Chapter 3
Mrs. Pierce moved fast for a woman in heels.
She crossed the living room in four steps and stopped directly in front of Mia, her finger raised, her voice shaking with something that had been building the entire drive over.
"You." The word came out like a verdict. "It was you all along. Hooking my son, playing the innocent little sister—"
"Mom—" Ethan started.
"Don't." She didn't look at him. She kept her eyes fixed on Mia. "I'm not blind. I've watched you for years. Every dinner, every holiday, every phone call at midnight. You think I didn't notice?"
Mia's face crumpled.
It happened the way it always happened—fast, practiced, devastatingly effective. Her knees hit the floor before anyone could react, and she pressed her hands together like she was praying, tears spilling down her cheeks in perfect, shining tracks.
"Auntie, please." Her voice broke on every word. "I never meant to—I tried to stop it, I swear I did. But Ethan said he loved me. He said it first. I didn't want to hurt Stella, I would never—" A sob cut through the sentence. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
Ethan stepped in front of her.
He actually stepped in front of her. Physically placed himself between his mother and the girl crying on the floor, shoulders squared, jaw set, like he was shielding her from something dangerous.
"Mom." His voice had gone cold and flat. "You don't talk to her like that. Not in front of me."
Mrs. Pierce stared at her son. For a moment she looked genuinely stunned—not angry, just stunned, the way people look when they've said something obvious out loud and the other person still doesn't understand it.
Then the fight went out of her. Her hand dropped. Her shoulders sagged.
Mr. Pierce had been standing near the window the entire time, quiet, watching. He was a careful man. He always thought before he spoke, which meant he usually said less than everyone else and meant more.
He turned to me now.
"Stella." His voice was low and even. "I'm sorry. On behalf of our family—I'm sorry. You deserved better than this."
I looked at him for a moment. He meant it. I could tell he meant it, which somehow made it harder to hear than anything else that had happened tonight.
"Uncle Pierce." I shook my head once. "You don't need to apologize. This isn't your fault. And it's over now—I'm not going to make this into something it doesn't need to be."
He nodded slowly. He looked tired.
The room had gone quiet except for Mia's soft, subsiding sniffles. Ethan still hadn't moved from in front of her.
I was reaching for my bag when Ethan's voice stopped me.
"Wait."
Something in the word made everyone go still.
I turned around.
He was on one knee.
I don't know when he'd gotten down there—I hadn't seen him move. But he was kneeling on the living room floor with a small velvet box open in his hand, and inside it was a ring I didn't recognize, which meant he'd bought it recently, which meant he'd planned this, or some version of this, before tonight.
Mia made a sound behind him. A small, involuntary sound. Her face had gone the color of old paper.
"Stella." Ethan's voice was different now. Softer. The performance of sincerity. "I was wrong. I've been wrong for a long time and I didn't see it until tonight. But I see it now." He swallowed. "I love you. I want to marry you. Please—give me another chance."
His mother pressed her hand over her mouth.
Mr. Pierce looked at the floor.
I stood there and looked at Ethan kneeling in front of me, and I waited for something to move inside my chest. Some reflex of the girl I used to be. The twenty-six-year-old who had wanted this so badly she'd spent thirty years pretending she'd gotten it.
Nothing moved.
I just felt tired.
"You don't love me," I said.
"Stella—"
"You don't." I kept my voice quiet. "You love having me here. There's a difference." I looked at him steadily. "If I leave, the story falls apart. Your mother stops asking questions. Mia stops being the other woman. Everything goes back to being complicated and uncomfortable." I paused. "But if I stay—if I'm the wife—then whatever happens between you and her is just family. It's just how things are. Nobody has to call it what it is."
The ring box stayed open in his hand.
"I'm not a shield, Ethan," I said. "I'm not going to be one."
I walked to my room.
---
He followed me, of course.
I was pulling the last of my things from the closet when I heard him in the doorway. I didn't turn around.
"You can't just leave." His voice had lost the softness. It was back to the tone I knew better—tight, slightly aggrieved, the voice of a man who was used to things resolving themselves around him. "Where are you even going to go?"
"Harbor City." I folded a jacket and set it in the bag.
"That's—that's two thousand kilometers away."
"I know."
He crossed the room and grabbed my wrist.
Not hard. He never did anything hard enough to be called what it was. Just firm. Insistent. The grip of someone who expected to be listened to.
"Think about Mia," he said. "She's fragile. You know how she gets when things fall apart. If you leave like this, if you make a scene—"
I stopped moving.
"That's your reason." I turned to look at him. "That's why you proposed. Not because you love me. Because Mia needs a cover story and I'm the most convenient one available."
His jaw tightened.
"You want to marry her," I said. "So marry her. Stop using me as the reason you can't."
I pulled my wrist free.
He didn't reach for me again.
I picked up my bag and walked out of the room, and I did not look back at the bed or the curtains or the mirror or any of the other things that had once meant something to me in that house.
---
Three days later, I was on a train.
The seat was by the window. Outside, the city dissolved into flat farmland, then low hills, the landscape emptying out the further we got from everything I'd known. I watched it go and felt, for the first time in as long as I could remember, like I was moving in the right direction.
My phone buzzed.
I looked at the screen.
*Ethan: Stella, Mia and I registered today. But I'm not giving up on you. I want you to know that.*
I read it once. Then I pressed delete and set the phone face-down on my knee.
The train swayed gently. Across the aisle, someone was eating instant noodles. A child two rows back was asking her mother how much longer.
I leaned my head against the window glass and closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, I noticed the man sitting directly across from me.
He was maybe thirty, with dark-framed glasses and a book open in his lap, but he wasn't reading it. He was looking at me—not staring, not intrusively, just the quiet, considering look of someone who has noticed something and isn't sure yet what to make of it.
I recognized him.
Gabriel Moore.
The enrollment office. The scholarship paperwork. *Environmental science. Good department.*
He held my gaze for a moment, then glanced back down at his book with the unhurried ease of someone who wasn't embarrassed to have been caught looking.
I turned back to the window.
The hills kept coming.
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