Chapter 5

Tara's POV

"Tara, you've let me down." His voice carried over the sound of the wind off the water, stripped of anything warm.

I stood where I was. The wind was pulling at my hair. I watched him cradle Mandy with the kind of careful attention he had never once reserved for a moment when I was the one who needed it. The whole scene felt unreal.

"I didn't push her." I kept my voice level. I wasn't defending myself. I was simply stating a fact.

"With this many witnesses, you're still going to deny it?" He got to his feet and came toward me, each step deliberate. "I thought you were just being difficult. I never imagined you were actually capable of something like this. Mandy can't swim. You could have killed her."

The voices of the people around us crested and broke. Every word was another piece of the verdict.

I looked at the man who claimed to love me and felt like I was looking at a stranger.

He didn't check the camera footage. He didn't ask what happened. He didn't give me a single moment to explain. He had already decided.

"If you're so sure I did it, then call the police." I didn't look away from him.

That caught him off guard.

Mandy reached out from where she lay and caught the hem of his pants. "Don't, Gordon. Please. The last thing you need is your name in the papers over something like this. I'm fine. If it makes Tara feel better, I don't mind. I can take it."

Those words did exactly what they were designed to do.

The way he looked at Mandy then, it was all tenderness. The way he looked back at me, nothing but contempt.

"Starting today, you stay home." His voice was flat and final. "You don't go anywhere until you're ready to admit what you did."

I was taken back to the house by his security detail.

My phone was confiscated. The internet was cut. The front door was locked from the outside.

I had been placed under house arrest.

For the next two weeks, Gordon didn't come back once.

I sat by the floor-to-ceiling window each day and watched the light change. I felt strangely calm. When hope has been ground down to nothing, what's left is a kind of stillness.

Then, two weeks later, the front door opened.

Gordon walked in. Mandy was with him.

Color had returned to her face. She was even more beautiful than before. She came in on Gordon's arm, scanning the rooms with the ease of someone deciding what renovations to make.

"I don't really like the way this place is decorated," Mandy said, her voice soft with complaint. "It's not really my style."

Gordon flicked her nose affectionately. "I'll have someone redo it however you like tomorrow."

I sat on the sofa and watched the two of them without expression.

Gordon crossed the room and stood over me. "Have you had time to think about what you did?"

I looked up. "What exactly did I do?"

"Apologize to Mandy." There was no flexibility in his tone. "Do that, and I'll forgive you. We can go back to how things were."

I almost laughed.

The tears nearly came with it.

He had locked me in this house for two weeks. He had walked in with another woman as though this were already her home. And now he was standing there, offering to forgive me.

"Gordon," I said, "do you actually believe I can't survive without you?"

He frowned. "Can you stop acting like a child? Mandy still isn't fully recovered. Her doctor said she needs rest. She'll be staying here for a while, and you'll be looking after her. Think of it as making things right."