Replaced & Reborn: Leaving Mr. Sinclair

My boyfriend of seven years is marrying someone else.

He asked me to stay on as his mistress.

Roman Sinclair and I had broken up more times than I could count. I did the leaving. He did the crawling back.

Then I walked out one last time, and he didn't come after me. He found a girl who could pass for me instead. Same face, near enough. He put her on his arm in front of every camera in Los Angeles.

And then he started handing her my life.

My campaigns. My roles. The Best Actress trophy I'd been clawing toward for ten years. He gave it to her like a party favor.

His wife was going to be someone else. Me, he wanted to keep. Off the record, out of the light. The part with no name.

I said no.

At the awards, a reporter pushed a mic into my face and asked if I regretted walking away from a Sinclair.

I smiled. I lifted my hand, just enough for the ring to catch the light.

"I'm getting married," I said.

And the coldest, proudest heir that family ever made, the man who never once let a room see him bleed, went red around the eyes in front of all of them.

Chapter 1

The gala. I came dressed to kill, and completely alone.

A reporter found me first. "Ms. Hale, no Mr. Sinclair tonight?"

Then the noise started at the far end of the carpet.

Roman stepped out of the car and laced his fingers through another woman's hand.

The room actually gasped. In seven years, he had never once shown up with anyone but me.

Tonight it was Selena Vaughn. The country's current sweetheart, the girl every brand wanted. A tabloid had run our photos side by side once and noticed the obvious. She could almost be me. A cheaper print of the same painting.

He walked her in like the knockoff had quietly taken the original's place, and no one was supposed to say it out loud.

The cameras swung toward them.

I caught his eyes across the room. Nothing in them. I gave him a polite nod, turned, and walked inside like none of it had touched me.

Marlene fell into step beside me, voice low. "No wonder Vaughn snatched your fashion contracts. I kept wondering who was backing her. It's Roman. You two fighting again?"

"We're not fighting." A beat. "We broke up."

She sighed the sigh of a woman who had heard it all. "Honey, it's June and you've called it off three times already. He always eats his pride and comes to smooth it over. Bow your head, just once. Or that Vaughn girl walks off with him for real."

Right. In everyone's version of the story, I'm the one who makes scenes. He's the one who soothes. Selena's just a prop he's using to needle me. Bow, and he takes me back by morning.

But I knew better.

He wasn't sulking. He was showing me where the exits were. Telling me, plainly, you don't want this, plenty of women do.

The stones along my hem bit into my palm where I'd closed my fist. The small sting cleared my head.

"We're not getting back together." I said it flat, no give in it. "This time, he and I are done."

Seven years. Two dozen breakups, easy.

I did the leaving. He did the returning.

The Sinclair heir, with more beautiful women in his orbit than I could count, and he'd still swallow his pride again and again just to make me smile. One I miss you, and he'd cross the country to hold me.

People kept telling me to stop. Stop picking fights over tabloid noise when the man so obviously wanted no one but me. I knew that. I still cried about it at night, more than once.

He'd only pull me in closer, his voice dropping low. "How is that making a scene? My Cami just loves me too much. Gets scared. I don't mind reassuring her."

He always did like reassuring me. Right up until he didn't.

Chapter 2

"Forever?" I'd asked him once, my eyes red.

"Forever." Not a second's hesitation.

We were so young. Love runs scalding at that age. You say the word out loud and you think that makes it as simple to keep as it was to promise.

Turns out that was only ever thinking so.

Something went bitter in my chest.

Beside me, Marlene asked, "So why'd you end it this time?"

I blinked, slow. Let my eyes drift to the two of them across the room, pressed close for the cameras. When I answered, my voice came out light.

"He's getting married. He asked me to stay on as his mistress."

Marlene went still.

I looked away and finished my drink. Nobody caught the red rimming my eyes.

"I told him no."

The color left her face. "That's insane."

Yeah. Insane.

Roman didn't see it that way.

When he'd said it, there'd even been a thread of are-you-serious in his voice, like I was the one being difficult. "Cami, I've already settled it with Arabella. She and I are a marriage on paper, nothing more. She doesn't touch my life, I don't touch hers. We each do our own thing. You and I go on exactly as we are."

