Chapter 1
Claire Summers found the photo in the editing room.
It was 2:17 in the morning, and the first rain of winter was tapping against the windows.
She sat curled up in her chair, bundled in a blanket she had washed so many times it had started to pill, and the screen in front of her was still frozen on the color grade for the last shot of her documentary.
Her phone lit up. Her best friend, Emily Reed, had sent her ten texts back-to-back, and the last one was a screenshot.
The screenshot was from Ethan Brooks' Instagram. His caption read: [Found my forever.]
The photo showed a ring on the hand of a girl Claire had never seen before. The hand was slender and pale, with a tiny mole at the base of the ring finger, in the exact same spot as the one on Claire's middle finger.
Claire stared at that mole for three full minutes.
She didn't cry. Her throat felt like someone had stuffed a wad of wet cotton in it, and she couldn't swallow it down or cough it up.
Without thinking, she pulled up her own Instagram. Three days ago, she had liked Ethan's birthday post from last year.
She had left a long comment underneath, choosing every word as carefully as if she were writing a thesis, agonizing over whether any of it sounded too clingy.
He never replied.
She had told herself he was busy. He worked in the ER, and some days he barely had time to take a sip of water.
Now she understood. He wasn't busy. He was busy making time for someone else.
*****
Claire's phone buzzed again. This time it was Emily.
"You saw it?" Emily kept her voice low, careful, as if speaking too loud might shatter Claire.
"Yeah."
"Did you cry?"
"No." Claire's voice was steady. Too steady, like she was talking about someone else's life. "There's one thing I can't wrap my head around."
"What?"
"It's only been four months since we broke up."
The line went quiet for a long time. Emily was probably searching for the right words, something strong enough to matter but gentle enough not to hurt.
Finally, she spoke. "Claire, I need to say something, and you're not going to like it, but you need to hear it. He stopped loving you long before you two broke up."
The words cut through her like a scalpel, slicing open a wound she had been pressing shut for six months.
She knew. She had always known.
In three years together, Ethan had never once said "I love you" first. Every single time, she was the one who said it, and he would answer with "me too." For his birthday, she would start preparing a month in advance.
She'd knit him a scarf by hand, or order a custom case for his stethoscope, or hunt down some rare medical textbook he had mentioned once in passing.
For her birthdays, he would grab a stuffed animal from the convenience store downstairs on the day of. The price tag was still on it, and the receipt was still in the bag.
When she had a 102-degree fever and called him, he said he couldn't leave the department and told her to take a cab to the hospital.
So she checked into the ER alone, waited in line for her medication alone, and went home to heat up some soup alone.
The next day, he came home from work, noticed the pill bottle on the table, and only then thought to ask, "Feeling any better?"
And she never blamed him. Not once.
Because she was too understanding for her own good.
She explained away every hurt with the same tired excuses. His job was demanding, and he was exhausted; that was just how he was. She had built every single excuse for him herself, but there was one truth she could never bring herself to face.
He wasn't incapable of love. He didn't want to love her.
Claire set her phone down, closed the editing software, and opened a folder on her computer labeled "Archive."
It held three years' worth of fragments she had written on and off. They weren't diary entries. They were words she had never been brave enough to send to Ethan.
The last one was dated the day they broke up.
[I moved out today. You were working late at the hospital, and I left without saying goodbye. But I knew you weren't really working.]
[You stayed away on purpose because you couldn't bring yourself to say it to my face, so you left me to carry that moment alone. Ethan, do you know what hurt the most? It wasn't that you didn't love me enough.]
[It was that I spent so long trying to find my way into your world, and you never once let me through the door.]
She read through it, word by word. Then she closed the folder, opened the trash, and hit empty.
Claire and Ethan's story was the kind of cliché that belonged in some low-budget indie film, the kind that barely earned a passing grade.