Chapter 6

The fireworks died out in the night sky, like the last glimmer of starlight in my heart.

Alexander smugly wrapped his arm around Sophia's waist, though his voice feigned gentleness. "Sophia, let's go. Let James have some time alone."

But Sophia didn't move a muscle. Her tears fell like unstrung pearls, her whole body seeming emptied of its soul.

"No… it wasn't supposed to be like this." She muttered, staring at the ring box's imprint in the sand where I'd set it down.

Alexander's arm tightened. "Sophia—"

She shrugged him off. The motion was small, but it was the first time she'd ever pushed him away.

"The subway rides," she whispered. "He engraved the subway rides."

Alexander's mask slipped—just a fraction. "What?"

"When we had nothing, James would fall asleep on the subway home after working double shifts. I'd put his head on my shoulder and count the stops."

She looked at her own hands, as if seeing them for the first time.

"I never told anyone that. Not a single soul. Only James would know to engrave that."

The realization hit her like ice water.

She turned to Alexander. Her eyes were different now—not angry, not cold. Searching.

"Alexander. The watch you said James stole from you. Tell me exactly what happened."

"Sophia, we've been through this—"

"Tell me again."

His jaw tightened. "He sent someone to take it from my apartment."

"Which apartment?"

"The one on Fifth—"

"I never told James where you live."

Silence.

"And those photos you sent him—from our trip. I didn't authorize those."

"I was just—"

"You sent intimate photos of us to my husband without my knowledge."

The word husband hung in the air. She hadn't used it in months.

Alexander's composure crumbled. The gentle, self-sacrificing mask was dissolving, and beneath it was something hard and calculating.

"Sophia, you're confused. That man manipulated you for years—"

"That man built a company so I could chase my dreams. That man slept on subways and bled at business dinners. That man carried a two-hundred-dollar watch for seven years because I gave it to him."

Her voice was rising. The beach around them was empty now—only the dying embers of stolen fireworks.

"And you. You wore his watch. You took his proposal site. You even used the same roses."

She stepped back from him.

"Who are you, Alexander?"

The question wasn't rhetorical. It was the first honest thing she'd said in a year.

And Alexander, finally, stopped pretending.