Arabella Carrington. The Carrington Group's only daughter. The match his family had picked to fold two empires into one.

I'd heard about the merger from his secretary, not from him. I'd gone to him wanting it put to rest. I'd expected him to tell me it was nothing.

I hadn't expected a detonation.

Funny.

The man I'd loved for seven years was getting married, and he was asking me to be the woman on the side.

I looked at him and my heart stopped, one full beat. Then it slammed back so hard my nose stung.

I couldn't decide whether to burn at the insult or grieve that it was over.

He just watched me. Calm. Certain. Like he already knew I'd say yes.

Because I loved him. I loved him so much.

All I wanted to ask was, "Roman. Were you ever going to tell me you were getting married?"

His brows drew together, like the question made no sense. "What does marrying her change? Loving you is enough, Cami. This happens all over this industry. It's not like you haven't seen it."

I'd seen it.

Of course I had. Seven years on his arm meant seven years of parties. Camera-ready couples, hollow underneath. Merger marriages where both sides went home to someone else.

I'd just never once thought Roman and I would be one of them.

We loved each other. I'd been so sure we'd marry, have children, go grey together.

I was wrong.

He had never planned to marry me. From the very beginning, I was the only one telling myself this was a love story.

I pulled my hand out of his and said it clearly, one word at a time. "I don't want to spend my life as the thing you keep out of the light."

He frowned, still patient with me. "Cami, you're not a mistress. You're my wife. My woman."

"And Arabella?"

He had nothing.

He couldn't erase her. And he still didn't understand why she mattered to me at all.

Chapter 3

Maybe he and I were never the same kind of people. Not from the start.

I lowered my lashes to hide how red my eyes had gone. "Roman. I don't do mistress."

"Cami, you really don't want to be with me? We promised each other forever. You love me"

"I do love you." I lifted my head and held his eyes, steady. "But I'm not going to lose my self-respect over it, Roman."

Outside, the first snow started to fall. In minutes the whole city went white.

"It's snowing." I stood and crossed to the window. When I spoke again my voice had gone soft. "Last time it snowed, we were on the couch under one blanket, watching that old Cinderella movie."

The maid who turned into a princess. The gown, the palace, the whole impossible climb.

I'd laughed and asked you whether marrying you would make me Cinderella too.

"You just smiled back then. I keep thinking about it now. Were you laughing at me on the inside? That I actually believed I could marry you. What am I. A small-time actress. Who was I to marry a Sinclair."

The tears came before I could stop them.

I wiped them away. I hate looking like that. Pathetic. Small.

They kept coming anyway. The ache in my chest was everywhere at once.

"I never thought about you like that," Roman said, low and rough.

Maybe not.

I made myself smile, and it came out crooked. "But did you ever think about marrying me?"

He went still.

His mouth opened. Nothing came out.

And there it was. My answer.

He hadn't. He had never once thought about marrying me.

I'd braced for it. It still landed like a fist.

"People say I fight with you, that I make scenes," I said, and every word tasted like rust. "They don't know why. You and I do. I wanted to get married. You didn't. You said you were busy building something. You said you had to handle your family first. So I understood, and I forgave you, over and over. If you had just told me you were never going to marry me, I wouldn't have spent years charming your parents. I wouldn't have spent seven of them on you at all. God, I was stupid."

People say love blurs your eyes, your judgment. I never believed it.

I do now.

How else does a woman let a flimsy, full-of-holes excuse fool her for seven years? Fall asleep beside a man that long and never once see what he's actually thinking? Get lied to, and still lie awake aching for him?

"Roman. Let's break up."

I finally said it. Calm. Certain.

Something lifted off my chest, off my shoulders. I felt weightless.

Roman just looked at me. The warmth drained out of his face and left something deep and cold behind. He said it slowly, each word landing with weight.

"Camille. You're going to regret this."

I didn't know what he meant. Not then.

But after that day, the cancellations started. One contract after another. My campaigns. My endorsements. Companies paid the penalties to break with me, just to be rid of me.

And every one of them signed Selena.

