Chapter 1He Banished Me to the Desert

Stepping out of the terminal after a brutal five-year stint out of state, my chest hummed with a foolish kind of hope. I thought Christopher would finally drop to one knee and keep the promise he made before I left.

Instead, he stood by the baggage claim with his hands in his pockets. His face was a mask of absolute indifference.

"Margo. I'm sorry."

Before the shock could even register, he kept talking.

"That transfer order. I was the one who pulled the strings."

"I deliberately shipped you off to that godforsaken mining project in the Mojave. I needed to clear the board so Lily and I could figure things out."

"She got pregnant back then. I didn't have a choice."

A suffocating silence stretched between us. I bit the inside of my cheek until the metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth.

Five years. Five years of swallowing sand in the desert, enduring blistering heatwaves, pulling sixteen-hour shifts until my bones felt like lead.

It wasn't a stepping stone for my career. It was a cage he built from scratch.

"You were always so intense, so relentless. I was terrified you'd do something to hurt her."

"I'm not telling you this to beg for forgiveness. I just need you to process this now, so you don't make a scene later."

His tone was heavy with a sickening kind of pity.

I took a step back, dodging the hand he reached out toward me. A broken laugh clawed its way up my throat, bringing hot tears to my eyes.

"Christopher, you just took something that could have ended with a shred of dignity and burned it to the ground."

* * *

Christopher's BMW tailed my cab the entire ride into the city, flashing its headlights twice.

The cab driver caught my eye in the rearview mirror.

"Hey miss, that Beemer's been riding my bumper for miles. A friend of yours?"

I wiped a smudge of dried blood from the corner of my mouth.

"No."

"You want me to lose him?"

"Don't bother. He knows exactly where I'm going."

The downtown apartment complex looked exactly the same, right down to the faded flyers in the elevator. I dragged my suitcase down the hall and jammed my key into the lock.

The cylinder wouldn't turn. The mechanism felt entirely wrong.

Then the door swung open from the inside.

Lily stood there in a silk slip dress, balancing a toddler on her hip. She blinked in surprise when she saw me, but the shock quickly melted into a sugar-sweet smile.

"Oh. You're back."

The little boy wrapped his arms around her neck, staring at me with wide eyes.

"Mommy, who's that lady?"

"Just someone who used to live here, sweetie."

Lily smoothed the boy's hair and looked back at me.

"Want to come in for a bit? Christopher mentioned you were flying in today, but I didn't think you'd be here this fast."

My eyes drifted past her shoulder into the living room.

A massive wedding portrait hung above the fireplace. The leather sofa I bought was gone, replaced by a plush sectional. Tiny clothes were draped over a drying rack on the balcony.

"This place..."

"Is my home."

Lily cut me off. Her voice was soft, perfectly modulated.

"It has been for five years. The second Christopher got the deed, he moved me right in."

The wheels of my suitcase jammed against the threshold.

"He told me that as soon as you hit the desert, we were getting married."

The toddler started squirming, whining to be put down. Lily set him on the hardwood, and he immediately bolted toward a toy chest in the corner.

She leaned against the doorframe, her eyes doing a slow, evaluating sweep of my body.

"You've lost a ton of weight. The outback must have been brutal, huh?"

My knuckles turned white around the handle of my luggage.

"Is Christopher coming up?"

"Hard to say."

She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow.

"What exactly are you looking for here? A payout? An apology?"

"I don't want anything from him."

"Then why did you even show up?"

Looking at her flawlessly pampered face, a wave of pure nausea hit me.

"I came back," I said, keeping my voice dangerously level, "to get my things."

Lily let out a soft, mocking laugh.

"What things? I tossed your clothes ages ago. Christopher said your books were just collecting dust, so we donated them. Oh, and those stupid potted plants you left behind? Dead."

She paused, tilting her head.

"I made sure not to water them."

I turned on my heel and hammered the elevator button.

Her voice drifted down the hall.

"Margo, don't make this ugly. You've got absolutely nothing left. You're out of your league here."

The metal doors slid shut.

I rested my forehead against the freezing steel panel and closed my eyes.

Five years.

I thought I was climbing the corporate ladder. I was just funding their honeymoon.