Addison Fitzpatrick POV:
"No, Ava. I need to be alone." I whispered, hitting the 'end call' button.
The words still echoed in my ears, Kade's casual dismissal, his cruel laughter. My body felt hot, then cold, then hot again. The memory of his hands on my skin, his lips on my neck, was an intrusive film playing on a loop in my mind. He had been so convincing, so tender. He had traced the line of my jaw, telling me I was beautiful, that I was unlike anyone he' d ever known.
It was a performance. A lie. A calculated act to extract my work, to drain my emotions.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force the images, the memories, out of my head. But they clung to me, insidious tendrils wrapping around my heart, squeezing until it ached. I curled into a fetal position on my bed, pulling the duvet tightly around me, as if its meager warmth could soothe the chill that had settled deep in my bones.
My thoughts were a chaotic swirl. Kade' s past warmth, his present coldness. His possessive whispers versus his public display of affection with Jodi. The contrast was a brutal whiplash. My mind, usually so sharp and analytical, felt dull, incapable of processing the magnitude of this betrayal.
Eventually, the exhaustion of battling these tormenting thoughts dragged me into a fitful, shallow sleep. It wasn't rest, just a temporary cessation of conscious pain.
I woke with a start, the dim light of dawn barely filtering through my curtains. My head throbbed. The first thing I noticed was the oppressive silence of my phone. No notifications. No messages. Nothing from Kade.
It was a small thing, but it amplified the gaping void within me. For ten years, Kade and I had a ritual. A goodnight text, a good morning message, a quick call if one of us went silent for too long. He had always been the first to notice, the first to reach out, even when we were kids. He'd shown extreme worry if I disappeared from his radar for more than a few hours.
Our daily rituals, nurtured over a decade, had vanished overnight. Habits, I realized, were fragile things. They could be broken, discarded, as easily as a champagne flute. Maybe this was a good thing. A clean break. No more lingering hope.
The sunlight, when it finally pierced through the gaps in my curtains, felt harsh, intrusive. My eyes burned. I reached for my phone, a reflex, a muscle memory ingrained over years of expecting to see his name on the screen.
Nothing. Just the usual spam emails and a few group chat messages I couldn't bring myself to read.
A profound emptiness settled over me. The silence was deafening. Kade Dalton had been a constant in my life for as long as I could remember. He was the anchor, the north star, the one person I had always believed would be there. Now, his absence was a physical presence, a heavy weight pressing down on me, expanding, consuming everything.
I dragged myself out of bed, each limb feeling impossibly heavy. My reflection in the bathroom mirror was a stranger. Pale, hollow-eyed, my hair a tangled mess. The girl who looked back at me was broken.
I splashed cold water on my face, again and again, trying to numb the ache, to wash away the shame. But the humiliation clung to my skin, an invisible shroud.
My parents would be awake soon. I couldn't let them see me like this. They loved Kade, saw him as a son. The thought of explaining this, of putting words to the gaping wound in my heart, was unbearable. It would make it real, make it undeniable. The pain would be too much.
I walked into the kitchen, the familiar scent of coffee and my mother's baking hanging in the air. My usual seat at the breakfast table was there, but the seat across from me, the one Kade always occupied when he stayed over, was empty. It felt like a monument to his absence. I remembered him here, laughing with my dad, teasing my mom, his hand brushing mine under the table. Those memories, once precious, now felt like cruel taunts.
My phone vibrated violently, startling me. My heart leaped, a flicker of foolish hope igniting in my chest. Kade? A mistake? A desperate apology?
I snatched it up, my fingers fumbling. No. Not Kade. It was a social media notification. My breath hitched. Another blow. Another reminder. And it was about Jodi. I knew it before I even saw the content. This wasn't over. Not yet.
