Chapter 39
The new apartment was quiet.
It was always quiet now. No coffee brewing in the mornings, no music playing from the kitchen, no low voice calling my name from the other room. Just silence, heavy and constant, pressing against the walls like something I couldn't escape.
I had been here for weeks. The boxes were unpacked, the furniture arranged, the bare walls still waiting for me to decide if I wanted to hang anything. I hadn't decided yet.
Every time I thought about putting up a picture or buying a plant, it felt too hopeful, too colorful, too bright, like I was pretending to be someone I wasn't anymore. So I put the idea away for another day.
The Johnson project kept me busy. Long hours, late nights, the kind of exhaustion that made it hard to think about anything except spreadsheets and deadlines and the next meeting.
Sienna had stopped asking if I was okay.
She just handed me files and told me to get them done, and I did, because work was the only thing that kept me from falling apart.
I had just come home, my shoulders aching and my head throbbing, and I was standing in the kitchen heating up leftovers I didn't really want. The microwave hummed, the light inside spinning, and I stared at it without seeing anything.
I had almost convinced myself that I was fine.
And then someone knocked on the door.
The sound sliced through the quiet like a blade.
My whole body went still. My hand hovered over the microwave buttons, frozen mid-reach.
No one knew this address. I hadn't given it to anyone, I didn't have anyone to give it to.
This address was mine, just mine, a secret I had kept close like a wound I didn't want anyone to see.
The knock came again, harder this time, more insistent.
My heart had already started pounding before I even moved. I walked to the door on silent feet, my bare toes curling against the cold floor, and I leaned close to the peephole.
My breath caught in my throat. My stomach dropped. For a moment, I couldn't breathe at all.
He was standing there.
Or whatever his real name was. He was standing right outside my door, in the hallway of my new building, and he looked like he hadn't slept in days.
His shirt was rumpled,hair a mess, dark strands falling across his forehead, and there were deep circles under his eyes that made him look older, wearier, nothing like the composed, infuriating man who had cooked breakfast in my kitchen.
I should have walked away. I should have stayed silent, pretended I wasn't home, waited for him to give up and leave. That would have been the smart thing. The safe thing. The thing that protected the walls I had spent weeks rebuilding.
But my body didn't listen to my brain. My hand turned the lock before I could stop it. The deadbolt slid back with a click that sounded deafening in the silence. And then I was pulling the door open, and he was there, right there, close enough to touch.
He looked at me. His eyes moved over my face like he was memorizing it, like he couldn't quite believe I was real. His jaw was tight, his throat bobbed as he swallowed, and when he finally spoke, his voice was soft, so soft it almost undid me.
"Elera...."
Just my name. That was all he said. And yet it carried everything, regret, longing, exhaustion, hope. I felt it hit my chest like a stone dropped into still water.
I didn't say anything. I couldn't. My throat had closed up, and my hands were gripping the edge of the door so hard that my knuckles had gone white.
The anger I had been holding inside for weeks was there, boiling just beneath the surface, but underneath it was something else, something raw and painful that I didn't want to name.
He looked terrible. Not in a pitiful way, but in a way that made me want to reach out and touch his face, and that made me angrier than anything else.
"You need to leave." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "You're not welcome here."
"Please..." he said, and the word was barely a breath. "Just let me explain."
"There's nothing to explain." I shook my head, and the motion felt jerky, uncoordinated, because my whole body was trembling now. "You got what you wanted. You left. End of story."
"It's not that simple, Kitten"
"It is that simple." My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated myself for it. I gripped the door tighter, my fingers aching.
"You lied to me. You used me. You let me believe you were someone you weren't, and then you disappeared like I meant nothing. Like nothing." I could feel the heat behind my eyes, the sting of tears I refused to shed.
"So no. I don't want to hear your explanation. I don't want to hear anything you have to say."
I started to close the door.
His hand shot out and caught it. Not hard, he didn't slam it or shove it. He just placed his palm flat against the wood, holding it in place. I looked at his fingers, at the faint scars I had traced so many times, and then I looked at his face.
His jaw was tight. His eyes were dim, shadowed, but there was something in them, something desperate and fierce and almost breaking.
"I'm not leaving." he said. "Not until you hear me out."
"Then stand here all night." My voice was sharp, but my hands were shaking.
"I don't mind."
I stared at him, and the annoyance that crept into my chest was almost a relief, better than the hurt, better than the want.
"I'll call the cops."
"I don't care." He said it quietly, but there was no defiance in it. Just exhaustion and truth.
"I'll still come back tomorrow. And the day after that. And every day after that, until you listen to me."
We stood there, frozen, the door half-open between us. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, could feel the tears burning behind my eyes that I refused to let fall. I had cried enough over this man. I had begged for him. I had given him pieces of myself that I would never get back.
I wouldn't cry again.
"Go home, Caspian." I said, and shoved the door closed with all the strength I had left.
It clicked shut. The sound echoed through the empty apartment. I leaned against it, my back pressed against the cold wood, my hands flat against the panels, and I pressed my lips together to hold back the sob that was trying to escape.
I heard him move on the other side, his exhale, slow, heavy, defeated. The silence stretch between us like a living thing.
And then his footsteps fading, soft at first, then gone.
I stayed there with my back against the door and my heart in my throat and the memory of his face burned into my eyes. His rumpled shirt. His trembling hand. The way he had said my name, like it was the only word that mattered. Like he had found the cure of a some disease he was searching for years.
He would come back. He had said he would come back. And I knew, with a certainty that sat deep in my bones, that I wouldn't be able to push him away forever.
Because even after everything, even after the lies, the betrayal, the weeks of silence, the way he had blocked me and left me with nothing but a sticky note and three hundred dollars—
I still loved him.
And that was the worst part of all.
But I wouldn't break.
Chances are given to those who deserve them. Not to cheaters, not to liars.