That was when I understood.

Roman wasn't sulking. He was making a point. Telling me, in the only language he trusted:

See? You won't be my mistress. Plenty of women will.

Chapter 4

The night hit its peak when he walked in.

Director Delacroix. The international name who'd only just come back to the country.

Marlene leaned close. "Delacroix's here. He's casting the lead for his new film right now. You've always loved his work. And I hear he thinks highly of you. Go get this one."

"I will."

I picked up a glass of champagne and started toward him. Then I saw Roman, Selena's hand in his, walking her straight to Delacroix.

"Director. This is Selena Vaughn, the one I told you about."

Selena caught my eye. The corners of her mouth curled, pleased with herself.

Roman made the introduction, and within moments Delacroix was deep in conversation with her about the film.

I pressed my lips together. For a second I didn't know what to do.

But I'd come this far, so I made myself walk over. "Director Delacroix. Hello."

"And this is?" He looked at me, not placing me.

Before I could introduce myself, Roman spoke.

"She's an ex of mine." He let it sit a beat. "A former mistress."

Mistress. He left the word hanging.

Something in my chest dropped.

I turned to look at him and met a challenge in his eyes. He'd done it on purpose. He knew I couldn't stand the word. That was exactly why he'd pinned it on me.

He looked away, his smile gone cold. "Mediocre." He said it to the director, not to me.

One word. Ten years of work, defined and thrown out in a single word.

Delacroix didn't look at me again.

And I understood. The chance I'd waited years for was gone.

Something dropped out of the center of me and kept falling, too fast to catch.

I turned and walked away.

I found him again at the corner behind the stage.

Roman was leaning against the wall, head tipped, the colored lights sliding over his face without warming any of it.

"Camille." He watched me. "Regretting it yet?"

You've lost so much since you left me. Regretting it yet?

"Come back to me, and everything you wanted is yours again."

I looked up at him.

My eyes were clear. Whatever he was searching for in them, he wasn't going to find it. There was no regret in me at all.

I smiled, soft.

"Roman. I'm never going to regret it."

I don't want it. Any of it. I just don't.

Something in his face went wrong. The certainty, the ease of a man who'd never once been told no. For one second it cracked, and he didn't have a thing to put in its place.

Roman's little intervention cost me every contract I had, which left me with something I hadn't had in ten years. Time off.

I'd been working nonstop for a decade. I didn't know what to do with an empty week.

I was cleaning out the closet when I found the shirt. A cufflink still fixed to one cuff. Black crystal, a silver R.S. set into the center.

I couldn't remember when he'd left it behind.

I almost threw it out. Then I remembered him mentioning once what a pair like that cost, and I set it aside instead.

I didn't want to owe him anything. Not even this.

I called his assistant to come collect it.

On the phone, the man lowered his voice. "Ms. Hale, Mr. Sinclair's been talking about you nonstop. He still loves you, you know. It's just that the family won't bend on the Carrington marriage. Asking you to stay on the side, that wasn't what he wanted. He didn't have a choice."

Careful words. They still couldn't cover how little any of it cost him.

To people like them, keeping a mistress had never been anything to be ashamed of.

"Mm," I said. "Understood."

He pressed, gentle. "Ms. Hale, as long as you understand. When are you coming back? I could pick you up"

I cut him off. "I'm not coming back."

"He and I ended a long time ago."

I'd said as much.

Chapter 5

I don't like the version of me that falls apart. And I don't regret things.

The last word was barely out of my mouth when something crashed on his end of the line. Heavy. Expensive.

Then Roman's voice, low and raw.

"Then go. Get as far from me as you want."

So he'd been standing there the whole time.

Still that childish. Every time he did something wrong, he sent his assistant out first to test the temperature before he'd show his own face.

Not this time. This time I wasn't going soft.

I hung up. I looked at his shirt, balled into the trash bag by the door.

And all at once I wanted to go home.

I missed my mom and dad.

"I can be there tonight."

I called my mother from the airport.

She lit up and shouted for my father, then came back laughing. "Baby, be careful, text us when you land, and keep an eye on your wallet. We'll be right there at the gate."

