Shattered Vows in the Snow

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My husband gripped the back of another woman's head, pulling her closer to deepen the kiss. At this high school reunion, nobody knew Killian and I had been married for four years.

The woman gasping against his chest was Siennathe exact same girl he used to swear was his worst enemy.

When the party ended, he shoved her drunk body into his car and sped off. He left me behind to walk home alone through the freezing snow and the pitch-black night.

He never came home.

When he finally walked through the door the next morning, a fresh trail of reddish-purple bite marks bruised his neck.

He always believed I was too deeply in love to ever leave him.

But I finally figured it outhe isn't worth it.

Chapter 1

Glasses clinked and laughter roared over the thumping bass at our high school reunion.

Killian sat next to me, keeping a calculated distance. He downed the bourbon in his glass, slamming it heavily onto the table, the muscles in his jaw tight.

I followed his stare straight to the opposite corner of the room. Sienna.

She sat quietly by herself. The alcohol had flushed her pale cheeks with a soft, peachy glow, making her look effortlessly striking. Chase hovered next to her, constantly refilling her drink and trying to hold her attention. She occasionally offered him a small, polite smile.

I knew it, and Killian knew it tooChase had a massive crush on Sienna back in the day. But nobody in the room was rooting for him and Sienna.

A few rounds of shots later, the group dragged everyone into a game of Truth or Dare. Sienna lost. The table erupted.

"Sienna, dare! Go kiss Killian!"

"Come on! Don't chicken out now!"

"A bet's a bet!"

Cheers, whistles, and rhythmic clapping pushed Sienna forward. Tipsy and flushed, she stood up, hesitating, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. A girl behind her gave her a hard shove, sending her stumbling right in front of Killian.

She lost her balance, almost crashing into his chest, but Killian's hands shot out, gripping her waist to steady her. The crowd lost their minds.

"Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!"

Surrounded by the deafening chants, Sienna lowered her head, her lips carefully pressing against his. The entire room held its breath.

Their history had always been messy. Everyone knew that if Killian didn't want this, he wouldn't give a damn about saving face.

But he didn't push her away. He paused for a split second.

Just as she started to pull back, Killian's hand snapped up, gripping the back of her head.

His fingers tangled in her dark hair as he dragged her back down, deepening the kiss with a brutal intensity.

The skin around his eyes flushed a deep redmaybe from the alcohol, or maybe from a physical hunger he couldn't hide.

The room exploded. Cheers and applause practically shook the walls.

I vaguely heard someone whistle over the noise. "Are the high school prom king and queen finally getting together?"

I stared fixedly at my glass on the table. The club lights reflected off the surface of the swirling red wine, making my vision swim. Everyone in this room knew I had chased Killian for our entire high school career.

But none of them knew we had been married for four years.

I couldn't even blame them for rooting for Killian and Sienna. Their history was infinitely more dramatic than ours. The thicker the hostility, the more they looked like soulmates.

I remembered back in high school, half the campus secretly shipped them. Back then, I tried to test the waters, forcing a casual grin as I asked him, "Everyone says you and Sienna are a thing. Do you like her?"

Killian paused his pen, disgust flashing in his eyes. "I wouldn't like her if she were the last person on earth. Don't mention her name, it's sickening."

He hated Sienna with a burning passion because her dad was the homewrecker who slept with his mom. Killian always blamed her father for tearing his parents' marriage apart. Later, Killian's mom and Sienna's dad actually got married, blending the two families. From that moment on, the two of them were at each other's throats, though Killian always seemed to loathe her a little more.

Three years later, that blended marriage ended in another divorce. Sienna slowly dropped her hostility toward him, but Killian still refused to even hear her name spoken out loud.

Chapter 2

Even on Killian's birthday, he had accepted everyone's gifts but smacked the small cupcake Sienna handed him right out of her hands, sending her running off in tears.

And on her birthday, he was ruthlessly vicious. While everyone else was writing sweet messages on her card, he grabbed a pen and scribbled: May everything you ever love end up shattered. He made her cry right there in front of everyone.

I never saw it coming.

