Chapter 1
At seven in the morning, Blake's phone buzzed me awake.
The screen lit up with almost 100 unread messages.
Blake had been missing for forty-eight hours.
The group chat with his buddies had already blown up.
Yates Flores had sent eight voice messages, each nearly a minute long.
I tapped the first one, and his furious voice blasted through the speaker.
"Did Blake f*****g evaporate, or did somebody kidnap him? Who saw him last? I want a straight answer right now!"
Colton Zavala had been firing off questions from midnight until dawn, strings of question marks and frantic messages piling up one after another. His last one had been sent at four in the morning.
"What if something actually happened to him? Should we call the police?"
Miles Lucero had not said a word.
He was always the quietest person in the group.
I turned his phone face down on the pillow and slowly sat up.
At two in the morning yesterday, I had spent four hours sitting beside the bathtub in Room 1208 at the Hilton.
I had watched a 6'3" man sleep slumped against the porcelain wall of the tub, his wrists tied together with a necktie.
There was an old scar below his collarbone.
Shrapnel had left it there.
My fingertips had followed that scar for a long time.
That might have been the only time I had ever dared to touch him like that.
When Blake was awake, I never dared get that close. In my own mind, I did not deserve to.
I had large eyes, slightly upturned lips, and the kind of face that looked harmless even when I was exhausted.
People said I resembled Ximena just enough to be useful.
And for Blake, that faint resemblance had been enough.
A faint resemblance was reason enough for him to keep a cheap replacement at his side for three years after Ximena, the woman he had never stopped loving, disappeared from his life.
I opened the closet and chose the ivory knit cardigan Blake had bought for me.
It was the same style Ximena used to wear.
Every time he bought me clothes, he chose something that matched her taste.
I used to treasure those clothes.
Now I put the cardigan on because I wanted to see through this show to the end.
I went to Stanton Villa.
The butler welcomed me inside with the same careful neutrality he had always shown me. He was not warm, and he was not rude.
He had been that way for three years.
No one in that house treated me like I belonged, but no one had thrown me out either.
The living room was a mess. Yates had just kicked over the coffee table, leaving broken glass scattered across the floor. The servants stood nearby with their heads down, and none of them dared to stop him.
When he saw me, he reined in his temper just enough to lower his voice.
"Isla, have a seat."
I sat on the corner of the sofa.
Colton came out of the kitchen with a glass of juice and dropped onto the sofa beside me.
"Ximena lands the day after tomorrow. Do you think Blake went to camp out at the airport for her?"
The living room went quiet for a second.
Several people turned to look at me. Then they looked away.
I knew that expression.
It was pity.
Blake's first love was coming back, and I, the substitute, was still sitting there helping them search for him. Of course, they thought I was pathetic.
I smiled and said, "That's wonderful. Blake will be happy once she's back."
Miles looked at me.
"Isla, what time did you get home last night?"
My heart skipped a beat.
"I was in the studio working on my graduation project until early morning."
He gave a quiet hum and lowered his head to keep playing with his lighter. He did not ask anything else.
When I stood to leave, I passed through the foyer.
The butler was directing two servants as they prepared the guest room halfway down the hall.
The bedding was white. The curtains were white. White orchids sat on the nightstand.
Everything was exactly what Ximena liked.
The butler greeted me when he saw me.
"Ms. Wilcox, Ms. Jarvis will arrive the day after tomorrow. Mrs. Claire Stanton asked us to prepare the room in advance."
I nodded.
"It looks comfy."
That guest room was right beside the master bedroom.
My room was at the end of the hallway, the farthest one from Blake's.
From the beginning, everyone had known exactly where I belonged.
After I left Stanton Villa, I hailed a taxi outside the gate.
"The Hilton, please."
The driver glanced at me through the rearview mirror.
"You staying there by yourself, sweetheart?"
I smiled without answering.
I wasn't going there to stay.
I was going to check on the man I had locked in a hotel bathroom, my caged bird.
