One Lipstick, Nine Lies, Zero People On My Side Chapter 03

One Lipstick, Nine Lies, Zero People On My Side Chapter 03

Leonie was still crying when Iona seized my arm and dragged me upstairs.

She shoved me into the private suite above Harborwake House and slammed the door behind us.

This room had once belonged to Stellan and me.

Whenever I finished a long surgery and needed somewhere quiet to breathe, he brought me here.

He kept sandwiches and soup in an insulated bag because I forgot to eat when I was working, and when the tension in my neck grew unbearable, he bought a massage chair for the living room.

Those small acts of care had once convinced me he loved me.

Now the suite was a nursery.

A bassinet stood beside the window. Diapers filled the shelves, toys covered the rug, and a changing table occupied the corner where my chair had once been.

Every trace of me was gone.

“What Stellan has with Leonie is love,” Iona said. “With you, he confused gratitude with love because you saved his life.”

I stared at her.

“What are you talking about?”

She didn’t answer right away. She only looked at me with something that resembled pity.

Then she crossed the room and raised the retractable projection screen.

The wall behind it was covered in photographs.

Stellan and Leonie skiing together at Rimeglass Summit. Walking beside Lake Edevane at sunset. Sitting shoulder to shoulder on a small riverboat through Cypressglass Bayou.

There were dozens of them.

“They’ve been together for three years,” Iona said.

My eyes moved from one photograph to the next.

“Last year, Stellan wasn’t away on business. Orson and I weren’t on our honeymoon either.”

She pointed to the largest photograph in the center.

Leonie wore a wedding gown. Stellan stood beside her beneath the vines at Calderay Vineyard, smiling as if he had never promised his life to anyone else.

“We were all there for their ceremony.”

The room tilted beneath my feet.

Iona kept going.

“Stellan arranged the confrontation at the hospital too. We couldn’t risk you finding out who Leonie was before her treatment was finished.”

I looked at her as if I had never seen her before.

Not long ago, I had stood beside Iona at her own wedding as her only bridesmaid. She had pressed her bouquet into my hands and told me I deserved the same happiness she had found.

She had even warned Stellan that if he ever hurt me, he would answer to her.

Now she was standing in the nursery he had built for another woman, telling me she had helped him erase me.

The tears came before I could stop them.

I had trusted every one of them.

They had taken that trust, used it against me, and called me unstable whenever I noticed the cracks in their lies.

The door opened behind us.

Stellan entered with Leonie tucked against his side.

I wiped my face and looked at them.

“Then keep each other.”

Leonie blinked. “Dr. Hollowell…”

Stellan frowned.

“Sabine, what are you talking about?”

I pulled the engagement ring from my finger, placed it in Leonie’s palm and folded her fingers around it.

“He’s yours.”

My voice came out calm.

“I hope the family you chose was worth everything it cost.”

Iona and Orson stared at me.

Stellan opened his mouth, but I was done listening.

I walked past him, opened the door, and left.