Stayed Through His Struggles, Left After His Success

I stood there, frozen, my entire body numb. The ringing in my ears drowned out everything else, and the shock left me dazed, almost paralyzed.

It couldn’t be… It couldn’t be true.

Maybe… maybe Damon was just having dinner with a friend, or... or maybe they were discussing something business-related.

I tried to push away the ugly possibility, desperately clinging to any excuse to convince myself that the man I had chosen was still the one I loved.

It wasn’t until tears started falling in large, heavy drops, their coldness snapping me back to reality, that I realized what was happening. In a panic, I fumbled for my phone in my bag, my fingers trembling slightly as I gripped it.

I pressed the phone to my ear, but it felt like I couldn’t hear the dial tone—only the loud, frantic beat of my heart in my chest, as if it were trying to break free, each thud louder than the last.

“Hey honey, what’s wrong?” Damon’s voice came through the phone, his familiar warmth and affection still there, his tone dripping with the same passion he’d shown me nine years ago.

But the man in front of me didn’t look like the shy seventeen-year-old who had once gazed at me with longing.

I stood motionless, yet it felt as if I were being pulled into a twisted, hopeless world.

The boy who had looked at me with such intensity at seventeen and the Damon at twenty-six, sitting in a café, holding another woman, blended together into one confusing, distorted image.

“Are you missing me? Wait until I finish up with some company stuff, then I’ll be back, okay? Love you, honey.”

The call ended, but I stood there, staring at the couple inside, torturing myself as I watched the girl turn her head away in annoyance. Damon sighed and rubbed her head, a helpless smile pulling at his lips as he pulled her into his arms, whispering softly to her.

“Honey… when I’m successful, I won’t let you work so hard anymore. I’m going to make you the happiest person in the world.”

The words echoed in my mind. I remembered how, at twenty-three, Damon had said the same thing to me on a summer night after we’d closed a business deal. Under the moonlight, I’d felt as if we were destined to grow old together.

Back then, he held me the same way, with a look filled with tenderness and love, as if I were the most cherished thing in his world.

How... how could things have turned out like this?

A crushing sense of helplessness and confusion hit me like a tidal wave. My eyes stung, and I collapsed to the ground, pressing my hands to my face as tears silently slipped through my fingers.

[Damon says he’s been tired of you for a long time. The one he loves now is me!]

The message flashed on my phone, sending a sharp tremor of anger through me. I looked up, and my gaze collided with Lisa Sinclair’s mocking eyes. She grinned at me before leaning in to kiss the man in her arms.

I quickly averted my gaze, turning away as if I were running from the scene. I couldn’t bear the thought of how those two were entwined. Just the thought of that mouth—once the one that kissed me—now pressed against another woman’s sent an indescribable pain slowly spreading from my heart to my limbs.