Oliver looked at me, one hand already loosening his tie, voice thick and low.
"I wasn't going to deal with her, but…"
His eyes darkened, as if he were waiting for something from me.
"That's your business."
I turned around and shut the door.
Noise filtered through from the other side, and I could just make out Davina's teary, wounded voice.
"It's fine, really—I can walk. Don't worry about me."
"This whole thing is my fault…"
Oliver let out a long breath.
He hesitated, then went downstairs after her.
Almost instantly, a text came through.
"She only showed up tonight because you can't follow the rules."
"I can't just leave her out there."
"Don't overthink this. If you need to throw a tantrum, go ahead."
The front door slammed shut.
I stared out into the black night.
I closed my eyes, and somewhere in the dark I could almost hear the crickets again.
That night had been so still it felt like something was wrong.
I'd just come out of dance class when I found Oliver slumped against the dumpsters, soaked in blood, a photograph of a woman crushed in his fist so tight his knuckles had gone white.
He was hunched over, gasping like each breath might be his last.
I saved him.
I only learned later that it had been the anniversary of the woman in the photograph—his mother. She'd given the Vance family one son in all her years of marriage, and that alone was enough to condemn her: she'd failed to carry on the line, broken the rules. Then his father's mistress started coming for her, again and again.
His mother had a breakdown and took her own life.
Oliver always said the Vance family's rules killed her.
He used to watch me through the studio glass while I danced, just standing there, lost.
All that dazed panic in his eyes would go quiet the moment I nodded at him, then flicker back to something like hope.
Soon after, the family took him back.
And then strange accidents started happening to me, one after another.
When I asked why, his face went hard, but all he said was not to overthink it.
After that, I barely saw him.
The only way I knew what was going on in his life was through the tabloids.
One of Oliver's brothers once dropped a stack of those headlines right in front of me. Cold and blunt about it.
He and I were never going to end up anywhere.
Later I confronted Oliver with the articles.
He waved it off. "None of that means anything. Stop listening to people."
But I kept receiving photos of him in bed with different women.
At first I refused to believe it. Then a recording arrived.
"She's pure, sure. But once you've had her, the thrill wears off pretty fast."
"You know she was set to be the next great dance master, right? All that shine, all that talent—and now she just sits in the palm of my hand."
I fought with him over that recording. I told him we were done.
Oliver thought I was making a scene.
His brow knotted, and his tone went ice-cold.
"All this over a recording you don't even know is real?"
"Is our marriage a joke to you? Or do you just not understand rules—what you're meant to hear and what you're not?"
He sent me overseas and let strangers look down on me, nitpick me, discipline me however they pleased.
I watched those same people drop the cruelty from their faces in an instant and fawn all over him the moment he walked in.
And I watched how he looked at the marks on my body with that flat, unmoved expression.
"These people are here to help you. Don't be so guarded."
Davina called it "emotional desensitization"—showed me flirtatious messages between her and Oliver, compromising photos, one after another.
She made me practice the correct responses for every kind of humiliating scenario.
The rift between Oliver and me kept growing.
I asked for a breakup more than once.
Oliver never answered. Every time, he just slammed the door and left. And every time, the only thing that followed was another trip overseas for more etiquette training.
By then, I could barely tell where my own mind ended and the fog began.
