Better Love In A Photo

For fifteen years, my husband Dustin and I were the fairytale. The high school sweethearts who made it, the tech CEO and his devoted wife. Our life was perfect.

Then a text message arrived from an unknown number. It was a picture of his assistant's hand on his thigh in the suit pants I bought him.

The texts from his mistress kept coming after that, a relentless barrage of poison. She sent photos of them in our bed and a video of him promising to leave me. She bragged that she was pregnant with his child.

He’d come home and kiss me, call me his anchor, all while smelling of her perfume. He was buying her a condo and planning their future while I pretended to have morning sickness from bad scallops.

The final straw came on my birthday. She sent a picture of him on one knee, giving her a diamond promise ring.

So I didn’t cry. I secretly changed my name to Hope, converted our entire fortune into untraceable bearer bonds, and told a charity to empty our house of everything.

The next day, as he headed to the airport for a "business trip" to Paris with her, I flew to Portugal. When he came home, he found an empty mansion, divorce papers, and our wedding rings melted into a single, shapeless lump of gold.

Chapter 1

I remembered the first time Dustin touched my chest. We were sixteen, crammed into the back of his dad' s old Ford, fogging up the windows.

He was all nervous hands and shaky breaths, fumbling with the clasp of my bra like he was trying to solve a puzzle in the dark.

I finally had to reach back and unhook it for him. He went beet red, even in the faint moonlight, and stammered an apology.

It was funny. It was sweet.

For fifteen years, he was the only one. The boy who couldn' t unhook a bra became the tech CEO who graced magazine covers.

To the world, we were the fairytale. The high school sweethearts who made it. Eliana and Dustin Powell. A brand. A testament to enduring love in a fast-paced world.

Our life was perfect.

Until it wasn' t.

The text message arrived on a Tuesday. An unknown number.

It was just a picture, no words.

A woman' s hand, nails painted a garish shade of pink, resting on a man' s thigh. The hand was slender, young. Too young.

The thigh was clad in dark gray suit pants I recognized instantly. I' d bought them for him. Tom Ford. For his thirty-second birthday.

On the woman' s wrist was a delicate gold bracelet with a single, tiny shark tooth.

I felt the air leave my lungs.

That bracelet. I' d seen it before.

On the wrist of Jami Salinas, his executive assistant. She' d flashed it at the company' s summer party, her smile a little too bright, her eyes lingering on me a little too long.

My heart started a frantic, painful rhythm against my ribs.

It couldn' t be.

But it was.

My first impulse was to scream. To throw my phone against the wall. To call him and demand an explanation for the image burning itself into my brain.

I didn' t.

I took a deep, shuddering breath and forced the rage down. I stared at the photo until the details blurred, until the sickness in my stomach became a cold, hard knot.

Was any of it real? Our fifteen years? The boy in the back of the Ford? The man who kissed me goodbye this morning?

The next day, I drove to the county courthouse. The building was old and smelled of dust and stale coffee.

I walked to the clerk' s office, my steps even and measured.

"I' d like to file a petition for a name change," I told the woman behind the counter.

She looked up, her glasses perched on the end of her nose. "For what reason?"

"Personal reasons," I said, my voice flat.

She raised an eyebrow, taking in my clothes, my bag. I was Eliana Powell, wife of a billionaire. Women like me didn' t just change their names.

"Are you in danger? Is this related to domestic abuse?"

"No," I said. The lie tasted like ash, but it was a necessary one. This wasn' t about danger. It was about erasure. "I just want a new name."