All this time, he was in love with her.

The roaring crowd grew so deafening that a high-pitched ringing pierced my ears, drowning out everything else. The strobe lights overhead blinded me, pulsing in time with the clinking glasses and raucous laughter.

Sienna was wasted. Someone shoved her directly into Killian's chest. "Killian, do us a favor and get Sienna home safely."

He gripped her waist, steering her toward his car. She mumbled incoherently the whole way, her body swaying as she leaned all her weight against his side. Even when he tucked her into the passenger seat and bent down to get in himself, he never once glanced in my direction.

Their silhouettes under the harsh glare of the streetlamp looked exactly like a tragic, star-crossed couple from a movie.

I stood beneath the next lamppost over and called out. "Killian."

He froze. It was as if he suddenly remembered I existed before turning his head to look at me. His sharp, striking features still carried the ghost of the teenage boy I used to know.

His eyebrows pulled together in a deep frown, his jaw setting hard. "Find your own way back. She's drunk."

When I didn't say a word, his gaze hardened. "Stop acting so spoiled. You didn't use to be like this."

He slammed the door shut.

The sleek car peeled away, disappearing down the empty street.

Right. I didn't use to be like this. I forced myself to think back.

From the moment we started dating to the day we signed the marriage papers, I was the one pulling all the weight. I was always the one initiating.

He honestly never thought I would walk away. He didn't think I had it in me to let go, and he probably didn't think I had the spine to do it.

I looked down, my thumb tracing the knuckles of my other hand. Chasing him, dating him almost a decade. Married for four years. He had consumed half of my entire life.

We were out in the middle of nowhere, and it was past midnight. I stared at the ride-sharing app spinning endlessly on my phone. Finally, I shoved it in my pocket and walked the hour back home by myself. My only regret was not driving my own car tonight.

Halfway there, freezing rain and light snow started to fall. The cold bit into my skin.

I pushed open the front door. The house was dead quiet and pitch-black.

A shiver racked my spine. It somehow felt colder inside. My hand pressed against the dull, gnawing ache in my stomach as I dragged my feet into the hallway.

I fumbled blindly along the wall for the light switch, my knuckles grazing a framed sketch, nearly knocking it to the floor. I flicked the switch. Harsh, blinding light flooded the room. I squinted, staring at the picture on the wall.

I had framed it myself in sleek glass. It was wiped spotless.

It was a drawing of Killian. Seventh grade. We shared a desk.

I had sketched him in secret while he was sleeping in class. In the graphite lines, the teenage boy's thick eyelashes caught the thin morning light filtering through the window.

Back then, I had reached out while he was passed out and gently poked his nose. I didn't realize my fingertip was coated in black ink. A dark smudge bloomed right on the tip of his nose.

Just as my stomach dropped and I frantically tried to figure out how to wipe it off, Killian's eyes fluttered open.

Chapter 3

Later, when he discovered my "masterpiece," he actually flicked my forehead, a rare flash of genuine annoyance crossing his face. "Troublemaker."

I rubbed my forehead, faking a pout, but my lips curled into a massive grin.

My phone buzzed against my palm, snapping me back to reality. I unlocked the screen. It was a text from my best friend:

[Sloane, are you holding up okay?]

Scrolling up through our chat history, my eyes landed on the video clips she had sent me a few days ago.

From the day I met Killian, I thought his personality was just stone-cold. From the time we started dating to our four years of marriage, his emotional baseline had always been a flatline. Whether it was our wedding anniversary or any major holiday, he rarely cracked a smile or offered much conversation. I honestly thought that was just who he was.

Until I watched those videos. It wasn't that he couldn't smile, and it wasn't that he hated romance.

He just saved every drop of his softness for someone else.

They walked together, hung out together, and checked into hotels together. Watching the footage on my phone, I barely recognized the man on the screen.

It turned out he knew how to cut the steak on someone's plate for them. The way he looked at her was like looking at some rare treasure, even the muscles around his eyes softened. He would gently stroke her hair, letting her rest her head against his thigh.

