Chapter 2 - The Fire in the Rearview
The metal door of the fire exit clicked shut behind me, severing the sound of Ryan calling my name from the elevator bank.
""Hannah! Stop acting insane! Pick up the ring and get back in the room!""
His voice bounced off the concrete stairwell, sharp, annoyed, completely devoid of fear. That was the most insulting part: he wasn't afraid of losing me. He genuinely believed this was just another minor domestic dispute where I would eventually cool down, allow him to kiss my forehead, and accept his excuse that he was merely being a chivalrous gentleman.
He had no idea that when a woman who believes in saving broken things finally decides something is beyond repair, she doesn't slam doors. She simply vanishes.
My phone blew up inside the small clutch purse looped around my wrist. Natalie's name flashed, followed by Mason's, followed by three missed calls from Ryan. I silenced the ringer, bypassed the lobby entirely, and pushed through the hotel's rear service exit into the biting September wind coming off Lake Michigan.
A yellow taxi was idling by the delivery bay, exhaust curling white in the midnight chill. I yanked the door open and slid into the vinyl backseat.
""Where to, lady?"" the driver asked, glancing in the rearview mirror at the woman in an ivory reception dress with smeared mascara.
""West Loop,"" I said. ""And drive fast.""
During the twenty-minute drive through the empty downtown streets, my mind raced backward like a film reel burning at the edges.
I remembered the quiet moments when Ryan had appeared so utterly safe. When we first met, I had just finished untangling my studio from a predatory partnership that nearly bankrupted my interior design firm. I was exhausted, suspicious of grand romantic gestures, and desperate for stability. Ryan had arrived like a solid brick wall—predictable, steady, entirely grounded.
He used to say, “Grand gestures are for men who are trying to hide what they lack in consistency.”
God, what a brilliantly disguised lie that had been. It wasn't that he lacked grand gestures; it was that he was saving all his emotional bandwidth, his protective instincts, and his drama for a woman who lived five hundred miles away. I had settled for lukewarm bread because he convinced me that fire burned down houses. Meanwhile, he was keeping an ember in his pocket for Lauren the entire time.
When the taxi pulled up to our loft building, I handed the driver a fifty-dollar bill and didn't wait for change.
Inside the quiet apartment, the scent of the pre-wedding morning lingered—lavender scented spray, dry-cleaned garment bags, and half-empty champagne flutes on the marble island. Two heavy designer suitcases sat near the door, neatly packed with sundresses, linen shirts, and oversized sun hats for our two-week honeymoon in Amalfi. The flight was scheduled for 3:00 PM tomorrow afternoon.
I dragged my suitcase into the bedroom, unzipped it, and dumped everything onto the rug.
Ten minutes. That was all I gave myself.
I threw in jeans, thick wool sweaters, hiking boots, my passport, my business laptop, my sketchbook, and the title deeds to my design studio. I left the silk honeymoon lingerie hanging on the closet door. I left the framed black-and-white photos from our engagement session on the dresser.
Then I walked over to the kitchen island. On the marble counter sat the envelope containing my grandmother’s vintage emerald earrings, a gift Ryan's mother had given me during the rehearsal dinner. Beside it, I placed the master key to the loft.
My phone lit up on the counter. A text message from an unknown number.
Hannah, it’s Lauren. Please don’t blame Ryan. I really was feeling sick and he was just trying to help an old friend. You’re misinterpreting everything. Please go home to your husband.
A bitter, dry laugh tore from my throat. She wasn't sick. If she had been dizzy enough to be carried through a four-star hotel, she wouldn't be typing grammatically pristine paragraphs forty minutes later.
I blocked the number. Then I blocked Ryan’s number.
May you like
I hauled my heavy luggage down the freight elevator, loaded it into the trunk of my small SUV parked in the underground garage, and keyed the ignition. When the garage door rolled upward, Chicago was sleeping under an ink-black sky.
I pointed the headlights northwest, away from Lake Michigan, away from the West Loop, away from the life I thought I was starting. As the city skyline faded in my rearview mirror, I didn't cry. The tears would come later, when the shock metabolized into grief. Right now, there was only the cold, sharp clarity of survival.
