzed mother. I'd even given up a chance to train abroad, for the sake of the Jamess.

He always said it. "You're steady. You're not like Hailey, you don't need looking after."

It took until tonight for me to understand.

Steady just meant I could be wronged and no one had to soothe me.

Fiancée just meant I was the one he could comfortably sacrifice.

……

Hailey pushed him away, crying. "Denys, go check on her, please."

But he looked at me instead, impatience thick in his voice. "Drop the face. There are a lot of people here tonight. Show some sense."

I looked down at my blood-stained wedding shoes and reached up to slide off the engagement ring.

"Denys James. This time, I won't be sensible."

The ring hit the floor, and his expression went cold all the way through.

"Sally Fox, are you done making a scene?"

I bent down and picked up my shoe.

Blood ran from my ankle down my calf and onto the white hem of my dress, staining it like a wound torn open.

Hailey stood behind him, shoulders shaking with sobs.

"Sally, I'm sorry, this is all my fault."

Denys steadied her at once. "You don't need to apologize."

When he looked back at me, all that was left in his eyes was a warning.

"With this many elders here, you really have to embarrass everyone?"

I let out a small laugh.

So I get hurt, and I'm the one embarrassing people, the one with no sense of the bigger picture.

My parents sat at the head table, their faces dark as a storm.

My mother started to rise, and my father held her down. I shook my head at them.

Then I told the emcee, "The engagement party is cancelled."

The hall erupted.

Edwina James shot to her feet in alarm.

"Sally, let's talk this through. Don't do anything rash."

I didn't look at her. I carried my shoe and limped toward the door.

Behind me came Denys's voice, low and pressed flat. "Sally Fox, walk out that door today, and don't you regret it."

I paused. I didn't turn around.

"I won't be the one with regrets."

But the one who came after me wasn't him. It was Hailey.

She held up the hem of her gown, breathless from running.

"Sally, you really have it wrong. I was so scared when the lights went out. I didn't grab Denys on purpose."

I looked at her.

"You didn't grab him on purpose. So the lighting program for the party, someone changed that for you too?"

The color drained from Hailey's face.

I'd only been bluffing. But that flash of panic made something in my chest drop.

She lowered her head fast, her voice softer still.

"I just wanted to surprise you. The hotel said they could add a blackout light show. I never thought anything would go wrong."

Before I could say a word, Denys had walked out.

He took off his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

"It's cold out here. Go inside."

Hailey clutched at his sleeve and looked at me, timid.

"Denys, does she hate me now?"

Denys spared me a glance.

"She's in no state to listen to reason right now."

When those words landed, the ache in my ankle somehow dulled.

I took a cab to the studio.

Lucretia Swanson was still pulling overtime, and when I pushed the door open she nearly dumped her coffee onto her keyboard.

"Weren't you getting engaged tonight? How did you end up like this?"

I dropped my bag on the desk.

"Called it off."

She crouched to look at my foot and swore under her breath.

Then she hauled me straight to the nearest ER.

The doctor picked out a small sliver of glass, put in two stitches, and told me to keep it dry for the next few days.

I'd just gotten back to the studio when my phone lit up.

A text from Denys: 【Hailey's falling apart. I'm taking her home first. Handle the wound yourself.】

Lucretia read it and let out a bitter laugh.

"Who exactly did he get engaged to today?"

I didn't answer.

When the antiseptic hit the cut, the pain made my fingers dig into the edge of the desk.

Half an hour later, Denys showed up.

He came through the door looking worn out, as if I were the one who'd put him through all of this.

He walked up to me and reached out, on reflex, to ruffle my hair.

"Still hurts?"

I turned my head away.

His hand stopped in midair.

"Sally, enough of this."

I looked up.

"Did you look into it?"

"Into what?"

"The blackout."

He frowned.

"The hotel's wiring is old. I'll send someone to deal with it tomorrow."

I held his gaze.

"Hailey said she changed the lighting cues."

He was quiet for a second.

"She wanted to surprise you."

I laughed.

"So the surprise turned into an accident, I get hurt, and she's innocent."

"Can you stop coming after Hailey?"

His voice dropped.

"She already feels terrible about it."

My chest went tight, like the air had been pressed out of it.

After a long moment, I said, "Denys. The engagement's off."

He looked at me the way you'd look at a child throwing a tantrum.

"Because I went to check on Hailey first tonight?"

"No."

I said it word by word. "Because you go to her first every single time."

The air went still.

My phone rang. It was my dad.

When I picked up, his voice was rough. "Come home, sweetheart. Your mom made you a bowl of pasta."

