Chapter 29 #6
He has mentioned trying to date other people, but the thought of him being intimate with someone else makes her sick.
They were each other’s first lovers, and now he acts as though that means nothing.
A few months after their breakup, she checked his social media and found his new accounts.
She tells herself it wasn’t stalking. Everything was public, after all.
Deep down, she knows he did it to provoke her, certain she would look.
Or worse, he didn’t care at all if she saw him moving on.
What infuriates her most is that he hasn’t even sent her a friend request, yet he wasted no time following countless other women.
Holding back tears, she decides to confront him, her voice trembling with anger and betrayal. “Is that why you wanted to break up? So you could fuck other people? You dirty bastard!”
“Lila, please don’t insult me. We broke up because you were mentally unstable,” he says flatly. “You needed help. Badly.”
“I needed you. But you shut me out! You gave up on us!” she cries. Tears spill freely now, streaming down her soft cheeks.
“You always start crying when things don’t go your way,” he sighs, then after a few seconds, he adds, “You made me feel like I wasn’t enough, even though I tried my best. It was like you weren’t satisfied unless I gave up everything for you, and that’s not fair to me.
You wanted someone to dote on you twenty-four seven, but that’s impossible.
“I told you to stay with me, that your family was holding you back. But you left, and it got harder to juggle everything once we were long-distance. I really did try. I drove to see you as often as I could—more than I went to see my own mom—because I knew you were over there hurting all alone. But every time I came to see you, it felt like you took all your frustration out on me,” he says quietly, still refusing to look at her.
“I even stopped seeing my friends because every spare second was spent trying to make you happy, because you couldn’t stand being alone. ”
His words sting. They paint her as weak and pathetic, yet somehow still manage to label her manipulative.
“Do you still love me?” she asks softly.
“I do,” he says with an exasperated sigh. “But I don’t think you’re in a good place, and I can’t take on any more right now. Maybe it’s best if we revisit the idea of us becoming something more than friends when you’re feeling better.”
“So you invited me over just so you could fuck me?” she says through clenched teeth.
“Lila!” He finally turns toward her. “You know that’s not true. I care about you, and I’ve missed you. I thought maybe, after all this time, we were finally in a better place to try again. Maybe.”
“You don’t think we are?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “Are you okay being alone? Do you still need someone to give you attention constantly?”
“What’s wrong with wanting that? Aren’t we supposed to be each other’s happily ever after?”
“There’s no such thing as a happily ever after, Lila.
There’s just life. You can’t expect everything to be a perfect fairy tale, because life isn’t perfect.
The constant fighting whenever things didn’t go your way was suffocating.
I felt like I was always walking on eggshells, afraid something I said might trigger your insecurities. I can’t do that anymore.”
“Jake, I love you.”
“I know. But I can’t go back to the way things were.” He exhales. “I think you should go home. It’s been a long day. I can get you a ride.”
“Don’t fucking bother,” she snaps, standing to grab her backpack. She had planned to sleep over, but it’s clear she’s no longer welcome.
All she ever wanted was someone to be head over heels in love with her for eternity. “Is it really such an impossible ask?” she whispers as she walks home to an apartment she knows is empty.
Moments later, she stumbles into her apartment, every step heavy and dragging.
The hallway feels alien beneath the pale moonlight filtering through a narrow window, shadows stretching and twisting along the walls.
Claire is gone, leaving the apartment completely dark except for the faint glow in their tiny kitchen.
The familiar space feels unfamiliar—almost hostile.
Lila exhales sharply, the sound echoing through the empty apartment. Maybe she should have accepted Claire’s invitation to the Thanksgiving party with her friends instead. Going over to Jake’s was a huge mistake.
The quiet is oppressive, a stark contrast to the laughter and noise of the evening she had just left behind.
With a heavy heart, she realizes that she’s ending Thanksgiving alone for the first time in her life.
The apartment remains unnervingly still, save for the occasional creak of the building settling and the distant blare of a neighbor’s television.
