Chapter 84: Where Were You?

Chapter 84: Where Were You?

Leo

Well… that hurt.

I sat in the driver’s seat of my car, engine still running, garage door half-open behind me, phone propped against the steering wheel, and watched the live feed of my girlfriend enthusiastically kissing the one person I hated most in the entire world.

Ivy. How dare you.

I got cheated on. And I honestly didn’t know the best way to react.

All my instincts screamed attack. That was all. Pure, simple, animal. I saw red so thick it felt like the garage itself had flooded with it. My knuckles went white around the steering wheel. My jaw locked so hard I tasted metal.

I wanted to push through the front door, storm into that room, and let my fists do a good number on Anderson.

Not a clean fight. No. Not the controlled violence of the ring. I wanted to break things that wouldn’t heal the same. Cartilage. Teeth. Eyes. The smug look on his face when he thought he was winning something that belonged to me.

And as for Ivy? That was a whole other level of crazy.

God knows everything I wanted to do with her was fueled by raw violence. I wanted to hurt her badly.

I wanted to show her that the monster she still flinched from was very much present. That it was only by the thinnest, most exhausted thread of self-control that she had not been harmed so far.

I wanted her to feel the same shock that was currently rearranging my internal organs. I wanted her to understand, in the most physical way possible, that she did not get to do this and walk away clean.

She was making out with Anderson in my own home.

My home.

The place where she slept in my bed. Where she left her inhaler on my nightstand. Where she had, only hours earlier, defended me to people who still looked at me like I might snap at any second.

We were happy. Or I had been. She had looked at me like I was something worth fighting for. She hadn’t seemed that scared of me today. She smiled. She had let me touch her without that old tension in her shoulders.

Only for me to open surveillance footage and see… this.

The moment she began kissing him back, I stepped out of the car. I left the engine running. I left the phone still playing the feed. I didn’t care if the whole world watched me walk into my own house like a man heading toward a crime scene.

I called her name once. Then again. Louder.

Even while I was calling, I was still watching her make out with him on the tiny screen in my hand.

Some part of me refused to believe it. Ivy would never. Not after everything he'd done to hurt her.

But there was another part of me—older, meaner, the part that had learned early that people leave—that had always been waiting for her to pull something like this.

That part wasn’t surprised. It was almost relieved. Finally. The other shoe had dropped. The proof that I had been a fool for thinking I could keep something this wonderful.

After all, she still loved him. That was the part that cut deep. That part hurt more than the kiss itself.

It was still the truth, wasn’t it? Anderson was still the one she loved. Not me. I was the temporary solution. The rebound. The safer option. The man who had been there when she needed someone solid.

But he was the history. The unfinished story. The boy she had never quite gotten over.

And Anderson? He didn’t love her. Not as much as I did. It was clear as day.

The only reason he was feeding her whatever soft, poisonous lies he was whispering between those kisses was because he wanted to pry her legs open.

He wanted to taste what I had already had. He wanted to experience what I had experienced. Wanted to know what it felt like when she came apart under someone.

That was all it was to him. Sex. Possession. Curiosity. A score to settle with the man who had taken what used to be his.

I was the idiot who had actually fallen.

I had started building a future around her in my head even knowing she was practically with me to make Anderson jealous.

I wanted a permanent place for her in this house. The slow work of teaching her she didn’t have to flinch every time my voice dropped. Children. The sound of her last name changing into mine.

All of it felt stupid now. I felt stupid. I was the jackass.

I kept calling her name while I watched her finally realize what she was doing. The way her body stiffened. The way she pulled back just enough to look toward the door like she’d heard something.

The panic that flashed across her face when she understood that actions had consequences.

The truth was, I kept calling for her because I didn’t want to watch my own girlfriend fuck Anderson. Because I knew—deep in the same place that still remembered every time someone had chosen someone else over me—that it was going to get to that point if I didn’t interrupt.

And I wasn’t strong enough to watch that. Not today. Now when I was still wondering what went wrong. We were happy. She had been happy. She hadn’t seemed that scared of me.

Only for me to see this.

She was panicking now. Just like all cheaters do when the door opens and the performance collapses.

I’d never cheated. Not once. If it wasn't working, I'd end things immediately. Not do this.

Not like I’d been in many relationships either. The few I’d had ended in quieter ways—distance, boredom, the slow realization that I was too much or not enough.

None of them ended like this. None of them ended with me standing in a hallway watching the woman I loved kiss another man in my own home.

This was the first time I was genuinely and truly in love with a girl and had actually hoped—stupidly, desperately—to change for her. To be better. To keep the monster on a tighter leash. To believe that maybe someone could look at the worst parts of me and still stay.

Only for her to turn around and do this.

Stab me in the fucking heart with the same hands that had held my face and cried for someone dear to me.

I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t want to hurt her despite the fact that some black, bitter part of me insisted she deserved it. But one thing was certain… I would not play the fool.