My eyes went hot in an instant.

"Dad."

"Mm?"

"Denys won't be coming around anymore."

The line went silent for a few seconds.

Then my dad said,

"Good. He's not welcome in this house anymore either."

When I got home, my mom knelt in front of the couch to redo the bandage.

Her hands shook so badly the cotton swab kept slipping.

"How did it cut so deep?"

I said, "A glass broke."

She didn't ask anything else, just bent down and blew gently on the wound.

At the table, my dad kept piling food onto my plate.

My mom watched me with red eyes.

I set down my fork.

"Dad, Mom. I don't want to get married."

My mom's tears spilled over at once.

My dad's face was grim.

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

He pushed the soup toward me.

"Then you don't."

I froze.

His voice dropped lower. "We raised you for twenty-some years. Not so you could go to someone else's house and learn to swallow your pride."

My tears dropped into the bowl.

The truth was, I should have understood a long time ago.

Three years ago, when Denys's company was barely surviving, I was the one who drove with him from one building-materials plant to the next.

After his mother's stroke, I was the one who went to the hospital every week to sit through her rehab.

The day I got my spot to study abroad, he held me at the airport.

"Sally, wait for me. Once the company's steady, I'll see you off myself."

After that, the James Group steadied, and Hailey came back.

She wanted to build a home-decor channel, so Denys handed her the model units to shoot, let her cherry-pick the best brand deals, and had me stay up rewriting her scripts.

I asked him once. "Don't you think she's getting too far into our lives?"

He didn't even look up.

"Be the bigger person. Hailey just got back, she doesn't have anyone else."

So I was the bigger person, for a long time. Long enough to forget I could hurt too.

The next day, I went into the office.

I printed two documents.

One was a request to terminate the engagement-home design commission. The other was a notice withdrawing from the Southgate Hotel project team.

Lucretia saw them and set a coffee down on my desk.

"You're really leaving?"

"Yeah."

"And you're okay with that?"

I signed my name.

"No. But it's time I gave myself back to myself."

At noon the cafeteria was packed.

I'd barely sat down when Hailey carried her tray over and took the seat across from me.

There were shadows under her eyes, like she'd cried all night.

"Sally, does your foot still hurt?"

I didn't answer.

She pushed a bottle of yogurt toward me.

"Denys said this is your favorite."

I looked at the yogurt.

I used to think it meant Denys remembered what I liked.

Later I learned he could recite that Hailey didn't eat cilantro down to the letter, but he could never seem to remember I'm lactose intolerant.

Hailey bit her lip.

"Last night Denys drove me to the hotel. We were up working on the Southgate plan."

I looked up.

"The hotel?"

She seemed to catch herself and rushed to explain.

"It's not what you think. I was too scared to be alone, so Denys stayed out in the living room with me."

Then, quieter, she added, "He's actually really worried about you."

Footsteps behind me. Denys set a box of medicine on my desk.

"Anti-inflammatories. Take them on schedule."

Hailey tilted her face up at him, her voice going soft.

"See? I told you Sally wouldn't really be angry."

Denys glanced at me.

"She just talks tough."

Hailey gave a light little laugh.

"I bet you last night that she'd cry."

Denys said flatly, "You lost."

He looked down at me.

"Our Sally's grown some nerve lately. She'll even blow up her own engagement party."

Listening to the two of them play off each other, I felt sick.

My wound, my humiliation, the ring I'd pulled off in front of everyone, all of it had become a joke in their mouths.

I set down my chopsticks.

"Denys."

He looked at me.

I said it calmly. "Let's break up."

For a beat, the cafeteria went quiet.

Hailey's eyes reddened at once.

"Sally, is it because of me?"

Denys cut her off. "You don't need to explain."

He watched me, his face cooling.

"Sally Fox, are you done making a scene?"

I picked up my tray.

"Done. So this is where it ends."

That afternoon the whole company was passing around the news that I'd called off the engagement.

Lucretia leaned in and dropped her voice. "Hailey was livestreaming a model unit just now, and a client's wife called her a homewrecker right there on camera."

My pen stopped.

"And then?"

"She took a fall. Denys carried her off to the hospital."

Lucretia scoffed.

"The whole performance, you'd think she'd broken a bone."

I was quiet for a few seconds.

"Did she hurt her hand?"

Lucretia gaped at me. "Sally, have they actually scrambled your brain?"

I didn't say anything.

Hailey lives off that account. If her hand was hurt, that really would be a problem.

I went to the hospital anyway.

The door stood open, Hailey propped up in bed — and the bandage was on her knee, nowhere near the hand I'd come about.