Page 65 of Ruin

Silence.

The only thing I can hear is his breathing down the phone.

“I’m not in love with you anymore, Cam. I’m sorry.”

The blade pulls out of my gut and sinks in my heart.

Don’t be sorry, I want to scream. Just fucking love me.

I start to choke on my tears. “You don’t mean that. We’ve just spent so much time apart that you’ve forgotten how good we are together. I’m gonna leave Juilliard and come to you—”

“No,” he says firmly.

I ignore him. I can’t hear him. I don’t want to hear him.

“We can spend some time together, and we’ll be okay. You’ll see me and remember that you love me and—”

“I slept with someone else.”

If I thought hearing the other things hurt me, then I had no clue what real pain was.

I’ve never felt anything like what I’m feeling now. It’s like my heart turned into glass, and he just punched his fist through my chest, shattering it into a million pieces.

I go still. Numb. The tears falling down my cheeks are the only things I can feel.

“Cam…”

I disconnect the call and throw my cell at the wall. I hear it shatter, like my heart just did.

I stare into the darkness as fresh tears run down my face, dripping onto my nightshirt.

Zeus’s shirt. One of his old T-shirts that I stole to wear to bed.

He had sex with another woman.

He cheated on me.

Zeus. My Zeus.

But he’s not mine anymore.

A cry of raw agony rips from my lungs.

I pull his shirt from my body and hurl it across the room, needing anything of his far away from me.

I fall to the bed, curl up into a ball, and cry until there are no more tears left inside me.

A week later, I see Zeus pictured in the papers with another woman.

A month after that, I discover that I’m pregnant with his baby.

“You did what?” I gasp, stepping back from him.

Zeus at least has the decency to look guilty. “I lied. I never cheated on you.”

I feel winded. I know I should feel relieved, but I don’t. Everything I’ve believed for the last five years—that Zeus cheated on me, that he abandoned Gigi—none of it is true. And I don’t know how to feel right now.

“W-why did you do that?”