Chapter 2
Ethan came home just after midnight.
He smelled of expensive champagne and the damp city air.
I was sitting at the dressing table, unpinning my hair.
"You just vanished," he said, stopping in the doorway.
"I had a migraine coming on."
He sighed, loosening his tie. He sounded more exasperated than concerned.
"Everyone at the after-party was asking about you."
"I didn't want to ruin your night, Ethan."
"You wouldn't have." He paused, watching my reflection in the mirror.
"Look, if this is about the dance... the board wanted a visual. It was purely PR."
"Vanessa knows the implant's fail-safes better than anyone. If my knee buckled, she knew exactly how to catch me."
"I know," I said, my voice perfectly steady. "I'm not mad."
He studied my face, looking for a crack.
I gave him nothing.
He pushed himself away from the doorframe.
Suddenly, his left knee trembled and gave out.
My body reacted before my brain could stop it. I was across the room in a second, catching him by the elbow.
Five years of muscle memory made it impossible to just let him hit the floor.
Ethan leaned heavily against my shoulder, waiting for the spasm to pass.
"Lower strap," he muttered through his teeth.
I eased him onto the edge of the bed and knelt on the rug to loosen the carbon brace.
The skin along his thigh was red and irritated from the gear.
But right above the compression band, there were four distinct scratches.
They were thin and raw.
Fingernail marks.
I stopped breathing for a second.
Before I could look closer, Ethan reached down and yanked the trouser fabric over his knee.
"Friction from the carbon fiber," he said quickly.
I didn't look up. "It'll bruise."
Ethan exhaled a long breath, letting his excuse hang in the air.
He reached out, his thumb gently stroking my wrist, trying to smooth over the rough edges of the night.
"I know the launch was hard for you to watch," he said softly. "Let me make it up to you."
"You don't have to."
"I owe you a real dance," he insisted, offering a tired, affectionate smile.
"Next Friday. Our tenth anniversary. No cameras, no PR team. Just you and me."
I looked into the eyes of the man I had kept alive for five years.
"All right," I said.
He kissed my forehead, perfectly satisfied that the crisis was averted.
He went into the bathroom to wash up.
Ten minutes later, he climbed into bed and fell asleep almost instantly, his breathing settling into a deep, even rhythm.
I lay beside him, staring at the ceiling.
Sleep wouldn't come.
After an hour of listening to the rain hit the glass, I gave up.
I slipped out from under the heavy covers and went downstairs into the dark living room.
On the coffee table, my phone screen suddenly lit up.
VELA Caregiver App: ARCHIVE STORAGE LIMIT REACHED.
For years, every physical therapy session had been recorded for the engineers.
I opened the app to clear the cache, scrolling past endless thumbnails of Ethan struggling on parallel bars.
Then I paused on a thumbnail from two months ago.
I pressed play.
In the silent, locked training suite, Ethan was sitting on the edge of the therapy mat.
His shirt was completely off, the VELA electrodes still taped to his spine.
Vanessa was straddling his lap.
Her lab coat was gone. Her blouse was pushed off her shoulders, exposing her bare chest.
Bare skin pressed against bare skin.
Her hands were buried in his hair, and they were kissing with a desperate, breathless hunger.
It wasn't a spontaneous kiss.
The way their naked bodies moved together, the way his hands gripped her waist...
It was sickeningly routine.
My hands shook violently.
The phone almost slipped from my fingers.
Before I could even process the suffocating weight in my chest, the screen lit up.
A silent notification.
A new message from an unknown number.
"Did you like their first dance tonight, Claire? He held my waist so tightly."
I stared at the glowing text.
Suddenly, the room felt entirely devoid of oxygen.
For two years, this anonymous number had haunted me.
Sending strange, unsettling messages.
A blurry photo of red high heels, deliberately left next to an empty wheelchair.
A text from last Thanksgiving: "He only stays with you out of pity. I make him feel alive."
Until five minutes ago, I had dismissed them all.
Sick pranks. Generic spam. Corporate trolls trying to mess with my head.
I had blocked the numbers. Treated them like garbage.
I never told Ethan, because I didn't want to stress his recovery.
But now?
Looking at the video still burning behind my eyelids, the puzzle pieces slammed together.
Brutal precision.
The messages weren't a prank.
The timestamps perfectly matched every single night Ethan claimed he was "working late in the lab."
Behind me, the floorboards creaked.
I locked the screen. My heart turned completely to ice.
Ethan stood at the top of the stairs, leaning on the railing.
"What are you doing down there?"
"Clearing the archive. It's full," I replied quietly into the dark.
"Leave it for Vanessa tomorrow. Come back to bed."
I walked up the stairs, past the husband who thought I was blind.
I went straight to the closet, opened the safe, and took out my passport.
I tucked it into the bottom of my suitcase, right beneath my old dance shoes.