SLOAN
She stood immediately. Francesca—mid-story, hands moving—stopped and glanced between them, uncertainty flickering across her features.
“Can we talk for a moment?” Kyle asked, tilting his head toward the guest room.
She followed Kyle back to the room without waiting for a response. He held the door for her, then shut it behind him.
“Read this,” he said, handing her his unlocked cell phone.
Her own face smiled up at her from the screen.
With a thudding heart, Sloan skimmed the article—from a major news outlet, not a gossip blog. Holy shit.
“I’m going to kill him,” she muttered, her fingers curling around the phone.
Why would Evan do this?
“I don’t want to force you to do anything you don’t want to do, but I think it might be time for you to call him.” Kyle’s voice was gentle, but she heard the strain under it. “You can use my phone and conceal the outgoing call number if you want.”
She squeezed her eyes shut.
He is such an asshole.
Evan was playing the victim.
If he controlled the narrative that something had happened to Sloan—that she didn’t run from him on the day of their wedding—he gained sympathy.
This was as much about him getting his way as it was about damage control.
Missing fiancée—it was brilliant, really, because even if the truth came out later, which would involve revealing his infidelity, he’d already seeded doubt. Always the schemer.
She could practically hear Bernice encouraging him to do this, too.
And Sloan refused to let him win this round—either of them. As the day had gone on, she’d felt stronger about her decision to bail.
I feel like I’m finding parts of myself that have been hidden for years.
“Fine,” she breathed. “Just tell me what I need to do to hide your number, because I don’t want him harassing either of us. Though I can’t guarantee he won’t have the FBI listening at this point if he’s taken it this far.”
Kyle hesitated and nodded, then leaned in, punched a code in the keypad, and handed it back. “Here’s hoping. I’ll leave you so you can have some privacy,” he said, starting past her.
“No—” The word had come out too fast, too filled with need, and her embarrassment flooded onto her cheeks. “Can you stay? Please? At least . . . at first?”
Surprise flickered in his face. Then he nodded, quietly, like that it was easy for him. Like her asking wasn’t a burden.
He crossed toward the bed and sat, folding his hands as he waited for her.
Sloan turned toward the closed door, phone trembling in her grip. She sucked in a shallow breath and dialed.
One ring. Two.
Evan answered on the third. “Hello?”
“Evan?” Her voice came out unsteady, thinner than she wanted.
“Christ, Sloan, where the fuck are you? Are you safe?”
“For God’s sake, Evan, stop the masquerade already.” Heat rose on her skin. “I told you I was leaving. I told you it’s over. You must’ve gotten the email already. I know all about your side—”
“No, listen to me. You don’t.” His voice hit that smooth, urgent cadence he used when he wanted something from her. “That girl is crazy. She means nothing to me, baby. God, I wish you would’ve just talked to me. This is insane. You walked out on our wedding day, Sloan.”
“If she meant nothing to you then why did you fuck her?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I didn’t.”
She’d expected the denial, but the bluntness of it made her falter for a second.
Could it be possibly true?
She closed her eyes, trying to breathe, her head spinning.
This is why I left.
I knew he’d do this. Twist it. Smooth it. Make me doubt my own eyes.
Silence must have fed him hope. “I can explain,” Evan pleaded. “Please, baby, just come back and let me explain. It’s not real. She must have used one of those programs to fake texts to fool you. To destroy my relationship with you.”
She must have. That made her lips quiver. So, he wasn’t denying that there was a woman out there trying to destroy his engagement. Just that she’d invented all of it.
“Then explain how she had pictures of your dick.” Her voice trembled with anger. “Explain how she knew which hotels and cities you flew to in November and December. How she texts exactly like you—same nicknames, same everything.”
“I don’t know. She must have hacked my phone or something. Or she’s trying to extort me.”
Hacked the phone of a congressman who treated security like religion?
Maybe some stupid part of Sloan had wanted him to tell the truth. To say, yes, I did it. I’m sorry. To let her have something clean.
Or maybe she’d imagined that a reality could exist that she hadn’t been cheated on and that Evan wouldn’t do something like this to her, to them .
But his words, his denial, his lies . . . they somehow made it all more real.
Her back hit the door as her legs went weak. She slid down to the floor, weary with exhaustion, the phone pressed to her ear. From the corner of her eye, she saw Kyle shift, alert, watching her. Not intruding. Just . . . there.
