Chapter 3

Hazel POV:

The clinic' s fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a sterile, unforgiving glare on the neat row of stitches marching across my forearm. The doctor, a young resident with tired eyes, carefully wrapped a white bandage around the wound.

"That' s a nasty cut," he said, his voice gentle. "Are you here alone? Is there family I can call for you?"

Family. The word hung in the air between us. Did I have a family? A fiancé who had just accused me of assault and abandoned me to carry his mistress to safety? A stepsister who had orchestrated my public humiliation? My only real family was Jakobe, lying in a hospital bed miles away, unaware of the fresh hell his sister had just walked through.

I couldn't form a reply. A lump formed in my throat, thick and suffocating.

Just as the silence became unbearable, a voice cut through the stuffy air of the examination room.

"Hazel."

I flinched. Harden stood in the doorway, his tall frame blocking the exit. He was holding a small paper bag from the pharmacy, his face a carefully constructed mask of concern.

The young doctor' s face lit up. "Oh, wonderful, you' re here. She gave us quite a scare." He turned to me, his smile congratulatory. "You have a very caring fiancé, Ms. Rogers. He was frantic when he called."

My stomach twisted into a knot of pure acid. Caring. Frantic. The words were a mockery.

Harden walked towards me, his gaze softening as he looked at my bandaged arm. "Let' s get you home."

The drive back to the waterfront condo we shared was suffocating. I stared out the window, watching the city lights blur into streaks of indifferent color. Krista was in the passenger seat, a place that had always, exclusively, been mine. Harden had insisted on it, claiming her minor scratch might get infected if she sat in the back.

She had already changed into one of my cashmere sweaters, which was two sizes too big for her but served its purpose. It made her look small, fragile, and victimized.

"You know, Hazel," Krista said, her voice laced with a triumphant little hum as she examined her perfectly manicured nails. "This seat is so much more comfortable than the back. I can see why you always hogged it."

I didn't answer. I could feel Harden' s eyes on me in the rearview mirror, but I refused to meet his gaze.

He pulled up to our building and turned to Krista, handing her the pharmacy bag he' d been holding. "Here, this is for you. The best scar-prevention cream on the market. I don' t want my beautiful Krista to have a single blemish."

His beautiful Krista. The words were a deliberate, calculated strike, aimed directly at my heart. And they hit their mark. I felt the impact like a physical blow, a sharp, stabbing pain that resonated through my entire body. My arm throbbed in time with my broken heart.

I must have made a sound, a small, choked gasp, because Harden' s attention finally shifted to me.

"What' s wrong now?" he asked, his voice laced with impatience. "It' s just a scratch, Hazel. Don' t be so dramatic."

He and Krista began to chat animatedly about their plans for the week, their voices a cheerful, oblivious buzz that filled a car thick with my silent anguish. My pain, my bleeding, my humiliation-it was all an inconvenient footnote to their grand love story.

"We should go look at wedding venues tomorrow," Harden suggested, his voice bright.

The word 'wedding' was so absurd, so utterly grotesque in this context, that a bitter laugh almost escaped me.

"Oh, that sounds wonderful!" Krista chirped. "But Hazel will need to come. After all, she' s the bride. I can help her pick out a dress. I have much better taste, anyway."

Her words were another deliberate jab, a reminder of her power and my irrelevance.

I thought of the past, of Harden whispering promises in the dark. "I can' t wait to see you walk down the aisle, Hazel. You' ll be the most beautiful bride in the world." It all felt like a scene from a movie I' d once watched, a life that belonged to someone else.

"I' m not feeling well," I finally said, my voice thin and reedy. "My arm hurts. I need to rest."

Harden sighed, a sound of pure annoyance. "Fine. Then Krista can try on the dresses for you. We' re about the same size. It' ll save us a trip."

The cruelty of it was breathtaking. He wanted his mistress to try on my wedding gown. He wanted to see her in white, to picture her as his bride, while I was relegated to the role of a sickly, inconvenient spectator. The mask of the loving fiancé had finally slipped, revealing the monster underneath.

A chilling realization washed over me. He didn't just want to replace me; he wanted to erase me.

"Harden," I asked, my voice flat, devoid of all emotion. "Are we still getting married?"

He seemed taken aback by the directness of the question. "Of course we are," he said, but his tone was clipped, impatient. "Don' t be ridiculous."

I turned my head to stare out the window, a dead smile playing on my lips. "Good. Because I have a very special gift for you and Krista. A wedding gift."

I didn' t wait for his reply. As soon as the car stopped, I opened the door and walked away without a backward glance, leaving him to stare after me with a flicker of something I couldn't quite decipher in his eyes. For a split second, it almost looked like confusion. Or maybe, just maybe, a sliver of fear.