Would I break up with her? Definitely.

I would not tolerate cheating. Least of all from her. Least of all from the one person I had been vulnerable with. I respected myself enough to know that I did not deserve this from Ivy.

It would be hard to get over her. I had planned an entire future around the shape of her in my life. Throwing that away would be what people called heartbreaking.

The kind of loss that didn’t heal clean. The kind that left scar tissue and a permanent limp in the way you loved after.

She was still in that room with Anderson. Fear written all over her face on the screen. I turned the phone off.

I made my way to my bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. The room still smelled faintly of her perfume. Of the lotion she used. Of her.

She wasn’t worth it.

That was what I kept telling myself, over and over, like a mantra that might eventually become true if I said it enough times.

Ivy wasn’t worth the ache currently trying to climb out of my throat. She wasn’t worth the future I had started building in my head. She wasn’t worth the version of myself I had been trying so hard to become for her.

I wasn’t going to break down the door and scream the entire house awake and prove to my mother that I was still the same unstable boy who solved everything with his fists just because Ivy decided Anderson was the better option. I wasn’t going to give either of them the satisfaction of watching me lose control.

I sat there in the half-dark and waited.

A few minutes later the door cracked open quietly. She walked in looking smaller than she actually was.

Guilt does that to people. It shrinks them. Makes them fold in on themselves like they’re trying to take up less space in a room they no longer deserve to occupy.

She looked like a very guilty woman.

“Leo.”

She paused at the door, rubbing her hands together nervously. The same nervous habit she always had when she was about to lie or when her asthma was starting to tighten. I watched her fingers twist together and felt something cold settle behind my ribs.

“I didn’t hear you calling.”

Liar.

“Oh… I thought as much.” I smiled. It felt wrong on my face. Too empty. “Where were you?”

She pointed toward the hallway, toward the room she had just left. “Poppy.” The name came out too fast. “I was with Poppy. Didn’t hear you.”

Little fucking liar.

“That’s okay.” I said it softly, almost gently, while the urge to hit something—walls, furniture, the man still somewhere in this house—crawled up the back of my neck. I kept my hands flat on my thighs. “Are you alright, Ivy? You look a little flushed.”

An involuntary gasp escaped her throat. Fear flashed across her face so clearly I could almost smell it. She reached up and touched her own cheeks like she could erase the evidence with her fingertips.

“It’s… the heater.”

The more she lied, the more I saw myself as the fool who had fallen for someone who could stand in front of me, cheeks still pink from another man’s mouth, and invent stories about heaters and her best friend.

I nodded and stood, starting to shed my clothes calmly. Cap first. Then the shirt. I needed a fucking shower. I needed the water hot enough to scald the image of her mouth on his out of my head.

She finally exhaled, like she’d been holding her breath the entire time, and walked forward a little bolder now that she thought the danger had passed. “What about you? Where were you?”

“Me?” I asked, voice light. Almost conversational. “I met up with Madison.”

Her steps faltered so hard I heard the soft scuff of her sock against the floor. “Maddie? My sister?” She repeated it like the words didn’t make sense in that order. “You met up with Maddie?”

“Yeah. I did.” I said it casually, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. Like I hadn’t just watched her tongue in another man’s mouth and decided the only way to survive the next five minutes was to stay ice-cold.

If she was expecting me to lie the way she’d been lying since she walked through that door, she had another thing coming. I was done.

“Why?” She asked, walking closer to where I stood. The space between us shrank. I could smell her now. “Why would you go to meet Maddie, Leo? Why didn’t you tell me? I could have gone with you—”

“That wasn’t necessary.” I cut her off. “We discussed some important stuff. That’s all.”

She didn’t look convinced. The crease between her brows deepened the way it always did when she was trying to decide whether to push or retreat.

But she nodded all the same. Then, surprisingly, she closed the last of the distance and wrapped her arms around my waist. Her head came to rest against my chest like she hadn’t just been kissing someone else in a room down the hall.

“Don’t go to see Maddie again,” she said, voice soft against my skin. “I don’t like it.”

Wow. What a hypocrite.

I hadn’t known she had it in her. I would never have guessed that she’d be able to look me in the eyes, still flushed, and try to manipulate me with jealousy she had no right to feel.

I patted her back twice. The gesture was empty. “Got it, baby.”

Ivy… For how long are you planning to deceive me?

The question sat heavy and unspoken between us while her arms stayed locked around my waist and my heart kept beating against her cheek like it hadn’t already started the long, slow process of tearing itself free.

I would not explode. I would not beg. But I also would not pretend this hadn’t happened.

Ivy could keep lying for as long as she needed to feel safe. She could keep touching me like she hadn’t just crossed a line she couldn’t uncross.

I already knew the truth. And when I was ready, she would know that I knew.

Until then, I would smile.

I would call her baby.

And I would start deciding exactly how this ended…