Chapter 9: Robe and Doorway

Victoria's condo was on the third floor of a brick building on Birch Street.

Dad had paid the deposit on it for her twenty-first birthday.

I texted Rafe from the stairwell.

"Going to Victoria's. Birch Street, 3C. Don't come. I mean it."

Ross knocked.

Nobody answered for a long time.

Then the chain rattled, and the door opened four inches.

It was not Victoria.

It was Kent, in a white hotel-style bathrobe, with his hair wet and his feet bare.

He looked at Ross.

He looked at me.

"June," he said. "This isn't what it looks like."

I had read that line in a hundred bad novels.

I had never expected to hear it said out loud, in a man's own voice, by a man I had been about to marry.

"What does it look like?" I asked.

"We were, I came by to check on her. She's been so upset. I needed a shower."

"At eleven in the morning."

"She had a leak."

"In your hair?"

Ross made a small choking noise.

"June, please," Kent said. "Let's talk about it calmly."

"Where is she?"

"She's resting."

"Victoria!" I called over his shoulder. "Come out. I want to see your face."

A door opened somewhere deeper in the condo.

Victoria appeared in the hallway in a pink silk robe that matched his.

She had a purple bruise across her left cheekbone.

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