A faint chill drifts through the hallway, raising goosebumps along her arms. Her footsteps echo against the worn floorboards, each creak far too loud in the silence.
As she approaches her bedroom, a chill snakes down her spine. The door is slightly ajar, a sliver of darkness spilling into the dim hallway. Something feels wrong. Her mind conjures images of a creature leaping from the shadows, and her pulse quickens.
She hesitates, her hand hovering at her side. Summoning what little strength remains, she pushes the door open and flips on the light.
The room looks exactly as she left it—slightly cluttered, with her new Prada luggage still unpacked from her recent stay with Max. Her eyes dart around, searching for anything out of place. The air feels different somehow, strange, though nothing appears wrong.
Maybe it’s because she’s grown accustomed to coming home to someone.
But that someone is currently on the other side of Manhattan, celebrating Thanksgiving with his family.
She’s pieced together fragments about them.
He has a brother. His parents are still together.
Max never gave her names or ages, so she imagines them as a family of strikingly attractive people.
Dark hair. Cold eyes.
Except when they smile.
Like him.
She wants to check her voicemails now.
Lila crosses the room slowly and collapses face-first onto her bed. She reaches into her coat pocket for her phone when the sudden flush of a toilet makes her jolt upright.
Then comes the sound of running water, filling the otherwise silent apartment. It goes on for what feels like an eternity before abruptly stopping.
“What is she doing back home so early?” Lila wonders. Despite the shock, a small flicker of relief sparks at the thought of talking to someone—anyone.
THUD.
THUD.
THUD.
Heavy footsteps echo as they move down the hallway. Footsteps that are definitely not Claire’s. Footsteps that are unmistakably drawing closer.
Deliberate.
Weighted.
As though made by someone large, wearing boots. The floorboards groan beneath each step. A cold draft brushes past her arms, making the hairs on her skin stand on end.
She wants to run—to lock her door, to crawl beneath the bed—but her body refuses to obey. She remains frozen, paralyzed with fear. Her pulse roars in her ears, each beat louder than the last.
The door swings open with a violent bang, rattling the windowpanes and sending a jolt through her spine. For a split second, all she sees is a dark silhouette filling the doorway—massive and unmoving.
Then the figure steps forward.
“Hey again, little lady.”
27
Max told himself that time was all he needed for things to fall neatly back into place.
Lila would miss him. She would realize soon enough that the little she had gotten from him wouldn’t get her far in New York City.
After all, it was expensive here. If she were smart, she'd come back to him. It was only a matter of time.
But within a day, Lila had already moved on… with a literal nobody.
Gunther had told him the news, and it had struck hard: two college sweethearts reuniting just in time for the holidays, one of them suddenly a hundred thousand dollars richer.
How detestably perfect. It had felt like a plot straight out of a cheesy Hallmark movie.
The thought had made him sick, a violent nausea gripping him until he thought he might tear apart from the inside out.
The hurt curdled into fury. He was essentially replaced. Disrespected. Cast aside for someone who could never measure up to him in any universe. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. He was not finished with her.
His rage seethed, twisting into something ugly and vengeful, before collapsing into the familiar, cruel void. The emptiness swallowed him more effectively than pain ever could. He did whatever it took to keep breathing, to slip free of the crushing weight of his own misery…
“Lilaaa… It’s time to wake up.”
Lila stirs awake, dizzy and disoriented. She squints into the total darkness, clutching her head as a dull throb pulses at her temples.
Ugh…
“Wakey, wakey…” The deep voice beside her drifts out in a singsong lilt, disturbingly sweet, like a childhood lullaby with a new haunting twist. She’s still too groggy to grasp what’s happening fully.
Fragments of the night flicker through her mind.
She remembers the sudden argument with Jake, remembers sobbing pathetically as she walked home… Coming home to a dark, empty apartment…
And then she remembers the large man from the club bursting through her bedroom door and dragging her from her bed before she could react.