This Time I Choose Me

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

NORA

I didn't make it down the stairs.

Daniel caught up to me on the landing, grabbing my arm again, harder this time. Sophia came down right behind him, her robe pulled tight now, her face different than before. Not annoyed anymore. Scared.

"Just wait," Daniel said. "Just wait one second, let me explain."

"Explain what," I said. "You already told me everything I need to know."

We were near the balcony that opened off the landing, a wide glass door someone had left open for the night air. I could feel the cold coming through it, could hear the city below, far down and small.

"You were useful," he said, and his voice had an edge now, something ugly coming through the calm. "Your father's shares. That's what this was always about. You know that, right? You had to know that, some part of you."

I stared at him. Eight years of birthdays and dinners and mornings waking up next to him, and he was standing there telling me I was a business deal.

"You don't mean that," I said, but I didn't even believe my own words as I said them.

"I do," he said. "I'm sorry it has to come out like this. But I do."

Sophia stepped closer, and for one second I thought maybe she would say something different, something that would make even a small part of this make sense. Instead she just said, "I'm sorry, Nora," in a voice so flat it barely sounded like an apology at all. Like she was sorry the way you're sorry for stepping on someone's foot in a crowded room.

"Sorry," I repeated. "That's it? Eight years of my life and that's the word you land on?"

"What do you want me to say?" she snapped, and there it was, the annoyance again, like I was the one being unreasonable.

I tried to step past them, tried to get to the stairs, needing to be anywhere but that landing with the cold air pushing in from the balcony. Daniel grabbed for me again. I pulled back. Sophia moved at the same time, reaching for my other arm, and I don't know if it was her hand or his that pushed me, or if it was both of them at once, panicked, trying to stop me from leaving, trying to stop me from telling anyone what I'd heard.

All I know is the floor wasn't under my feet anymore.

The balcony rail hit the back of my legs and then there was nothing behind me at all, just open air and the city lights spinning slow and then fast, both at once, my body falling in a way that didn't feel real, like it was happening to someone else and I was just watching from very far away.

I thought about the courthouse with the cracked steps. I thought about Sophia crying at my wedding, tears I now knew were nothing. I thought about my father's grave, standing there alone because Daniel had somewhere else to be, someone else to be with. I thought about every night I waited up, every question I didn't ask, every time I told myself I was lucky to have a husband so patient with my worries.

Eight years of being good. Eight years of being patient. Eight years of loving people who were laughing at me behind my back the entire time.

If there's anything out there, I thought, anything at all listening to me in this last second, give me one more chance. Just one. I won't be so blind this time. I won't be so soft. I won't spend another eight years being someone's fool.

Please. Just one more chance to do it right.

Then there was nothing.

I woke up gasping, my hands clawing at soft sheets instead of cold air, my heart slamming so hard it hurt.

For a moment I couldn't understand why I wasn't in pain, why there was no broken glass, no crowd gathering below me, no sound of Sophia screaming my name too late to mean anything. I was lying flat on my back, staring up at a ceiling I hadn't seen in years, a small water stain shaped like a leaf in the corner that I used to make wishes on when I was a teenager.

My old room. My parents' house.

I sat up slowly, my whole body shaking, and looked around. The same faded curtains from when I was twenty. The same desk in the corner, covered in old textbooks I recognized from university. A poster on the wall I'd forgotten I ever owned.

This isn't real, I thought. This has to be some kind of dream, some last flash of memory before everything goes dark for good.

But the sheets felt real under my hands. The morning light coming through the curtains felt warm on my skin, real in a way dreams never quite managed to be.

I heard my mother's voice outside the door, calling something to someone downstairs, her voice younger than I remembered it being in recent years, lighter somehow.

My heart was still pounding. I climbed out of bed on legs that didn't feel steady and walked to the small calendar hanging by my desk, the paper kind with a picture of flowers on top, the kind my mother always bought at the market and gave to me every year without asking if I wanted one.

I stared at the date circled in red pen.

Eight years back. The day before my wedding.

I stood there staring at that circle, my hands pressed flat against the wall to keep myself upright, my mind racing through everything at once and nothing at all. The bureau. The redacted name. The hotel charges. The balcony. Daniel's voice saying I never mattered. Sophia's flat little sorry. The fall, slow and fast, the cold air, the plea I threw out into nothing right before I hit the ground.

One more chance. That's what I asked for.

I looked at my hands, young again, no wedding ring, no eight years of small worries etched into the lines of my knuckles. I looked at my reflection in the mirror across the room, twenty years old, unmarked, unaware of anything that was coming.

Tomorrow I was supposed to marry Daniel Whitmore at the courthouse with the cracked front steps. Tomorrow I was supposed to start eight years of being patient, being good, being blind.

My mother's voice came again, closer this time, footsteps approaching my door.

"Nora, sweetheart, are you up? We have so much to do before tomorrow."

I looked at my hands again, and then at the calendar, and something cold and steady settled into my chest, the same feeling that had waited there since that first day at the bureau, except now it had somewhere to go.

I wasn't going to marry him tomorrow the same way I did before. I wasn't going to sign my father's shares away because a man I loved told me it made sense. I wasn't going to spend eight years waiting up for a husband who was never really mine, or trusting a best friend who never really was one.

Not this time.

"I'm up," I called back, and my voice came out steadier than I expected, steadier than I had any right to feel. "Give me a minute."

I looked at myself in the mirror one more time, twenty years old and starting over, and for the first time since I woke up gasping in this room, I almost smiled.