He didn’t finish. Or maybe he couldn’t.
David’s laugh came next, the sound of someone who didn’t understand what it meant to have something to lose. I stood motionless outside the door, my fingers tightening around thebooks pressed to my chest, nails digging into the covers. A job offer. A new university. A future that didn’t include this place.
Didn’t include me.
The thought hit hard, a dull ache that spread through my ribs and settled deep in my chest. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. The air in the corridor felt too thin, the floor too far beneath me. I had imagined a hundred ways he might leave, a thousand reasons he might pull away, but not this.
Not the quiet betrayal of him choosing the world beyond us.
And still, even as my heart splintered under the weight of it, I couldn’t make myself turn away. I stood there, caught between hope and devastation, listening to the sound of his voice—his calm, distant voice, and wondering when I had started belonging to someone who might never stay.
The conversation faded, David’s voice dropping to a low murmur I could barely make out. Panic kicked in fast. If I stayed, they’d see me. I stepped back, slow at first, then quicker, clutching the books so tightly the corners cut into my arms. It didn’t stop the shaking. It didn’t stop the truth from hitting like a punch to the gut.
By the time I reached the end of the corridor, my heartbeat was a roar in my ears. Whatever we’d been—whatever I thought we were—it didn’t matter. His future was already waiting somewhere else, and I wasn’t fucking part of it.
He was leaving.
And he hadn’t told me. Not a single damn word. Not while he kissed me, not while he had me whispering his name, not while he promised me silence and belonging in the same breath. He’d held me, claimed me, made me think I meant something, and all the while, he knew.
I shoved open the door, the cold air smacking my face, cutting through the mess in my head. Students crowded the steps,laughing, their voices bright, careless. I should have felt it. I should have been able to breathe it in. But all I felt was fury.
He had played me. Maybe not with lies, but with half-truths and silence, which was worse. He had taken everything I offered, every ounce of trust, every piece of my goddamn heart, and left me with nothing but questions. He had broken me open just to walk away. Anger rose in my chest, fierce and blinding, burning hotter than the hurt. He had called me his, said I belonged to him, and I had been stupid enough to believe it. Fuck him for that. Fuck him for making me think it meant something. For making me feel wanted just long enough to leave me hollow.
And maybe, fuck me too, for letting him.
How could I have been so naive? So weak? My mother had seen it long before I did. She used to look at me with that mix of pity and frustration and say I trusted too easily, that one day it would ruin me. I spent years trying to prove her wrong. I left home. I built a life on my own. I walked through this city with my head high, pretending strength was the same thing as independence. I thought distance could protect me.
But standing there, with anger clawing through me in the cold spring air, her voice came back clearer than ever, and the truth stung. She had been right. I was weak. Weak enough to believe that a man like him could love me. Weak enough to let him become the center of everything I swore I’d build for myself.
And maybe that was the cruelest truth, not that he broke me, but that I had handed him the pieces and called it love. I walked faster, each step harder, my boots slapping against the wet pavement. I didn’t care who stared. The air stung my face, my vision blurred, but I kept moving. If he wanted to disappear, let him. If he wanted to leave, let him go choke on his ambition.
I wasn’t going to wait for a man who could burn me to ashes and still walk away clean.
Not this time.
He could keep his future, his plans, his fucking control.
I was done being something he could leave behind.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Hayden
David’svoicelingeredinthe air long after he left my office, his words burrowing deep, sharp and insistent. Any man in my position would have accepted without hesitation, a full contract at one of the top universities in the country, prestige that would crown years of work, the kind of title people bled for. But the only image that refused to fade was not of lecture halls or accolades. It was her.
Edwina.
The girl from that fucking night. The accident that destroyed everything. The one I had pulled from the wreckage while my sister and her fiancé lay dying in the same goddamn chaos. I had spent years trying to hate her, to drown her memory in guilt and rage, but she had stayed, etched into every sleepless night, every breath that burned through me. When she returned, allthat anger turned into something worse, obsession. She became the ache that nothing could numb. The hunger that no distance could quiet. I spent every lecture fighting the urge to drag her into my arms, to remind her of what her body already knew, that she belonged to me.
And now that she had whispered she loved me, lips swollen from my kiss, how the fuck could I trade her for a contract, a paycheck, a hollow life I no longer wanted?
Christ, I couldn’t.
Not when her body remembered me, not when her thighs clenched at my filthiest words, not when the sound of her breath alone made me harder than any goddamn ambition ever could. She was the one thing in this world that could wreck me completely, and I wanted her wreckage more than I wanted the life I had built.
The sound of my phone cut through the quiet, shrill and jarring.
Alessia.
