Page 2 of If He Hadn't Cheated
Inside my apartment, silence punches me in the gut. I drop my bag, my shoes, all in the same place.
The bed is unmade, like it always is. The sheets are twisted from nights spent turning, twitching, trying not to dream.
I strip and step into the shower. The water runs cold before it runs hot, and I stand under washing last nights sins it until I feelsomething close to clean. Not pure. Just clean enough to pass for functioning.
When I dry off and catch my reflection again, I try to find the girl I used to be. The one who had plans. A future. Engaged. Graduating top of her class. Interning at a Fortune 500 company with a full-time offer waiting. White dress picked out. Venue paid for. Love songs saved to a playlist.
Gone.
All of it. Gone the moment I opened a door to the truth if who really was.
Sebastian.
My fingers twitch at the memory. His name isn’t just a wound. It’s a map of every scar I’ve earned since. The knock. The door. Stephanie’s moans.
Her body moving in rhythm with everything he promised me that same night. That was the moment the old Lana died.
What’s left of me is a ghost with a bar gig and a habit I’m not ready to name.
I get dressed in silence. Another black dress. It’s all I wear now, mourning clothes for the version of myself that didn’t survive him.
I grab my charger, plug in my phone, and watch it light up.
My life, summarized in a screen. Zero messages. Zero missed calls.
I whisper to the room, “This has to stop.”
But even I don’t believe it.
Because the truth is, I don’t just crave the buzz. I crave the nothingness that comes after. The silence that wraps around me like a second skin. The weight of someone else’s body so I don’t have to feel my own.
I don’t want love. I don’t want salvation.
I want silence.
And the only place I find it is in forgetting.
So I’ll go to work tonight. I’ll pour drinks and pretend I’m whole. And when the lights dim and the lies start to taste sweet, I’ll find someone else who doesn’t care what I used to be.
Because I don’t.
Not anymore.
2
The Past
“Hey... have you seen Sebastian?”
I shouldn’t have asked. The second the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve walked into something I can’t walk back out of.
The group of guys around the study table looks up like I’ve just shattered their carefully controlled silence. Four of them, all athletes, all tight-knit like brothers raised on loyalty and testosterone. At the head of the table sits Knox Cain, elbows resting on the wood, thick book open in front of him like he’s reading scripture instead of strategy.
The Art of War. Of course. He’s been carrying that same damn copy since high school, the cover worn and the edges dog-eared like he’s studying it for something more than midterms.
“He’s studying,” Knox says without lifting his eyes from the page. His voice is flat, even, the same bored tone he used the night he told Sebastian that dating me would be a distraction. That I’d ruin his focus senior year. It sounds more like a warning now than it ever did then.
My mouth stretches into something that might be a smile, though my chest tightens. “Where?”