His presence grounded her in a way she hadn’t realized she needed.
“Evan, listen to me, and don’t interrupt.
” She closed her eyes, her pulse pounding in her ears.
“It’s over. I don’t believe you. There are things that can’t be faked, like pictures that you didn’t send to me, which means you must have sent them to someone else.
With details you can’t just grab off the inter—”
“You clearly have no idea how good deep fakes are these days.”
God. He couldn’t even respect me enough to not interrupt.
She gritted her teeth. “The thing is, it doesn’t actually matter, because I’ve realized something in the last day. I don’t like how you treat me. Or how your family treats me. And none of that compares to the fact that I don’t like who I am when I’m with you.”
“Listen here.” Bernice’s voice cracked in like fingernails scraping on glass and Sloan instantly knew she’d had an audience this whole time. “My son is a congressman. A congressman . You will not be using this to destroy his career, Sloan, or we will make sure you go down—”
The sound shifted, as though Evan had lifted the phone and turned the speaker off.
“Sloan, Mom’s just angry. And hurt.”
She stared at the phone in disbelief for a few seconds.
His mother? He had his mother listening to our private conversation?
Her skin crawled at the thought.
She forced her voice to be steady. “Evan, I’m not coming back.
So if you could just do me the favor of being honest now, for all those times you weren’t honest before, I’d appreciate it.
You owe me that much. And even if I believed you, which I don’t, I’ll never be able to trust you blindly. Never.”
Silence.
Her fingers cramped around the phone as she prodded, “Evan?”
“You know,” he said at last, his voice going colder, “you’re no angel, Sloan. You want to talk about trust? Do you know how long it took me to trust that you wouldn’t do something to ruin me after that stunt you pulled three years ago?”
The sudden, startling memory of waking up hooked to hospital wires and Penny’s red-rimmed gaze slammed into Sloan’s solar plexus.
How. Dare. He.
Her vision flashed white with rage. “Don’t you dare. That is not the same thing as you cheating on me.”
“Maybe not to you.” Evan’s words bit out like he wanted them to cut her. “I was there for you when you messed up, Sloan, because that’s what you do when you supposedly love someone. You look past their mistakes. You don’t just walk away.”
Still no actual denial. As if Evan felt it was acceptable to betray her. Justified. The hell?
Hurt crested so fast it stole her breath. Her mind raced, trying to find the logic, the fairness.
Anything that would justify the cruelty of his words.
If he loved me . . . he’d be begging me to come back to him for that reason alone. Instead, he believed his actions were justified. As if my dark place excused his infidelity. He’d been keeping score.
Her voice trembled as she said, “That’s not love, Evan. That’s manipulation. Tell the police I left, and I don’t want to be found. You did this to us, and I’m done.”
She hung up.
Hot, angry tears pricked her eyes before she could stop them. Not about the breakup, not even for the cheating, but for what he’d just thrown at her like it was a weapon he’d been waiting to use.
And boy, had it worked.
And to think I was going to marry that man. If she’d had doubts about her decision to leave, Sloan now had none.
Footsteps crossed the room and Kyle crouched in front of her.
She crumpled into his arms, breaking before he even finished moving. His strong arms closed around her as he steadied himself against the wall beside them, anchoring her like he’d done this a thousand times.
And really, he had.
How many times had he held her, especially toward the end, when her mom was dying?
Just held her when the world went dark and the anxious thoughts wouldn’t stop pressing in.
Accepted that sometimes when she spent the night and crawled on top of him for sex in the middle of the night that it had been about needing to lose herself with someone who’d loved her and given her comfort.
But he’d been her safety net, too.
“Hey,” he whispered into her hair. “It’s going to be okay.”
“No . . . he just . . .” She struggled for breath, shame and rage tangling together.
God, she didn’t want to tell him. Didn’t want to hand anyone else that piece of her that still felt like something that should stay locked away.
Yet, this was Kyle. He already had every reason in the world to think the worst of her. And he was still here.
“I was deeply depressed three years ago,” she said quietly, her cheek pressed into his chest. “Evan and I had a big fight, and he left for a trip.” A lump rose in her throat.
“And I swallowed a whole bottle of my anti-anxiety meds.” Her breath hitched.
“I was still living in San Francisco and Penny came over so we could go to lunch, but instead . . . she found me. I woke up in the hospital.” And she’s never forgiven me.
Kyle didn’t stiffen. Didn’t recoil.