Chapter 2 2

They put me in the guesthouse. Luxurious prison.

For three days, I watched.

Izzy and Julian Vance, her pre-amnesia fiancé, were inseparable.

Laughing. Touching. Planning their future.

Julian, handsome, smug. He looked at me like I was dirt on his shoe.

He'd orchestrated my downfall in the other life. I felt the ghost of it.

Noah, my son. Six years old.

They dressed him in tiny polo shirts, khaki pants.

He wasn't my rough-and-tumble Philly kid anymore.

He saw me in the garden.

I knelt. "Noah?"

He stared. His eyes, Izzy's blue, were cold.

"Mommy says you're not my daddy anymore," he said. "Julian is."

He kicked my shin. Hard.

"Grease monkey," he spat, a word Julian must have taught him.

Then he ran to Julian, who scooped him up, smiling over Noah's head at me.

The last piece of my old heart broke. Good. I needed it to.

On the third day, Izzy approached me.

A performance of sentimentality.

"Liam," she said, her voice soft, a hint of the Izzy I knew. "Before you go... for Noah's sake... could we take a picture? A family portrait?"

I saw the calculation. A final, clean image for her narrative.

"Alright, Izzy," I said.

We stood in the formal drawing room. A photographer fussed.

Noah stood between us, stiff, unhappy.

Just as the photographer raised his camera, Izzy's phone rang.

She answered, her face instantly animated.

"Julian! Oh no, the yacht? For this weekend? Of course, I'll meet you. Right away."

She hung up, gave me a fleeting, apologetic glance.

"So sorry, Liam. Urgent. Julian needs me."

She hurried out, Noah trailing after her, eager to leave my presence.

The photographer looked awkward.

"Sir?"

"We're done," I said.

I walked out of that house.

I didn't look back.

At Logan Airport, I took out my old phone.

Pictures of Izzy, laughing. Noah, a baby, then a toddler.

My finger hovered over the delete button.

My past life screamed, *No!*

My new life pressed down. *Yes.*

Delete. Delete. Delete.

A flood of texts came through. Izzy.

*Liam, where are you? The photographer is still here!*

*Liam, this is rude!*

*Answer me!*

I turned the phone off. Dropped it in a trash can at the gate.

The flight to Los Angeles was called.

I walked onto the plane.

A new city. A new life.

This time, I would build it for myself. Alone.