I can’t take any more.

Numbness swept over me, and I embraced it.

“Whit? Baby? Asa said you were here. I was already almost to Gable when he called.”

The voice was so familiar, but my brain felt like it was slogging through mud as I tried to identify it.

“What are you doing here? How did you—” Jackie sputtered as I looked up at the person standing in the doorway.

Ricky.

His gaze locked on the two sheet-covered bodies. “Fuck. Fuck.” Ricky covered his mouth like he was going to puke. “Shit, they’re really—”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, sounding like a zombified version of myself.

He stepped toward me. “I got on a plane as soon as I got your letter. I had a shitty layover, otherwise I would’ve been here sooner.” His gaze cut back to the bodies. “Asa just told me about . . . Fuck. I’m so sorry, Whit.”

Ricky came to me and dropped to his knees at my feet. When he wrapped both arms around me and laid his head in my lap, I was too frozen to react. I didn’t understand why he was here, but maybe that was because I didn’t understand anything right now.

I let Ricky hold me as he apologized over and over.

“You need to keep walking, boy.”

Aunt Jackie barked at someone, and my head jerked toward the doorway. Just before she pushed the door closed, my gaze collided with a tortured hazel one.

Lincoln.

A new storm of emotions rolled through me. I didn’t know where one ended and the next began.

Pain. Regret. Loss.

What was broken tonight could never be repaired.

A Gable and a Riscoff could never be together. Fate would never let it happen.

Four

Whitney

Present day

“What have you done?”

The accusation in Lincoln’s voice—the voice that just promised me a new beginning—shreds me.

“What are you talking about?”

He holds out his phone, shoving it toward my face. The damning headline is at the top in bold.

Ricky Rango’s Estate Claims He Was the True Riscoff Heir

I tear my gaze from the words and look back up at Lincoln. “You think—”

“I don’t know what to think, Whitney. You were his wife. You have to tell me what the hell is going on.”

I wish I could. I reread the headline before Lincoln lowers his phone. Any words I might try to speak get caught in my throat.

I look up at him, still attempting to form a response, but from the look on Lincoln’s face, it doesn’t matter. He’s already tried and convicted me. Again.

Today, for a second, I thought I might not actually be cursed.

Wrong.

“Say something. Anything,” he says as his phone vibrates again. He never looks away from my face, expecting me to have some kind of answer when I have nothing to give him.

I’m so tired of being found guilty of crimes I didn’t commit.

Self-disgust, for letting this happen again, washes over me. I’m the only one who can allow someone to make me feel this way, and I’m done.