Chapter 2

My hands trembled as I gripped the steering wheel, the engine of my BMW roaring to life with a violence that matched the storm brewing inside my chest. Rain had started to fall, fat droplets splashing against the windshield like tears I refused to shed.

Six months. Six months of lies, of coming home to Mark's kisses that now felt like poison on my lips. Six months of Lisa smiling at family dinners, asking about my work trips with that perfectly reconstructed face—a face that looked like mine but better, more refined, more desirable.

I peeled out of the driveway, tires squealing against wet asphalt. The speedometer climbed—forty, fifty, sixty—as I tore through our quiet suburban neighborhood. The houses blurred past in streaks of warm light, each one a reminder of the life I thought I had, the marriage I thought was solid.

The rain intensified, turning the world into a watercolor painting running down glass. My wipers struggled to keep up, their rhythmic thump-thump-thump matching the frantic beating of my heart. I pressed harder on the accelerator.

How could I have been so blind? All those times Lisa had asked about my schedule, offering to "check on Mark" while I was away. The way she'd started dressing differently after the surgery, wearing clothes that looked suspiciously like ones from my own closet. The perfume—God, the perfume we both wore, creating a scent trail of betrayal through my own home.

My phone buzzed in the cup holder, Mark's name flashing on the screen. I ignored it. It buzzed again. And again.

The highway stretched before me, slick and dangerous. Other cars moved like cautious ghosts through the downpour, but I wove between them with reckless abandon. The speedometer hit seventy, then eighty. The rain hammered against my windshield now, each drop a tiny explosion of fury.

I thought about the way Mark had looked at me this morning before I left for Chicago—distracted, guilty. Had he been thinking about her even then? Had he been counting down the hours until my plane took off so he could text my sister, invite her over to defile our bed?

The phone buzzed again. This time it wasn't Mark.

Lisa.

My sister. My twin. The person who was supposed to understand me better than anyone else in the world. Instead, she'd stolen my face, perfected it, and used it to steal my husband.

I grabbed the phone with one hand, my thumb hovering over her name. What could she possibly have to say? More casual cruelty delivered in that cool, measured tone? More explanations about how I was never really present anyway?

The phone slipped from my wet fingers, clattering to the floor of the passenger side. I reached for it, my eyes leaving the road for just a second—

A horn blared, long and desperate.

I jerked my head up to see the massive grille of an eighteen-wheeler bearing down on me, its headlights cutting through the rain like twin suns. I'd drifted into the wrong lane, my grief and rage making me careless with more than just my heart.

Time slowed to a crawl. I could see the truck driver's face, wide-eyed with horror behind his windshield. Could hear the screech of his brakes mixing with my own scream. My hands yanked the wheel hard to the right, the car responding with a violent lurch that sent my stomach into my throat.

The BMW spun, tires losing their grip on the rain-slicked asphalt. The world became a kaleidoscope of headlights and darkness, the guardrail rushing toward me with inevitable finality. In that endless moment before impact, my mind went strangely quiet.

I thought about the phone call I'd been about to make. Not to Mark—never to Mark again. Not to Lisa, who'd already said everything she needed to say with her actions. No, I'd been reaching for a different number. A contact I hadn't called in two years, not since the night I'd chosen Mark over everything else.

Damon.

The thought of his name sent a strange calm through me, even as my car careened toward destruction. Damon, who'd warned me about Mark from the beginning. Damon, who'd loved me with a fierce intensity that had terrified me into running toward the safer, more predictable choice of my husband. Damon, whose last words to me had been, "When he breaks your heart, don't come crying to me."

But I would have called him anyway. Because despite everything, despite the years and the silence and the pride, he was the only person who'd ever seen me—really seen me—without needing me to be perfect.

The guardrail rushed up to meet me, metal screaming against metal. My seatbelt cut into my chest as the car crumpled around me like a tin can. Glass exploded inward, tiny diamonds of pain that caught the light for one beautiful, terrible moment.

My last coherent thought before the darkness claimed me was of Damon's hands, strong and sure, the way they'd felt the night I'd walked away from him. The night I'd chosen the wrong man and sealed my fate.

The phone, still glowing on the passenger floor, showed his name on the screen—the call I'd been trying to make, the connection that would never happen.

Then the world went black, taking with it the pain, the betrayal, and the crushing weight of knowing that everything I'd built my life on had been a lie.