Page 47 of If He Hadn't Cheated
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“I can’t watch them tear you apart because of me.”
His eyes lock on mine. “Then don’t. Go home. Let me handle this.”
I shake my head. “I can’t just leave. It’s not your fault and this isn’t your fight.”
“It is now.”
The silence between us feels final but I know it was Sebastian. It’s the only person who would have a reason.
He straightens his tie, the mask sliding back into place. The man who kissed me in the mirror is gone, replaced by the one who runs empire.
“I’ll fix this,” he says.
“How?”
“Any way I have to.”
He walks out before I can answer. I stand there for a moment, staring at the empty doorway. My reflection stares back at me from the glass wall, faint and distorted.
The girl in the reflection doesn’t look like me anymore. She looks like someone who had everything she wanted for a moment and lost it before she could even breathe it in.
I grab my bag and leave through the back elevator, ignoring the whispers, the flashes of phones, the sound of my name cutting through the air.
When I step into the street, the cold wind hits my face, and I realize something that makes my chest ache.
Love isn’t what ruins people.
It’s the people who destroy it.
22
Idisappear quietly. No goodbye. No closure. Just silence. Knox calls once. I don’t answer.
After that, he doesn’t try again.
I leave the city a week after the scandal breaks. The tabloids still run headlines, but the world moves on faster than pain does.
I rent a room two hours away, close enough to still see the skyline from the window when the weather is clear.
The first week, I sleep too much. The second, not at all. The quiet is suffocating at first, like I traded one kind of noise for another. But eventually, I start to hear something else beneath it. My own thoughts.
The doctor at the clinic helps me find a recovery group.
At first, I sit in the back and say nothing. Listening feels easier than speaking. But each story I hear sounds too familiar to ignore. The panic. The craving. The shame. The wanting to feel something again even when it hurts.
By the third session, I tell them everything. The heartbreak. The spiral. The night I almost didn’t wake up. And for the first time, the weight I’ve been carrying doesn’t feel so impossible.
Sometimes, when I’m alone staring at the small tv, I catch myself thinking about Knox. The way his voice sounded when he said my name. The way he looked at me like I was something worth fighting for.
I miss him.
But I know missing him isn’t the same as needing him.
By the third morning, an envelope arrives at the front desk. There’s no return address, but I know the handwriting instantly.
Inside is an invitation and a huge box.
