Chapter 09
the ones that will haunt
Colin
I make it to the hotel without knowing how. I don’t remember the route the driver took, or getting into the car, or sitting in the back seat… only that I must have, somehow. I don’t remember saying anything that made sense.
Everything after I walked out of our home blurs together. Everything except the sound of the door closing behind me.
And her voice.
Those words that won’t stop echoing in my head. They hurt because they were true, because they showed me exactly how she felt, not how I wanted to believe she did.
Now I’m standing in the middle of a room that smells nothing like home. Sterile. Expensive. Empty. The kind of place made for men like me—men who ruin everything they touch.
I throw the brown envelope onto the coffee table.
I stare at my reflection in the black-mirror screen of the TV. I look like a man who finally ran out of lies.
I used to think I could fix things if I just explained enough, apologized enough, proved enough. But she didn’t want proof. She wanted truth. And I couldn’t give it to her until it was too late.
My feet take me to the bar, where the brandy stares back at me. I open it, reach for a glass, but then set it aside and lift the bottle instead. It’ not even four in the afternoon, but that doesn’t matter anymore. I drink straight from the bottle.
The burn stings my throat hard, and for a second, I think the heat might fill the hollow inside me… but it doesn’t. It just brings her back. Her face. Her resignation. The destruction I left behind.
She wasn’t even wearing her rings anymore. The engagement ring, the wedding band that once meant everything. Had she taken them off before and I just didn’t notice? When did she do it? Did she throw them away, along with everything we built, everything I ruined?
I can feel the weight of mine on my hand, and all I can think about is hers. The empty space where they used to be.
The hurt in her eyes, the ache in her voice, the devastation that didn’t need words. And that calm...threaded with exhaustion, with the kind of acceptance that feels like surrender.
That’s what I can’t shake. Not the anger, not even the grief, just that silent surrender. Like she’d finally stopped fighting for us.
I take another swallow, longer this time, until my chest aches and my eyes sting. The liquor drips from the corner of my mouth, and I don’t even bother wiping it away. Let it burn. Let it mark me.
Because maybe pain is the only honest thing left in me.
The room spins in slow circles. Somewhere out there, life goes on. People keep moving, laughing, loving—making promises they naively believe they can keep.
And here I am, facing what I’ve done, wondering when I stopped being one of them.
“You don’t need to keep waiting, Colin. You just need to sign the papers.”
“It would be a hundred—no, a thousand times easier if I didn't love you anymore,”
“It wouldn’t hurt like this. It wouldn’t take every ounce of strength just to breathe, wishing I could no longer exist some days, if it weren’t for our kids.”
I grip the edge of the counter, trying to breathe.
My knuckles turn white, the bottle wobbling beside me, amber sloshing against glass.
“...it wasn’t one mistake, or two, or three. They were deliberate. Repeated. Daily choices.”
“You didn’t keep any of those promises.”
I let my forehead fall against the counter, but her voice won’t quiet down.
“Where were you the day Alicia was burning with a fever?”
“I’m so sorry, my little princess. So, so sorry.” My voice comes out strangled as the image flashes back. Alicia in that hospital bed, and the worry tearing through me as I tried to understand what had happened.
“Will you compare us in your head, Colin? Wonder if she tasted better? If she was better?”
“Never!” I yell into the empty room.
I start to pace, running a hand through my hair, the brandy bottle clutched in the other, still hearing all her words. As if she’s here now with me, repeating them over and over.
I look at the bottle and take another pull. It tastes like everything that’s left of us. Bitter, heavy, and gone.
“Imagine me with a younger man. Having sex with him for months. Coming home late at night and lying next to you after letting him do to me everything you did to her. Sharing things with him that I never shared with you.”
I spit out the brandy, coughing as it scorches its way back up my throat. Before I can stop it, my mind betrays me. Flooding with images I never asked for.
Ceci. With other men.
Men I’ve seen look at her the way only I had the right to. Craving her. Wanting her.
