I watched as he jerked back like I shot him.
Cade’s face fell and he rolled his lips into his mouth, as though physically holding himself back from saying something he shouldn’t.
He said it anyway.
“You saw what you saw at the party and branded me a cheater.” Barely concealed fury plunged through his frame as he pinned me with harsh eyes. “There’s always two sides to a story, but you played judge, jury, and executioner before hearing mine.”
“The evidence was there.” A bitter chuckle escaped me. “What was there to say?”
“What was there to say? We were together forthreeyears! You were my best friend before my girlfriend! You were supposed to listen to me! You were supposed to give me the chance to fucking talk! I’ve always been there for you,” he barked incredulously, voice cracking as he pointed an accusing finger at me. “Through thick and thin, I was your pillar. Any fucking thing you needed, I gave to you.” In his rising anger, he knocked a glass world globe off a work desk. It shattered into little pieces on the floor. Neither of us flinched in the aftermath. It was no worse than what already lay broken between Cade and me. “So why couldn’t you have given me the one thing I needed?”
To be heard.
That’s all he wanted.
I silenced him and he hated me for it.
“You’re out of your mind if you thought I’d give you the time of day after you cheated!” I shouted back. “Did you expect me to sit down, offer you tea and cookies, and listen to your explanation when I found you in bed with another girl, drunk and high as a kite? Be so fucking for real, you asshole! I don’t give second chances! Especially to two-timing scums!”
Innumerable individuals watched me get humiliated at that party. They watched me get betrayed in the worstway possible and then filmed it for hundreds to see, laughing at my expense like I was a toy for their amusement.
I could never forgive him for the sheer desolation I experienced in that moment. I wanted to die. I wanted the earth to swallow me whole so I could disappear forever.
Next thing I knew, Cade flung aside the work desk and it crashed against a shelf with a jangling noise, causing a few books to fall.
The air rippled with weeks’ worth of pent-up tension and the long-awaited confrontation. It was suffocating and I could taste its flavour on my palate like a foul substance I was forced to choke down.
“Fuck you, Ella!” Cade seethed and advanced towards me, a vein protruding in his neck. “You’re so sure of what you saw, huh? You think you have it all figured out, but did you stop to think, for one second, how out of character it would be for me to cheat on the love of my life? Did it ever cross your mind that betraying you is the last thing I’d ever want or do?”
Glass crunched under the weight of our steps as he backed me against the brick wall.
Cade talked like he wasn’t guilty and it didn’t settle well with my gut. Doubt crept in my mind, making me question small details from that night.
“It may have been the last thing you wanted, but you still did.” My hand reached up to clutch the necklace at the base of my throat…only to remember it wasn’t there anymore. I took it off after we broke up. Now I missed it like a vital organ. “You hurt me, Cade. You hurt me so much.”
“And you hurt me too, Ella.” One final step and he was back in my orbit where I could not evade him. “You were supposed to trust me…love me. Instead, you cussed me out, slammed the doors in my face, and all but pushed me out of your life like I was trash.”
Trust and love. I always thought those two words were synonymous.
While some part of me still loved Cade, I no longer trusted him.
And I could never be with someone I didn’t trust.
The faster he got that tidbit through his head, the better.
It was finally time to rip off the bandage and tell him the truth of why his betrayal burned so deep.
Cade claimed he was there for me through thick and thin, but there was one instance where he wasn’t—though he had no clue—and my irrational mind could not forgive him for it.
“I was in no condition to hear you out that night, Cade,” I said. “Or the days and weeks that followed.”
“Why?” He gritted his teeth.
“I came to Josh’s party because I had something important to share with you.”
“What?” Cade’s blue eyes darkened as he sensed the change in my tone. “Spit it out already, Ella.”
I snaked a hand between our bodies and pressed it to my stomach. “I was pregnant.”
