Chapter 1

"Sign it."

The divorce papers hit the coffee table. The edge of the paper snapped with a nasty little snap.

Dashiell Vance stood by the window, looking sharp and grim in the shadows. He wouldn't even look at me.

Next to him, Tamsin Booth perched on the arm of the couch, her nude-pink nails wrapped around a strawberry. She bit into it. Juice smeared her lips.

"Sable, I'm so sorry," she said, sweet as honey. "Dashiell and I, we're really in love. And you know, you can't exactly blame him, right?"

She didn't say the rest, but it hung there anyway, louder than any words.

What she didn't finish was, "You can't even talk. What makes you think you deserve to be Mrs. Vance?"

I sat across from them, my fingers digging into my knees. Three years of this. I'd wiped down this couch more times than I could count and emptied that ashtray every single day. The white roses on the table? I just changed them yesterday.

I'd put every ounce of myself into keeping this place together, and now silence was the reason they were throwing me out.

Dashiell finally turned. He looked at me like I was a piece of old furniture he'd tripped over.

"Sable. Three years. I'm done." His voice was flat. No heat. Just over it. "You can't even string together a sentence.What am I supposed to do with you? Take you somewhere and say, 'Hey everyone, this is my wife. She can't talk?'"

Can't talk.

Those two words out of his mouth hurt worse than the crash that crushed my throat three years ago.

But I didn't cry. I'd learned something over the past three years.

Crying didn't make a sound anyway. And my world had been quiet for a long time.

I picked up the pen from the coffee table and uncapped it, moving so slowly that Dashiell thought I was dragging things out. He let out an impatient breath.

Then I wrote a single line in the blank space of the divorce papers, and then slid the paper across the table.

He glanced down, and his eyes widened in shock.

I wrote neatly: [Fine. But I have one condition—tell me, how did you survive that car crash three years ago?]

Dashiell's face went pale. "What are you talking about?"

I stared at him, not blinking once.

Tamsin jumped in, "Sable, you're not trying to say you saved Dashiell, are you?" She giggled behind her hand. "But Dashiell said he crawled out of the car himself."

I ignored her and kept writing. [You had amnesia, Dashiell. Two weeks of retrograde memory loss after the crash. The doctors said so. You forgot the details of that day.]

Dashiell gripped the edge of the paper. "What are you trying to say?"

I wrote, [The car hit us from the side. The passenger side. You were driving. I was in the passenger seat. If I hadn't thrown myself in front of you, it wouldn't have been my throat that got crushed. It would've been your head.]

The living room went dead quiet.

Tamsin's smile froze. Dashiell stared at the words, his breathing growing heavier. He searched his mind, struggling, but came up empty, like that memory had been scrubbed out of existence.

"You're lying." His voice was hoarse. "If it was really like that, why didn't you say anything before?"

I lowered my head and wrote, for him and for myself. [Because the first thing you said when you woke up was "Sable, you can't even speak properly? Embarrassing."]

The pen tip stabbed through the paper, ink bleeding into a small black stain.

Dashiell looked like he'd just been slapped, stumbling back a step.

"Dash..." Tamsin grabbed his arm. "Don't let her mess with your head. She doesn't even have a voice. How do you know anything she writes is even true?"

I glanced up at Tamsin. Three years ago, she was Dashiell's first love, who dumped him without a second thought and jetted off after graduation. Now she was back, and the moment she saw I was mute, suddenly Dashiell looked like a prize worth fighting for.

I set the pen down without writing another word and stood up. Then I took the divorce papers, flipped to the last page, and scrawled my name on the signature line.

Sable Vance.

Each stroke was slow and steady, as if I were carving my name into stone.

Suddenly, Dashiell slammed his hand down on the paper. "Wait!"