Younger, older, it doesn’t matter. All of them touching her, tasting her, tracing the skin I know by heart.
It makes my skin feel too hot, too tight, too wrong. My breathing splintering until I can barely pull air in.
And then the image sharpens. Her and Santoro. In our bed. Exactly the way it was the last time I had her. Only it’s him now. His hands where mine are supposed to be. His voice breaking through hers, making her twist, beg, moan—sounds that belong to me.
My stomach turns violently. I stumble into the bathroom, barely making it before I fall to my knees and throw up into the toilet. It tears through my throat, bile and brandy burning on the way out. But nothing burns like the images that won’t leave my head.
Because now I understand what she must feel. Every time she tries not to picture me, every little thing her mind tells her I might’ve done.
For months.
All the ways I betrayed her. Betrayed us.
I gather myself off the floor, my legs unsteady, the bitter taste of bile burning in my throat. I wash my face. My mouth. The water feels too cold, too clean for someone like me.
I stare at my reflection for a second, the mess I’ve become, and then I turn away.
Dazed and disoriented, I wander back into the sitting room and sink into the couch. I just sit there for a long time, staring at nothing.
“And Colin? You really should’ve read what I wrote on the blog.”
I pull my phone from my pocket, open Ceci’s blog, and scroll straight to the last post. By the time I reach the end of the page, tears are already running down my face. I read it again. And again. Until the words blur and my throat burns.
By the fifth time, I already know…
of everything Ceci wrote, of all the raw, unfiltered pain she poured into every line, two of them are the ones that will haunt me the most.
You realize that the person who was supposed to protect you became the one who destroyed you.
If he could risk your shared past for a fleeting thrill or a love affair, why should the burden of preservation fall on you alone?
Affidavit of Defendant
I take one last look at the signed papers before closing the desk drawer, the weight in my chest deepening with the dull thud. Three knocks come at my door, forcing a groan from my throat.
Maya steps in with hesitant footsteps and a soft smile. Of course she’d take advantage of Margaret’s absence to sneak in. I gave explicit orders not to let her into my office, and she keeps trying anyway.
When I stay late at the office, I lock the door.
Inevitably, the three knocks come. I ignore them.
If only I’d done that from the start.
I rub my temple. “What do you want, Maya?” I ask, already out of patience.
She touches her belly, like she always does now whenever she’s standing in front of me.
“I have an appointment on Friday. Do you want to come with me, to hear his heartbeat?” she asks, her voice full of hope.
“I think it’s a boy. He’s going to look just like his dad.”
I clench my teeth and think of Ethan. My spitting image, but with his mother’s eyes. Ethan, who refuses to talk to me. Who barely looks at me when we go out—him, Alicia, and me—for dinner or lunch, like last Saturday.
When I’m home with Alicia, he hovers nearby but keeps his distance. I can feel it every time, the wall he’s building, growing taller, thicker. I’m losing him. I’m going to lose my son the same way I lost Ceci.
“Give her the divorce. Don’t contest it. She needs this. With time, no rush. you can try again. A love like yours doesn’t just disappear overnight.”
I hear Oliver’s words in my head, the ones he said a few days ago after I told him everything. What Ceci said, about the divorce petition. I don’t know if they were empty words or pity disguised as hope. But even I don’t dare believe them.
I’ll always love Ceci. That part won’t change. But what I did...
The thought dies before I can finish it. My chest feels tight. My throat burns. There aren’t enough words left in me to name the damage I caused.
“Colin!” Maya calls, her tone impatient now.
I take a deep breath. “Only reach out to me if it’s to ask for money to deal with this problem. I’ll pay whatever it takes. Otherwise, there’s nothing left for us to talk about.”
“Colin, I—”
I stand up, my voice low but firm.
“No, Maya. You heard me. The only reason you remain employed here is because terminating you would create a series of legal ramifications—given your current condition and everything that happened before.”
