Chapter 2

The suffocating memory of icy seawater flooding my lungs still lingered as I jolted upright, coughing violently. My chest burned like it was about to split open.

White hospital walls surrounded me, and the fluorescent lights stung my eyes. Beneath the sharp smell of antiseptic, I caught a faint trace of salt and fish.

It was coming from the old couple who had pulled me from the water.

"Oh, sweetheart, you're finally awake!" The woman hurried over with a bowl of warm broth. "You were floating out there for half a day. Another hour and we would've lost you."

I opened my mouth, but my throat was so raw that the words wouldn't come.

My hand moved to my stomach on instinct, and my fingertips pressed against the flat skin. A faint warmth pulsed beneath my palm, and it was more reassuring than any medication could ever be.

The baby was still there.

In that moment, all of it fell away. The despair of sinking into the ocean, Richard's cold contempt, Kirsty's vicious insults. None of it mattered against that tiny flicker of warmth.

I couldn't die. I had to bring this child into the world.

A nurse came in to take down my information. Her pen hovered over the clipboard. "Name?"

I gripped the bedsheet until my nails dug into my palms, and I swallowed the name that the Blackwell family had ground into the dirt. "Blaire."

My voice came out rough and broken. "I got caught in a storm out on the water. The boat capsized. I don't remember much after that."

I couldn't say I was Claire Evans. I couldn't mention the Blackwells. Even the thought of them sent a chill through my entire body, like I was being dragged back under that freezing water all over again.

The day I was discharged, the old couple pressed a cloth bag into my hands. Inside were a few hundred dollars in cash and a set of old cotton clothes, washed so many times they had faded to near-white.

"We don't have much, but take this and find yourself a place to stay," the old woman said. "And stay away from the ocean."

I took the bag and bowed my head to them, but I couldn't say thank you. A thousand words sat lodged in my throat, and not one of them would come out.

I found a place in a run-down apartment building on the top floor of an old complex near the coast. The room was barely a hundred square feet, and the rent was thirty dollars a month.

Paint peeled off the walls in wide strips, mold crept along every corner, and at night, the mosquitoes swarmed thick enough to carry a person away.

I set the cloth bag on the only small table in the room and stared at the emptiness around me. This was all I had left, and I knew it.

The next morning, I went out looking for work. I walked through most of the city before I finally landed a gig at a small diner.

The owner looked me up and down, then glanced at my belly, which was barely starting to show. He hesitated for a long time before he spoke.

"You can wash dishes and bus tables. You get one meal a day, and I'll pay you at the end of the month."

I nodded. As long as I could earn money, I could handle anything.

But after a few days, he changed his tune.

He owed me half a month's wages and only paid me half, acting like it was perfectly reasonable.

He sneered, "You're pregnant, and you're slow. What's the big deal if I dock your pay a little? If you don't like it, leave."

I clenched my jaw and stayed. The kitchen was stifling, and mountains of dirty plates sat soaking in cold water. I crouched by the sink and scrubbed until my fingers went numb.

The morning sickness hit without warning.

I was carrying a tray of plates out to the floor when a wave of nausea slammed into me. I dropped into a crouch on the curb and dry-heaved until my stomach turned inside out, and all that came up was bile.

A group of women from the stall next door huddled together and whispered. Their voices were low, but every word cut straight through me.

"Look at her. Pregnant and no ring, I bet."

"Some guy probably dumped her. Why else would she end up here all alone?"

"No self-respect at all."

I didn't look up. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, stood up, and carried the tray back inside.

Their words were like fine grains of sand ground into my eyes, stinging and raw, but I didn't dare cry.

My tears had already been washed away the day I fell into the sea, and the ocean had taken every last one of them.

I knocked off work that evening and passed by a small art supply store on the corner.

A design portfolio sat behind the glass display case, and it caught my eye immediately.

It brought everything back. When I was young, drawing was the thing I loved most. I used to flip through books like that and swear to myself that I'd become an independent designer someday.

But after I married into the Blackwell family, all of that passion was ground down to nothing, buried under years of trying to please people who never cared.

I crouched outside the store, picked up a few sheets of scrap paper someone had tossed, and found a pencil with a broken tip.

Back in my tiny house, I sat under the dim glow of a bare lightbulb and started sketching lines on the paper.

My hand trembled. The lines came out crooked and uneven, but I couldn't stop. Something inside me kept going, and the thought in my mind grew sharper with every stroke.

I would have this baby. I would survive on my own talent. And I would be Blaire, forever.

Never again would I be Claire, the woman whose whole world revolved around Richard.

My belly grew rounder as the weeks passed, and it was time for a prenatal checkup.

I spread out the loose bills and coins I'd been saving for weeks, counting them over and over. I was still sixty dollars short.

I stood outside the exam room, clutching a handful of wrinkled cash, my voice shaking as I tried to reason with the nurse.

I begged, "Ma'am, I'm sixty short. Can I go ahead with the checkup and pay the rest as soon as I can?"

The nurse shook her head, and her tone didn't budge. "I'm sorry, but that's not how it works. You need to pay in full before we can see you."

I felt the stares from the people around me. Some looked sympathetic. Others looked down on me.

A dull, dragging pain rippled through my lower belly, and I froze. My hands flew to my stomach on instinct.