Part 1
The brick hit me before I ever saw my father lift his arm.
One second, I was standing on the cracked walkway outside my parents’ house in a pale blue dress, the same dress I had bought to announce my wedding date. The next second, my whole world exploded into white pain.
There was no dramatic warning. No final argument. No chance to step back.
Just a wet crack, a flash of heat across my face, and then my knees gave out beneath me.
Something warm rushed down over my left eye. I heard pieces of brick scatter across the concrete like shattered dishes. Someone screamed.
For a moment, I thought it was my mother.

Later, I realized it was me.
“Daphne!”
Beckett caught me before my face slammed into the porch steps. His arms wrapped around me so fast that I barely felt the fall, only the panic in his hands as he pulled me against him.
“Daphne, stay with me. Look at me. Please, look at me.”
I tried.
My left eye opened to nothing.
Only darkness.
My right eye blurred, but I could still see enough to understand the worst part.
My mother was laughing.
Lorraine Whitmore stood beside the porch swing in her cream cardigan, one hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking as if someone had told a clever joke at dinner. Not nervous laughter. Not shocked laughter.
Real laughter.
“I told you,” she said, looking straight at Beckett. “Let’s see if he still loves you now.”

My father, Richard Whitmore, dropped the broken half of the brick onto the grass. His breathing was calm. Satisfied.
“Should’ve listened,” he muttered.
Beckett stared at him like he had just watched a stranger crawl out of my father’s skin.
“What did you do?” he whispered.
Nobody answered.
Then my younger sister, Corin, stepped out from behind the open front door. She looked perfect. Black dress. Fresh manicure. Hair curled like she had been preparing for a party instead of waiting for my blood to hit the sidewalk.
She folded her arms and sighed.
“I told you she wasn’t going to move.”
Move.
That word cut through the ringing in my skull.
Because that was what they had called it.
Moving.
As if asking me to hand over my fiancé was no different from switching seats at a dinner table.

My father pointed at Corin.
“You’re dating the wrong daughter.”
Even through the pain, even through the blood, those words landed harder than the brick.
Beckett slowly turned toward him.
“What?”
“You heard me,” Dad said. “Daphne has always been difficult. Corin deserves a man like you.”
Corin tilted her head at Beckett, not ashamed, not horrified, only irritated that the night had gone off-script.
“You would’ve been happy with me,” she said.
Beckett looked at her like she had lost her mind.
“I wouldn’t choose you if you were the last woman alive.”
Something inside Corin’s face changed.
“You chose that over me?”
She pointed at me, bleeding in Beckett’s arms, as if I were a broken object ruining her perfect display.
Mom immediately wrapped one arm around her.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she said, glaring down at me. “He’ll realize he made the wrong decision.”
The sickest part was that none of this felt new.
Only bigger.
The favoritism had been there my entire life. If Corin wanted my toys, they became hers. If Corin broke something, I apologized. If I earned praise, my parents found a way to make her the victim.
When I won a college scholarship, Dad called me selfish for leaving home.
When Corin dropped out after one semester, Mom said she was finding herself.
When I bought my first car, Dad told me to give it to Corin because she needed confidence. When I refused, he didn’t speak to me for six months.
But I had never imagined this.
A brick.
My own father.
My own face.
Beckett pressed his jacket against my wound and shouted toward the street.
“Somebody call 911!”
The front door across the street opened. Mrs. Ellery, our elderly neighbor, froze when she saw me.
Dad shouted, “Family accident!”
Mrs. Ellery hesitated.
“No,” I tried to say.
But blood filled my mouth, and the word came out as a cough.
Beckett grabbed his phone. Dad kicked it out of his hand so hard the screen shattered across the driveway.
“You’re not calling anybody,” Dad said.
Beckett stood.
For the first time since I had known him, I saw real rage enter his face.
“You people are insane.”
Dad smiled.
“No. You’re just stubborn.”
Then he lunged.
Part 2
They crashed into the flower bed hard enough to snap the wooden border.