I told her I was done the moment I slid into the passenger seat of Sloan's Tesla, fresh from the traffic authority office. "Asher, I'm exhausted. Stop playing games, please?" I looked at Sloan’s profile—her hands gripping the steering wheel—and a laugh, thin and brittle, escaped me. "I’m not playing games." "Sloan," I turned my head, my gaze tracking the blur of neon lights outside the window, "this is where we get off." 1 The Tesla slammed to a stop mid-span on the main bridge. The air inside the car was instantly thick, frozen like the surface of a December lake. "Reason." Sloan's fingers drummed once, sharply, on the steering wheel. Her voice was cold enough to frost the glass. "Give me one good reason. What in the hell is this dramatic exit about now?" I glanced in the rearview mirror at the silver Lexus that had followed us for three intersections, then pressed the button to lower my window. The night wind rushed in, clean and sharp. "I’d guess we have thirty seconds." "Before the person in that car comes running to you." I started the countdown, low enough for only her to hear. "Thirty." "Twenty-nine." "Twenty-eight." When I reached twenty-five, the Lexus had pulled over and stopped. The driver’s side door flew open, and a boy in a beige trench coat sprinted toward us, tapping frantically on Sloan’s window. Sloan frowned and pushed the button. "Sloan, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!" Kellan's eyes were already red-rimmed, his voice shaking with a manufactured sob. "I truly didn't mean to rear-end you, I just saw your car driving so fast, and I was so worried you'd crash, so I followed..." He looked past her, directly at me, and a single, perfect tear rolled down his cheek. "Asher, please don't be angry. I wasn't trying to interrupt you guys. I was just... I was just so worried." He reached for my sleeve, and I recoiled, pulling my arm away. "Hit me," Kellan pleaded, pushing his face closer. "If it'll make you feel better, just hit me." Sloan pressed her hand firmly on his shoulder, keeping him in place. "Kellan, stop it. What are you doing?" Then she turned back to me, her eyes heavy with disappointment. "Your damn chivalry? Did you leave it in the precinct parking lot?" I laughed out loud. See? I hadn’t done a single thing, yet just by sitting here, I was instantly cast as the unreasonable, classless man. I pushed Kellan’s hand away and stared directly at Sloan. "Do you understand now?" "Sloan," the part of my chest where my heart used to be felt utterly numb. I unbuckled my seatbelt. "That is the reason." "We’re over." I shoved the car door open. Over Kellan’s look—that flicker of shock, then undeniable, smug victory in his eyes—I gave Sloan a smile. "Congratulations. All those little maneuvers you used to wedge yourself between me and Sloan over the years are finally paying off." "Sloan is all yours." I turned and walked away. Sloan bolted out of the car, grabbing my wrist and spinning me back around. "Asher! Do you have any idea how important the signing I missed today was because of this fender-bender? You called, said you'd been hit, and I threw down my pen and rushed to the precinct! And for what? The person who hit you was Kellan! He’s an intern at my own company!" "He apologized. Insurance is filed. What more do you want from me?" "I've been biting my tongue for months, Asher. Kellan is always here, always talking you up, telling me to be more understanding, telling me not to fight with you. Can you stop being so ungracious?" Her grip on my wrist was crushing. An old injury flared beneath her grasp, a sharp, familiar jab of pain. I looked down at the pale circle of skin her fingers were devouring. "Let go!" I yanked my arm free, rubbing the throbbing spot, and then I roared. "Sloan!" "I’ve been biting my tongue for eight years!" Sloan and I had been together for eight years. From college to launching her company, from a shared basement apartment to a view of Avery Coast in a high-rise. We'd fought, we'd argued, we'd had weeks of silence, but I had never done this—I had never humiliated her in front of a third party. But I was done holding back. "I had a 104-degree fever, and you were helping him at the shelter find a home for a stray cat. I was getting torn apart by a client during a crucial pitch, and you were on a rooftop watching a meteor shower with him. Every single time I genuinely needed you, you were already with him!" I held her gaze. "You gave him the security code to my apartment so he could sneak in and grab files while I was out of town. You gave him my prized, irreplaceable, first-edition collection set for his birthday, telling him, ‘Asher doesn’t really play with these anymore.’ Today, my car gets rear-ended, and your first words were, 'Is Kellan okay?'" "Sloan!" "We’re done!" My composure, which I’d desperately clung to all evening, shattered like a broken dam. Sloan’s face paled. She automatically started to rationalize. "I had Kellan get the files because I was running into a meeting! I asked about his car because his damage was worse! Why are you always dissecting every little thing!" "Asher!" She looked at me, her eyes filled with nothing but exhaustion and disappointment. "When did you become so petty? Hunting for microscopic crumbs of evidence?" "You're turning into exactly the kind of small-minded man you swore you'd never be!" I thought I was past the point of pain. From giving my statement at the traffic authority office to sitting in her car, I had been perfectly calm. I even spent that drive reviewing our eight years—from meeting to falling in love, from having nothing to having everything. And I had concluded: it had to end. I wanted a clean exit. But her words still twisted my heart, a blunt force trauma to the softest part of my chest. "Yeah. In your eyes, I’m the small-minded one." I let out a weak chuckle. "Well, I don't need your approval anymore." I turned to leave, but Kellan scrambled to his feet and grabbed my arm. He was crying now. Tears streaming down his face, though I hadn't shed a single one. "Asher, I’m sorry, this is all my fault... I’ll quit tomorrow. I’ll leave the company. I’ll disappear... Sloan really loves you. Please, don't break up with her. Please." I hated this performance most of all. Looking at his tear-drenched face, I ripped my arm out of his grasp. "Get lost!" Kellan stumbled back a few steps, staring at me, startled. "Asher!" Sloan rushed forward to steady Kellan. Seeing the scrape on his elbow, she turned on me, her voice shaking with rage. "Are you insane! Apologize to Kellan!" "Dream on." I looked at Sloan, then caught Kellan’s expression—a fleeting moment of triumph beneath the tears—and spat out a final ultimatum: "Either we end this cleanly, or I move out right now, and you can deal with the fallout. You choose." I didn’t look back. I didn't care about Kellan’s choked sobs or Sloan’s attempts to soothe him. I flagged down a cab and headed straight for my oldest friend Rhys’s place. 