Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
JADE
The mirror doesn't scare me this morning.
I stand in our bathroom, steam still curling from the shower, and I look at myself without hate. The woman staring back has tired eyes and messy hair, and a body that will never grace a perfect yoga Instagram. Her stomach folds where she bends. Her face is round in ways that used to make her cry.
But she's still here.
I press my palm against the glass, feeling the condensation cool against my skin. For years, I've avoided this—really seeing myself. I'd catch glimpses and look away, listing flaws, hearing Mila's voice whispering all the reasons I wasn't enough for Devon.
Today, her voice is quiet.
Thank fuck.
I hear Devon moving around downstairs: the clink of coffee mugs, the soft thud of the refrigerator door. Normal sounds. Our sounds. I’ve missed this.
When I finally pull on clothes and head down, he's at the kitchen table, his expression unreadable.
"What's wrong?”
He looks up at me, and there's something in his eyes—relief, I think, mixed with vindication. "Officer Gray came by while you were in the shower. She unofficially shared some information with me. And…” He hesitates, grimacing as his words trail off.
My stomach rolls, but I force myself to sit across from him. "Tell me."
Devon sighs. “She smashed our car window.”
I freeze. “What? How—”
“The lady across the street had it on her Ring camera. The police asked around, and apparently, they caught her smashing our car and running around the corner.” He shakes his head as I stare past him.
To think she did that to us with both of us in the house… I shudder.
"Jade—" He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice is rough. "She's done this before. To other people. We weren't her first targets."
I gape at him. I thought this was a tirade against me.
“Mila had been stalking Grant and his wife for months before the conference. She'd attended specifically because she knew he'd be there. When he rejected her advances—she pivoted to me.”
Devon was selected because he was someone from her past that ‘rejected her.’
"She chose you," I whisper. "On purpose."
"Yeah." Devon winces. "Because I was easy. Because Grant wouldn't give her what she wanted, so she found someone who might."
“So, all that about Grant being aggressive after she ended things…” I trail off, shaking my head. “Fucking hell, Devon.”
“Yeah, no wonder he tried to tell me to be careful.” Devon pinches the bridge of his nose before continuing.
“There's more. Officer Gray said there was a report from Bali—from the yoga retreat where Mila did her training.
A male instructor she'd worked with had filed a complaint after she began following him, sending invasive messages, and making false claims about their relationship.”
I stare at him, unsure what to say. Even knowing this wasn’t just directed at me didn’t make this any easier to swallow.
"She did this in India too," Devon continues, eyeing me like I might break. "Another man. Same pattern. Target, fixate, escalate. When it doesn't work, she moves on to the next guy.”
For weeks, I've felt like the victim—betrayed, humiliated, broken. But hearing this, the unhinged trail of Mila's behavior, I realize I was never the only one in her crosshairs.
Devon was a victim too—of a calculated predator.
"Her power was an illusion," I whisper.
"What?"
I meet his eyes across the table. "Everything she made me feel—worthless, inadequate, not enough.
It was all constructed. She didn't have any real ammunition, so she manufactured it.
The kiss, the pregnancy, the Instagram posts—none of it was about what actually happened.
It was about what she could make me believe had happened. "
Devon swallows. "I should have told you the truth from the start. About the kiss. About all of it."
"Yes. You should have."
"If I had—"
"She still would have done this. Look at the pattern, Devon. Grant, the instructor in Bali, India—you. The only difference is how much damage she can do before she's stopped."
I stand and move around the table, and Devon turns in his chair to face me. I cup his jaw in my hands, feeling the stubble rough against my palms.
"You made a mistake," I tell him. "A terrible, painful mistake that I'm still healing from. But you didn't create this. You didn't cause her obsession."
His eyes are wet. "Jade—"
"I love you." The words come out stronger than I expect. "Not because I'm afraid of being alone. Not because I'm desperate or insecure or any of the things Mila called me. Because despite everything—the lies, the pain, the weeks of hell—I still want to build a life with you."
Devon pulls me onto his lap, his arms wrapping around me like he's afraid I'll disappear. I feel the tremor in his body, the relief breaking through, and then he's kissing me.
It's different from the desperate, grief-stricken intimacy of recent weeks. This kiss tastes like it’s real.
Like it’s a new us.
When we finally break apart, I rest my forehead against his.
"What happens now?" he asks.
"Now we try again. Properly this time." I trace my thumb along his cheekbone. "No more secrets or lies. No more letting someone else's poison into our home."
Devon's hands tighten on my waist. "I want—" He stops, starts again. "I want us to try for a baby. When you're ready. Not because we're trying to prove anything, but because I want that life with you. I’m not waiting for success or anything else. Not anymore.”
I blink and tears stream down my cheeks. He really wants this, something I’ve always wanted.
"I'm ready," I whisper. "I've been ready for so long.”
He kisses me again, softer this time, and I sink into it.
I think about the mirror this morning. The woman I saw looking back at me. She wasn't the girl Mila shaped with whispered insults and school bully cruelty. She wasn't the wife who doubted her own worth.
She was someone new. Someone made of fire and still standing.
Devon's hand finds mine, our fingers interlocking.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”