Chapter 39 Kate
KATE
I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING
What does she have that I don’t?/Is her silence prettier than mine?/Did you ever even see me?/Or was I just killing time? Kate Riggs
I don’t even remember unlocking the door. One second I was staring at my phone in the elevator, and the next I was face-down on the couch, wearing only one heel, the other somewhere by the doormat.
The apartment is too quiet, except for the faint hum of the fridge and the click of Shay locking the door behind us. I know she’s there, hovering like she wants to say something but knows better. She doesn’t ask if I’m okay—thank God. If she did, I think I might scream.
I can’t take his calls. I would say things I don’t mean, and that’s not who I am. I should confront him, yell at him, and get it off my chest, but I’m too tired. I can’t do much of anything but wallow in my broken heart.
My phone is still clutched in my hand, screen smeared with my thumbprint and guilt.
The photo is burned into my eyelids—Finn, mouth too close to her ear, fingers on her waist, both of them laughing like I don’t exist. I want to believe it’s fake.
I need to. But it’s not. It's real enough to be reposted on three gossip pages and make my publicist text, “Damage control?” with the most pitiful attempt at neutrality I’ve ever seen.
I toss the phone like it burns, and it hits the rug with a soft thud. Shay sits at the edge of the couch. Not touching me yet. Just… waiting. She’s always good at that—holding space without filling it.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” I mutter. “That he did it, or that he let it be photographed.”
Her voice is low. Careful. “You don’t know what you saw.”
I laugh, bitter. “I saw enough.”
Silence. Not the good kind. The kind that gets inside your teeth and rots them from the inside out.
I curl in on myself, eyes stinging. I haven’t cried yet. Not really. I don’t know if it’s because I’m in shock, or because I’m afraid that if I start, I won’t stop.
“I feel so stupid,” I whisper, not to her. To the ceiling. The air. To whatever version of myself thought love could make me safe.
Shay finally reaches out, brushing a crumb of mascara off my cheekbone. “You’re not stupid, Kate. You’re just… trusting. And that’s not a crime.”
“No,” I say, my voice hoarse. “But apparently it’s a liability.”
She doesn't argue. Just pulls the throw blanket over both of us and tucks my head into her shoulder like she used to in college, when I had the flu and a broken heart and too much pride to ask for help.
I close my eyes and try not to see the photo again. But I do. And every time I Do, it hurts worse—because now I’ve let myself believe it.
I can’t even look at my phone without wanting to throw it into the fancy lake outside my apartment window.
Not because of the photo—I’ve memorized every painful pixel of that.
No. It’s the silence of the room and my mother’s voice screaming in my head.
"He’ll leave you like the rest, darling. Men always do."
God, I didn’t want to believe her.
I didn’t. Because Finn is different!
Was different.
But there she is, practically glowing behind my eyes, smug and satisfied. The I-told-you-so doesn't even have to be said out loud. It’s just there—coiled around my ribs like barbed wire.
I trusted him. I let myself trust him. I fell for him, like a total idiot.
And now I get to be the girl whose fake husband was caught cozying up to his real ex while I was out of town, trying to make peace with my mother.
My mother is going to eat this alive.
And the worst part? I did know better. And I still fell in love. Even now, I remember how cute he was hauling that huge silver cup all over town. The look on his face talking to the kids at the skating rink, and his eyes, when they bore into me every time we made love, like it was the first time.
Damn him. Why did he have to ruin it?
“Are you sure you don’t want tea? Or whiskey?” Shay’s voice floats in from the kitchen.
“Both,” I mutter, curling deeper into her couch. I’ve been in the same leggings for two days. My eyes are puffy, and I’m pretty sure my soul is trying to leak out through my tear ducts. The more I cry, the less I’ll pee. I guess that’s a silver lining.
She walks in with a mug and a shot glass, like the absolute legend she is, and hands them both over without comment.
“I hate him,” I whisper.
“You don’t.”
“I want to.”
Shay sits beside me, tucks her legs under her, and waits. She doesn’t push. She lets me unload.
“I believed him,” I say finally, voice cracking. “I thought—I thought maybe this fake thing had become something real. I thought he saw me. And then I see that picture and it’s like... none of it mattered.”
Shay’s quiet for a beat. “Maybe it did. Maybe it scared the hell out of him.”
“Then why didn’t he fight for me?”
That silence is heavier. I take the whiskey. It burns, but not enough to make my heart hurt less.
“I can’t go back, Shay. Not after this. Not after everyone knows. My mother will have a field day. I’ll be the girl who married a hockey god and still wasn’t good enough.”
“You weren’t the one who wasn’t enough.”
I laugh. It’s bitter and wet. “Then why am I the one crying on your couch?”
No answer.
God, I miss him, and I hate that I do.
And I don’t know what hurts more: the betrayal—or the fact that, deep down, I still want him to be the one to fix it.
The worst part is the silence in my head.
It’s not the kind that means peace. It’s the kind that waits for you to breathe wrong, so it can pounce.
And it does. No matter what Shay says, I still wonder, Why wasn’t I enough?
It hits like a punch to the chest. I don’t say it out loud. I don’t have to. The words just bloom in my ribcage, heavy and poisonous, pressing on my lungs until I can barely inhale.
What does she have that I don’t?
Tess. God, even her name sounds like something out of a perfume ad.
She’s tall. Effortless. That kind of girl who can eat pasta in public and still look like she moonlights as a Pilates instructor.
And she doesn’t flinch from cameras like I do.
She leans into them. Like she knows they’ll love her. Like she’s always known.
I hate that I remember her perfume—spicy, expensive, laced in every air kiss and “babe, we have to catch up soon.”
I hate more that I remember Finn smiling at her that night. Not the way he smiled at me. No. Not quite. With me, it was real. I thought. With her, it was… easy. Automatic. Like muscle memory.
I shift on the couch, trying to curl deeper into Shay, into the cushions, into anything that isn’t this body. This body that suddenly feels too soft. Too loud. Too much.
“I gave him everything,” I murmur, almost to myself.
Shay doesn’t say anything. Her hand finds mine, warm and steady.
I stare at the ceiling like the answers are hidden in the cracks. “I did everything right. I was low-maintenance. Chill. Supportive. I never asked too much, I gave him space. I—God, I trusted him.”
I feel the heat rising now, behind my eyes, my cheeks, my throat. “And for what? So he could turn around and put his hands on her like I’m some phase he grew out of?”
I feel it. The cry I was holding back. It isn’t graceful. It’s not even cinematic. It’s messy and shaky and full of something ugly. The kind of grief that has nowhere to go because it’s still trying to figure out if it has permission to exist.
Shay lets me wallow. She doesn't try to fix it, or me. She just puts on her playlist of breakup music and makes me some mac and cheese.
But right now? I can’t stop the questions or the endless looping in my head. It’s like a curse, or a terrible nightmare that is now my reality.
What does she give him that I couldn’t?
And worse—
Why does he want her more?