I laughed under my breath.

I'm thirty-two years old. I've clawed through ten years in this business. And my mother still tells me to watch my wallet, like I'm the same girl who left for college with a duffel bag and no idea what the world was.

The second I came through arrivals I saw them. Both of them, up on their toes, looking for me.

Mom had my hand before I'd said a word, turning it over, checking me like produce. Dad took my suitcase. Then he looked past me, toward the doors.

"Cami, you came alone? Where's Roman"

I froze.

Mom swatted his arm, mock-furious. "Roman's busy, obviously. Your daughter walks in the door and you're asking after some man. What kind of father are you?"

"Right, right. My mistake." Dad rushed to fix it, grinning. "I'm making your favorite tonight. The fried chicken you've begged for since you were six. Call it an apology."

There was worry underneath the way they were both looking at me.

I smiled and nodded, hard.

Home. Dad went to work in the kitchen. Mom went to tidy my old room.

Not that it needed it. That room had been spotless for years.

That's the thing about kids growing up and leaving. Parents are always afraid they held you back somehow, so they pour all the missing into small things. Walking into your old room again and again. Sitting on the bed. Just looking.

Mom started to say something a few times and swallowed it. Finally, "Cami. Did you and Roman fight? Did he upset you again?"

See.

When Marlene talks about me and Roman, it's always me making scenes.

My mother just assumes it was his fault.

I didn't want her lying awake over my love life. So I only said, "We broke up."

But she came closer. She looked at my face. And she pulled me into her arms and said it soft. "Somebody hurt my girl, didn't they."

I went still.

When I found out the man I'd loved for seven years had never once thought about marrying me, I didn't cry. When he stripped my contracts and handed them to someone else, I didn't cry. When he asked if I regretted it, I didn't cry.

Because crying does nothing. It just gives people something to laugh at.

But there, folded into my mother's arms, warm and soft and safe, the tears I'd been swallowing for too long finally came loose.

"I just think," I said, "maybe I got it wrong from the very start."

I shouldn't have said yes to him.

Shouldn't have stayed.

Shouldn't have let all his careful little explanations talk me back in, that first time I felt him slipping.

Maybe I really did get it wrong.

But I wasn't going to sit in the wreckage of it. Tomorrow, I wanted to go watch the sun come up.

Chapter 6

My mother only wiped my face, gentle, and spoke low. "Cami. You know how people say everyone gets one storm they have to walk all the way through before the sky clears? Maybe Roman was yours."

"My girl walked through hers in seven years. I should be throwing a party. Because I know the road after this is smooth. All of it."

Really?

I looked up at her.

She didn't hesitate for a second. "Of course."

And the thing in my chest that had been off the ground for so long finally came down and sat still.

"Your dad and I are your back wall, always. Walk as far as you want. When you're tired, come home. My arms don't close."

She tucked the blanket up around me. The last of the sunset came through the window and landed on her face, and everything about her went soft.

"Mom," I said, half-asleep. "Tomorrow I want to go see the sunrise."

She reached over and tucked a loose strand behind her ear, and nodded.

"Okay. Your dad and I will come with you."

Mm.

They were both here.

That was enough.

When I woke, they were already dressed and ready.

Cedar Ridge. Hills folding back into hills.

The sun wasn't up yet. A thin mist hung in the air. Only a few scattered figures on the trail.

We walked, and the pine-cold air went all the way down, and some of the weight in me washed out with it.

Then, behind us, a voice, bright with surprise.

"Mr. Hale? Mrs. Hale?"

I turned.

A man in black running gear was coming toward us at a jog. Dark hair half-damp, which somehow only made the clean lines of his face sharper.

He grinned at my parents. "You two remember me?"

They blinked. Then their whole faces opened. "Ren!"

"Ren, weren't you overseas? When did you get back?"

He answered easy, smiling. "My project wrapped. Figured I'd come home a while."

Mom pushed me forward. "Ren. You remember Cami? The two of you were always together when you were little."

His smile went deeper. He leaned in, and his voice dropped.

"Cami. You still remember me?"

I blinked. And I smiled. "Of course I do."

A beat