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.

Denys was bent over her, twisting the cap off a water bottle.

He went still when he saw me.

Hailey spoke first. "Sally. You came."

I crossed the room.

"Is it bad?"

She shook her head.

"Just a scraped knee."

I had barely let out a breath when Denys's voice cut in. "Satisfied now?"

I looked up.

"Sorry?"

He set the bottle down on the table.

"If you hadn't made such a scene about calling off the engagement, do you think Hailey would have been this off on her livestream today?"

"If the client hadn't gone after her in front of everyone, would she have fallen?"

I stood there for a few seconds, just making sure I'd heard him right.

"Denys, you think this is my fault?"

"Isn't it?"

His voice went cold. "You know how fragile she is, and you still dragged this through the whole company."

Hailey grabbed his arm. "Denys, don't say that."

He ignored her.

"Sally, I always thought you knew how to handle yourself. That you understood limits."

"And now?"

"Now you'd rather make everyone in the room miserable than back down."

Something in my chest went numb.

"So she gets torn into by a client, and that's on me?"

"She falls, and that's on me too?"

Denys frowned. "Do you have to be so snide about it?"

I looked at him.

"I'm just finishing your sentence for you."

Hailey's tears spilled over. "Sally, I'm sorry. I never wanted the two of you to fight."

It was always this.

She cried, and Denys decided the whole world owed her room to step back.

Me included.

I took a step back.

"Denys, I'll say this one last time."

"The engagement's off. The collaboration's off."

"Whoever you protect from now on has nothing to do with me."

The last warmth left his eyes.

"Sally, don't push me into making this ugly for you in public."

I smiled.

"Don't worry. I won't give you the chance."

As I walked out of the room, I heard Hailey ask softly, "Denys, has she decided she doesn't want me as a friend anymore?"

Denys said, "It's just her temper flaring up. Give it two cold days and she'll come around."

I didn't slow down. Two cold days, sure.

When a heart goes cold all the way through, it doesn't warm back up.

For the next two weeks, Denys didn't come to me.

But the talk about him and Hailey never let up.

People said he drove her to every shoot himself.

For the Southgate Hotel promo, Denys asked for her by name to be on camera.

Someone else said her sponsorship rates had tripled.

Lucretia slapped the desk, furious.

"One fall, and she lands herself right in the heart of the project."

I kept my head down, reworking a drawing.

"Let her."

"You're really not bothered?"

I paused.

"I am."

But I wasn't turning back.

That afternoon, Hailey came to the design department.

White dress, eyes rimmed red.

"Sally."

I didn't look up.

"Miss Winfield. Did you need something?"

Her expression froze for an instant.

"You never used to call me that."

"My eyes used to be worse."

The coworkers around us kept typing, heads down, ears wide open.

Hailey bit her lip. "Denys's stomach has been acting up these past few days. Don't stay angry with him over this."

I lifted my eyes.

"If his stomach's acting up, you should take him to a hospital, not come find me."

The tears fell at once.

"I only wanted to give you both a way out of this."

"Sally, after all these years together, why let it come to this over me?"

I looked at her.

"Hailey. Stop painting yourself as so innocent."