Twice.
Then every bit of heartbreak on her face hardens into something colder.
“It doesn’t matter,” she repeats.
“Sophie.”
“No.” She steps back. “No, don’t you dare say my name like that now.”
I reach for her.
She jerks away before I touch her.
That hurts.
I deserve it.
“You don’t get to measure my honesty with one hand and hide your own behind your back,” she says. “You don’t get to stand there and act like postponing our wedding is some noble decision about trust when you have been carrying a grave between us and calling it the past.”
Becki sobs harder.
Royal murmurs something against her hair.
Amelia stands near Derby, face pale and stricken, like she is watching another woman’s love turn into a battlefield and wondering if all roads end the same way.
Derby’s expression is grim.
He knows.
Hell, all of them know.
I have lost control of this room.
Worse.
I have lost the right to claim I had it.
Sophie grabs her phone from the table. Her hand shakes, but her voice doesn’t. She looks at Becki, and some of the anger eases. “Take care of yourself.”
Becki is crying too hard to answer.
Sophie looks at Royal. “Take care of her.”
Royal nods once, solemn as death.
Then Sophie looks back at me.
My almost-wife.
My heart.
The woman I just hurt because I was too proud to see my lie standing beside hers.
“I need to think somewhere that is mine,” she says. “And I need to ask my father what the hell he paid for before someone else decides the answer with a gun.”
Then she walks past me.
Not around me.