I had to put all my cards on the table with Jonathan, and he was clear. We keep Maya at the company at least until things calm down, or until I convince her to accept a generous settlement and sign an NDA.
But Maya doesn’t want money. She keeps clinging to this foolish idea that she loves me.
“I’d never do anything to hurt you or jeopardize the company,” she says, looking up at me from beneath her lashes.
I point to where her hand protectively rests on her stomach. “Keeping this lie alive is more than hurting me, Maya. It’s detonating my entire life with a nuclear bomb.”
I’m too tired to keep trying to put some sense into her delusional mind.
When I finally speak, my voice is cold enough to leave no room for misunderstanding.
“Don’t come into my office again unless you’re asked to, or unless it’s to ask for the money to make this problem go away, once and for all.”
She tries one last time to convince me to go to the appointment—then, absurdly, suggests I join her in Montauk this weekend to meet her uncle and aunt, who apparently want to know who the father of her baby is, promising she’s only told them about the pregnancy and that she’s protecting our secret.
I walk to the door and pull it open.
As soon as she leaves, I slam the door shut and lean against it, eyes closed.
The door to my office bursts open, and I look up from the document just in time to see Jonathan storm in. Rage written all over his face, tablet in hand.
“Have you seen this?” he growls.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. If this is another problem, it can wait. It’s barely past noon, and I’m already done for the day.”
He lets out a bitter laugh. “You don’t get that option. Because this mess is your goddamn doing.”
I take the tablet from his hand, and the second I see the image and read the headline, it slips from my fingers and crashes onto the desk.
It hits me all at once. The pounding. The rush. Panic that doesn’t begin in my head, but deep in my chest. Violent. Uncontrollable.
My heart starts hammering so fast it feels like it’s trying to break free from my ribs. Every beat echoes in my ears, louder than my own breathing, louder than the dead air the room.
“You should pick that back up and read the whole thing,” Jonathan snaps.
My hands won’t stay still. They tremble when I reach for the tablet, trying to hold it steady long enough to read.
Love story. Luxury hotels. Forbidden love.
My chest locks up. I gasp for air. It’s like my lungs forgot how to work—like being strangled from the inside.
I glance at Jonathan, desperate, silently asking for help, and see him pacing in front of the desk.
When he feels my eyes on him, he stops and turns to face me.
“This? This could destroy everything we’ve spent years building.”
He slams his hand down on the screen, his voice rising with every word.
“You have to fix this shit! The phones are already blowing up—and this is only the beginning.”
I press both hands to the back of my head and pray. To any divine thing that might somehow be listening, for this to be a nightmare.
Maya
As soon as I step into the apartment and close the door, I kick off my heels and leave them by the entryway. I take my phone and toss the bag onto the coffee table.
I told the poor fool in the finance department—where Colin had Theodora dump me—that I had a terrible migraine.
It only took a few blinks, a bitten lip, and a hand on his chest for him to let me go home early without asking questions.
The truth is, I didn’t want to be at the office when Colin finds out, or when someone sees it and shows him.
Once he does, he'll be the one with the real migraine.
I unlock my phone and open the link I got a few minutes ago. A slow smile spreads across my face. It’s perfect.
I read it again. And again. Letting it sink in, basking in every word, every picture.
My phone rings, interrupting me just as I start to read it again.
Chloe.
Of course. She’s probably already seen it and can’t wait to start lecturing me.
I decline the call. I don’t want to tie up the line in case Colin calls.
When it rings again a few seconds later, I reject it. Then again.
“Ugh, she’s not giving up.”
I finally answer, and the first thing she says is, “What did you do, Amaya?”
I press my lips together; she loves pushing my buttons. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She lets out a short laugh.
“Your little games don’t work on me. Mom and Dad already saw it. You’d better be here before the weekend at the latest. I have no idea what the hell is going through your head.”
My eyes drift to the sonogram lying on the coffee table. “I’m just going after my own happy ending... dear cousin.”