2 Rhys opened the door, looked at me, and didn’t ask a single question. He just stepped aside. He wordlessly pulled two six-packs of an ice-cold IPA from the fridge and set them on the coffee table. He only asked one thing: "Good start?" I looked at the beers, and my eyes suddenly burned. I'd managed to hold it together until now. Rhys didn’t say anything else, he just opened his arms. "Cry, man. Go for it. You don't have to put on a show for me." I completely broke. I collapsed onto his shoulder, howling until my throat was raw, shaking uncontrollably, until I finally stumbled into his bathroom and threw up until there was nothing left. Finally, my voice hoarse, I whispered: "I’m leaving her." What is the end of love? It's when the person you swore you’d face the world with turns into the opponent sticking the knife in your back. It’s when you finally admit that the grave you once believed could bloom with flowers is just a pile of dirt—the flowers will wilt, and the love will die. I stayed at Rhys's place for two weeks. In that time, I scrolled through thirty-seven updates on Kellan’s private feed. Every single one featured a glimpse of Sloan. [Midnight deadlines don't feel so lonely when you have the right company.] The photo was a selfie of Kellan. In the blurry background, Sloan was a focused profile at her computer. [You promised you’d always be my light.] The photo was two hands linked: on Kellan's wrist was the Cartier watch I'd bought Sloan last Christmas. The other hand, resting lightly on his arm, was hers. [Taking the most important person to the most important place.] A photo of Kellan, beaming, inside an airport lounge. Beside him, Sloan was captured mid-doze. Post after post. Rhys jumped off the couch, pointing at my phone, screaming. "I swear to God! That little shit! Is Sloan blind? How can she not see what he’s doing? It’s completely obvious!" Rhys was furious. I, conversely, felt strangely calm. I was going through withdrawal, and the craving was almost gone. I just shrugged at Rhys's outburst. "Sloan knows exactly what she’s doing." "She knows?" Rhys sank down beside me. "Then why does she keep playing the innocent victim?" "To her, if they haven't slept together, she's innocent." I managed a wry smile. "She always told me that her relationship with Kellan was pure and clean. And that my mind was the only thing that was dirty." Sloan always maintained that one boundary. So whenever I pushed back, she always shut me down with the same weapon: "You're seeing things because your heart is poisoned." 3 Now looking at these posts, I felt nothing. "The moving company is scheduled for ten," I reminded Rhys. If I was breaking it off, I had to physically leave that apartment. My things weren't extensive, but a few items couldn't stay—chiefly, the box of my father's original blueprints and sketches. "Just glad you finally came to your senses," Rhys said, clapping me on the shoulder. When we arrived at the apartment building, I checked my phone—Kellan had posted half an hour ago, tagged at a resort hotel in the next county, the photo grid featuring a dozen pictures of Sloan. I thought I'd have the place to myself. But the moment I unlocked the door, the scent of a simmering garlic butter sauce hit me. I walked into the living room and saw Kellan, wearing my charcoal grey cashmere lounge pants, sitting cross-legged at the dining table, picking at a plate of shrimp. He jumped up like a startled rabbit when he saw me. "Asher..." I ignored him, my eyes tracing the pants back to the source—Sloan, who had just walked out of the kitchen holding a steaming pot of soup, her expression instantly freezing. "You're back?" Sloan asked stiffly. "Have you eaten?" I didn't answer. I walked straight toward my study. Then I stopped dead in the doorway. The design books, once perfectly ordered on the shelves, were pulled out and haphazardly stacked. My work desk was a mess of scattered drawings, but the thing that made my blood run cold was the corner of the room: The door to my father’s old floor safe was wide open. 4 "Asher..." Kellan had crept to the doorway, his voice thin as a mosquito's whine. "I'm so sorry... Sloan and I came back from the hotel, and I realized I left my suitcase there... Sloan told me to put on your clothes..." "I accidentally... bumped the safe." A buzzing started in my head. I spun around and saw Kellan holding a stack of faded, yellowed paper—my father’s original blueprints and sketches—the edge of the stack stained with a huge, dark smear of coffee. "I swear I didn't mean to!" Kellan threw himself forward, grabbing my arm, instantly on his knees. "Please, just hit me! I’m begging you! Hit me!" "I didn't know these were your dad's designs! I honestly didn't know!" He grabbed my hand, trying to force it to strike his face. "Hit me! Hit me hard! I deserve it!" He then attempted to kowtow, but before his head could touch the floor, an arm slipped beneath his chest, stopping him. Sloan pulled him up and looked at me, her voice as flat as if she were commenting on the weather. "He's gone, Asher. They're just drawings. They're not him. Kellan is sorry, can you please stop making this worse?" Her tone was so rational, so utterly dismissive of my grief. As if I were the one who was overreacting, the one who was small-minded. She stood between us, a protector, blocking my path to Kellan. "He already feels terrible. Just let it go."
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "387590", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel