Chapter 1
When the truck slammed into us, Samuel Hartley's first instinct wasn't to reach for me in the passenger seat.
He tore off his seatbelt, threw open his door, and carried Naomi Reed out of the back.
The crushed door pinned me in place while blood ran down my forehead and into my eyes.
He stood ten feet away, Naomi in his arms, and shouted.
"Naomi, wake up!"
I pushed through the pain and screamed his name.
He glanced back at me.
"Hold on, she's unconscious!"
Right then, the pain drained out of me.
I wasn't exaggerating.
I learned something that night, which was that once my heart quit on someone completely, even pain showed up late.
Once the ambulance got there, a medic asked which one of them was my family.
Samuel carried Naomi into the other one.
Flat on the gurney, I heard a nurse mutter under her breath.
"What kind of man does that?"
I shut my eyes and thought, for the first time, that she was being generous.
I woke up again in a hospital room.
Six stitches closed my forehead, a hairline fracture ran through my left arm, and scrapes covered one leg.
A nurse changing my dressings caught me watching the door and asked quietly.
"Your husband hasn't come by yet?"
I pulled my mouth into something like a smile.
"He's busy," I said.
The nurse didn't say anything.
The pity in her eyes stung worse than the stitches.
My phone buzzed twice on the nightstand.
I thought it was Samuel.
It was a voice message from his mother, Janet Hartley.
"Lauren, don't blow this out of proportion. Naomi has been fragile since she was a kid, so of course Samuel saw to her first.
"You're his wife. Be the bigger person.
"Besides, you're fine, aren't you? Dragging this out would only embarrass all of us," she said.
I played it to the end, ran it through the transcript function, screenshotted the text, and saved it.
A second message landed a minute later.
Janet said, "Oh, and Naomi has been crying nonstop since she woke up, saying the whole thing is her fault. Stop in and reassure her when you get a chance so she doesn't carry that around," she added.
A laugh cracked out of me.
The stitches pulled, and the pain washed the room out to black.
The nurse jumped and pinned my shoulder to the bed.
"Don't move," she said.
"Sorry," I said. "Somebody told me a joke."
Samuel finally showed up at nine that night.
He carried a takeout container in one hand.
It wasn't the butternut squash soup I liked. It was the seafood chowder Naomi liked.
I was allergic to seafood.
He set the container on the nightstand with his forehead already creased.
"Why didn't you pick up?"
I looked at him. "You called me?"
His hand stopped halfway to his pocket.
"I was slammed. It slipped my mind."
"Slammed taking care of Naomi?"
His face darkened.
"Lauren, don't get passive-aggressive with me."
I looked at his wrinkled shirt and the dried blood stiffening one cuff.
It wasn't mine.
It was Naomi's blood.
The math was almost impressive.
Three years of marriage, and the one time I was the one bleeding, he never asked where I was hurt.
Naomi scraped the back of her hand, and he sat by her bed for eight hours.
"Samuel," I said, "I want a divorce."
He acted like the words hadn't landed.
"What did you just say?" Samuel asked.
"Divorce," I repeated.
He stared at me for a few seconds, then let out a short laugh.
"Just because of that moment in the crash?" Samuel scoffed.
I laughed, too.
"Exactly. Just because of that moment," I replied.
He slammed the bowl of congee down on the table.
"Lauren, can you not do this? Everything happened at once. Naomi was in the back, she took the worst of the hit, and I got her out first. Tell me what's wrong with that."
I lifted my good hand and touched my forehead.
"I was stuck in that car with smoke coming off the door. Did you see me?"
He looked away.
"Where were you when the medic asked who my family was?" I said.
He didn't say a word.
"You were carrying her into the other ambulance."
I stared at him.
"Samuel, I'm not blaming you for saving her.
"What I can't get past is that I screamed your name and you told me to hold on."
The only sound left in the room came from the monitor.
His lips parted around something he didn't say.
"I thought you could take it a little longer."
"Yeah."
I nodded.
"You've always thought that."
He'd assumed I could take it.
He'd decided nothing really hurt me.
Being reasonable was my job in his version of us.
And walking out was the one thing he never pictured me doing.
Samuel pinched the bridge of his nose.
"You're hurt and you're not thinking straight. We'll talk about divorce once you've calmed down."
I pulled a manila envelope out from under my pillow.
A friend had dropped it off that afternoon with copies of our documents and the filing paperwork inside.
"I'm perfectly calm," I said.
The sight of those pages finally changed his face.
He asked, "Lauren, you're serious?"
I said, "You always said I couldn't survive without you."
I pushed the folder toward him.
"Let's find out."
He stared at me, and for the first time, something close to panic surfaced.
It lasted a second before he buried it.
"Don't be like this."
Just then, his phone rang.
He glanced at the screen and picked up immediately.
Naomi's voice came through, thick with tears.
"Samuel, I had a nightmare."
Samuel looked up at me.
I looked back without blinking.
"I'm on my way," he said.
After hanging up, it felt like Samuel finally had a way out. He could leave without another word.