And then there was the final video. Six months ago, on the exact day Killian officially made Sienna his kept woman. They were outside our old high school campus, making out right under the same redbud tree where I had originally confessed my feelings to him.

My best friend worked as a teacher there. She had stayed late grading papers that night, walked out the gates, and caught them. She hid in the shadows and recorded the whole thing.

Aside from her, none of our old classmates knew Killian and I were married. We never threw a big wedding reception. He found the whole thing to be an annoying hassle, and I had always hated dealing with overwhelming social details, so we just had a quiet dinner with both of our families.

My best friend was also close with Sienna. She debated with herself for weeks before finally sending me those clips.

I finally pieced together what happened six months ago.

Killian's jaw had been constantly locked tight back then. Looking back, he must have just found out Sienna was getting married.

Life after graduation hadn't been kind to Sienna. Her family dragged her down with endless debt and drama. Eventually, her parents forced her into an engagement with some trust fund kid. He was obsessed with her, but the feeling wasn't mutual.

On the day of the wedding, Sienna ran. She ran straight to Killian.

No wonder he dropped everything that day. His phone rang, and he walked out the door before we even cut my birthday cake. "Eat the cake by yourself."

I thought it was a sudden corporate emergency. But it was just Sienna calling.

In the video, Killian's face was a mask of pure ice when he first walked up to her. "Aren't you supposed to be walking down the aisle?"

Sienna rarely cried. But she must have been at her breaking point that night. She grabbed his arm, sobbing uncontrollably. "I didn't go. I don't want to get married."

She was a runaway bride, struggling to catch her breath, and the very first person she thought of to dump it all onto was him.

Killian didn't react. He didn't say a single word.

After a beat of dead silence, Sienna spun around to leave. "Fine. I'll go back and get married then."

Killian's expression snapped. "Don't you dare."

He closed the distance in two massive strides, grabbing her from behind and slamming her back against the trunk of the redbud tree.

He forced his mouth over hers.

After that, he pulled out his checkbook, scribbled a string of numbers, and shoved it into her hand. "Fill in whatever you want. I'll take care of you."

Sienna's chest heaved. She raised her hand to slap him. "Killian! Don't push it!"

Chapter 4

But her hand never fell. The blood drained from her face.

She probably needed the cash desperately. Someone in her family was supposedly sick. And just like that, Killian made her his kept woman.

But the way he treated her after that went way beyond some transactional arrangement. The first few clips my best friend sent were just random encounters. Sienna lived near the campus, so my friend constantly ran into herand into Killian looking for her.

I finished the videos. A wave of nausea clawed up my throat. I sprinted to the bathroom and dry-heaved over the toilet.

In a daze, I remembered that four years ago, I was the one who proposed to Killian. I fully expected him to shoot me down, but he actually said yes.

It only clicked for me recently. Two days before I proposed, rumors had spread that Sienna had a new boyfriend and was getting engaged. Nobody expected them to break up six months later.

I fumbled my way out of the bathroom. I was dead on my feet, but I tossed and turned in bed, wide awake.

I left the lights off. I sat alone by the bay window, staring out at the neon city skyline, listening to the relentless ticking of the clock.

Killian never came home that night. It wasn't the first time. I used to just write it off as him being a workaholic and go to sleep early.

The sky finally started to bleed a pale, washed-out grey. Faint morning light crept through the glass. Then, I heard the front door click open.

Killian walked in. He froze for a fraction of a second, surprised to see me awake. I turned to look at him.

He didn't say a word. His face was a blank slate. If I hadn't seen the feral intensity in the way he kissed her, I would have believed he was just wired to be this cold.

He shot me a brief glance.

As he turned away, a fresh cluster of reddish-purple bite marks caught my eye, bruised right into the side of his neck.

I slowly stood up. Maybe it was the freezing snow outside, but my mind felt unnervingly clear. The only thing left was a dull, numb sting in my chest, like skin being stitched tight.

"Killian."

His footsteps stopped.

I rolled my stiff shoulders. A faint sigh slipped through the end of my sentence before I could catch it. "Let's get a divorce