Chapter 1

I was the one who gave my husband my kidney.

But that night, twelve people raised their glasses to another woman.

“To Blair,” Dean called over the noise of the harbor bar. “The woman who gave Rhys a second life.”

Glasses clinked. My husband smiled.

I stood inside the door with rain dripping from my coat, one hand wrapped around the orange prescription bottle in my pocket and the other pressed to my left side. The scar beneath my dress had faded. The ache had not.

Rhys had never asked why I sometimes held that spot.

He had left his anti-rejection medication on the kitchen counter again, so I had driven through a storm to bring him the pills that kept my kidney working inside his body.

Dean noticed me first. “Look who’s here. The other Mrs. Halston.”

A few people laughed.

Rhys turned. His smile disappeared. “Mara? What are you doing here?”

I placed the bottle beside his whiskey. “You missed your nine o’clock dose.”

He checked his watch, annoyed. “You could have called.”

“I did. Three times.”

His phone lay facedown beside him.

Claire leaned across the table. “You’re a saint, Mara. I don’t know how you keep track of everything.”

“She’s good at being useful,” Rhys said.

The laughter came again. Pain pulsed under my ribs, and I pressed harder until it passed.

Dean poured another round. “Blair gave him the kidney, but Mara makes sure he doesn’t ruin it.”

“She got the better deal,” someone said. “Blair gave him a body part. Mara got the Halston name.”

“And Evelyn’s money,” Dean added.

I waited for Rhys to stop them.

He opened the bottle instead. “Mara knew what she was agreeing to.”

Dean pushed an empty glass toward me. “Come on. Without Blair, you wouldn’t be Mrs. Halston. You should be the most grateful person here.”

Rhys filled the glass with wine and offered it to me. “It’s only a toast.”

I looked at the hand I had held in the hospital while doctors waited to see whether his body would accept what mine had given it.

“I’m driving.”

With a sigh, he replaced the wine with water. “There. Now you have no reason to make this awkward.”

Twelve faces waited.

I took the glass. “To getting exactly what we deserve.”

Dean laughed as if I had made a joke.

Rhys swallowed the pills I had carried through the storm, then lifted his whiskey. “To Blair. I owe her everything.”

I set down my untouched water. That was the first thing I stopped doing for him: I did not finish the toast.

Claire cleared her throat. “Blair lands Friday at three twenty.”

“I’ll pick her up,” Rhys said immediately.

Last month, he had forgotten the children’s reading event I had spent half a year organizing. Blair’s arrival time settled into his mind without effort.

Dean grinned. “If Blair had stayed, would you still have married Mara?”

The table went silent.

Rhys looked at me. For one second, he hesitated—long enough for the dying part of me to hope he might lie.

“No.”

Someone shifted in their chair.

“Mara was the suitable choice,” he added. “She knew what this marriage was.”

Three years of organizing his medication, watching his temperature and waking whenever his breathing changed.

Suitable.

Dean gave an uneasy laugh. “Keep talking like that and she might leave.”

Rhys did not hesitate this time. “She won’t. Mara doesn’t walk away.”

His certainty silenced the table.

I pushed the medication toward him. “Read the label for the next dose.”

Then I walked out without checking whether he took it.

Under the bar’s awning, I opened the contact I had saved months ago.

Start the divorce papers.

My attorney replied immediately.

Are you certain? Your agreement with Evelyn has ninety days left.

Through the rain-streaked window, I watched Rhys raise another glass to Blair.

I’ll keep my promise, I typed. On the ninety-first day, I’ll be gone.