Page 50 of Vows of Deceit
She stood still for a moment, breathing in the quiet, feeling the way her chest ached in nostalgia. Inside, the grand foyer looked just as she remembered, sunlight pooling through stained-glass windows, the chandelier overhead casting rainbows on the floor.
Cassie wandered slowly, fingers brushing dusty shelves, velvet wallpaper, polished banisters. The house was still maintained by estate staff, but rarely used. It had become more museum than home.
She paused outside the library. The double doors creaked open. She stepped in. The scent of aged paper hit her like a whisper from the past. On instinct, she crossed to the cornerwindow seat and curled into the same spot she used to hide in during thunderstorms.
That’s where she cried after Kelly got her first solo ballet. Where she journaled her first kiss. Where she wrote the first letter she never sent to Damien. Where she once believed love could fix anything.
Cassie reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the key she’d brought. Not to the house. To her old hope chest, hidden beneath the floorboard in the attic.
She climbed the stairs slowly. The attic door moaned open, dust swirling in a sunbeam. The chest was still there. Inside, her childhood drawings, a photo strip of her and Kelly laughing before life turned cruel, letters she wrote but never sent, and a polaroid of her parents on their wedding day smiling, young, fragile with happiness. Cassie stared at the memories, then closed the lid gently.
“I forgive you,” she whispered.
Not to them.
To herself.
That night, she sat on the back porch with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a glass of wine. Grayson called.
“I’m at the estate,” she said.
“Alone?”
“Yes. Just needed to visit the ghosts.”
“Are they still angry?”
She smiled. “No. Just quiet.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too.”
He didn’t pressure her to come home. He never did.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised.
“Then I’ll wait on the steps, with coffee.”
“And no shirt?”
He laughed. “Whatever you want.”
She ended the call with a full heart. As she fell asleep in her childhood bedroom with walls still painted a soft lilac, a faded poster of a Broadway musical taped above the bed, Cassie King made peace with every version of herself she had ever been.
The dutiful daughter. The perfect wife. The heartbroken woman. The survivor. The woman who dared to begin again. Tomorrow, she would return to the city. To her life. To the man who saw her, not for what she offered, but for who she was. But tonight, she gave herself to the past one last time and let it go.
Chapter Forty Two
Where the Heart Lives
Five Years Later
The coastal breeze swept through the terrace doors of the Collin Estate, carrying with it the scent of jasmine and the salty kiss of the nearby sea. The late afternoon sun drenched the nursery in golden light, painting soft shadows along the pale blue walls and ivory furniture.
Cassie stood at the window, one hand resting on her swollen belly as she watched her daughter run barefoot across the garden with Grayson.
“Amelia Collin,” she called out with playful sternness, “if you don’t wear your sunhat, Daddy’s getting double sunscreen duty.”
