The Scandal Before the Vows novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Skylight

Locked next to their bedroom, Corina listens, hears Trenton admit the whole year was revenge, slaps him and lies that she could never hit Dean; when the door shuts she climbs out of the skylight she once thought was a gift and steps off the roof as Trenton cries her name.

The sounds came through the wall a minute after the lock turned.

A bed creaked, Brynn laughed low, and then she raised her voice so I would be sure to hear.

"Hot, isn't it? Making Corina listen from the other side."

I put my hands over my ears.

It did nothing.

Trenton had built this spare room for me.

Eight months ago, when I could not sleep, he had cut a skylight into the roof above this bed and lain beside me, counting stars until morning.

I had thought it was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for me.

Now I lay on the floor of it and listened to him with her.

I did not cry.

I lay there remembering every night I'd let him hold me, and every promise, and every time I had told him I trusted him.

None of it made sense anymore.

The door opened a long time later.

Trenton stood in it with a towel around his hips.

Brynn leaned on his shoulder behind him, her neck covered in dark marks, laughing at me with her whole mouth.

"Already finished?" he said. "It's one night, Corina. How are you going to survive a whole year of this?"

"Trenton," Brynn said sweetly. "Don't tell me you feel sorry for her."

Something moved across his face.

Then he sneered.

"As if."

He looked down at me on the floor.

"I only planned to marry her to make her feel what I felt. Why would I feel sorry?"

"So none of it was real," I said.

My voice was flat and clear and did not sound like mine.

"The skylight. The nights you stayed up with me. You not eating when I couldn't."

"All of it," Trenton said. "Every night."

I stood up.

I do not remember deciding to.

I crossed the room and slapped him as hard as I have ever hit anything.

The crack rang in the hall, and Brynn gasped.

Trenton stared at me, and then his face went dark red.

"You hit me? You have a death wish!"

I started laughing, and I could not stop.

"You bet I would," I said. "You and Brynn both. You bet I'd slap you the day I found out. Well, I did. Why are you so angry? You won."

I wiped my eyes.

"But I'll tell you the truth, Trenton. If it had been Dean, I never could have hit him. I couldn't bear to."

I watched that sink in.

I had lied.

I had stopped loving Dean a long time ago.

But the lie went in exactly where I had aimed it, and Trenton's face turned to ice.

"You said that on purpose."

"Yes."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he smiled, and it was the worst smile I had seen on him.

"Fine. Have it your way."

He backed out.

The door swung shut in front of my face, and this time the key did not turn.

He didn't need it.

The sounds started up again on the other side of the wall.

I got into the bed and pulled every blanket off it and piled them in a heap under the skylight.

I climbed up on the heap.

I tried the door once.

It opened onto the hall, and the stairs were on the far side of their open bedroom door.

To leave, I would have to walk past them, and my feet would not go.

I want to say there was a reason for what I did next.

There wasn't.

I had no money, no phone, no coat, no friend I could call and no home I had not already lost.

Everything I had saved myself with was a thing he had built to hold me still.

And the only way out of that room that did not pass them was up.

I opened the skylight and the cold came in.

I got my elbows on the frame and pulled myself out onto the shingles, the roof wet under my palms.

The city was lit up in rows below me, small and far.

I stood.

It was a short walk to the edge.

My mind was very quiet, and one thought kept coming back to it.

There was nothing left that he could take, so there was nothing left for me to lose.

I looked down at the dark drive, at the white blooms of the hydrangeas along it.

I stepped off.

For a second the air was only air.

Then I fell past the master bedroom, and the window was lit, and a man in a towel was inside it with his hand on the glass.

His mouth opened.

"Corina, no!"

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