Chapter 63
Emily's POV
The cab ride to the hospital felt simultaneously endless and too short, like time itself couldn't decide what it was doing anymore. Alex sat beside me pressing a bar towel against his split lip, the white fabric already staining dark red in spots where the bleeding hadn't quite stopped.
I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead through the windshield, watching streetlights blur past in streaks of amber and white, because if I looked at him I'd have to acknowledge what just happened and I wasn't ready for that yet.
My hands were shaking in my lap. I clasped them together hard enough that my knuckles went pale, trying to physically hold myself together through sheer force of will, but it wasn't working. Nothing was working.
I felt like I was coming apart at the seams and the only thing keeping me from completely unraveling was the fact that I still had something to do—get Alex to the emergency room, make sure he was okay, deal with the immediate crisis before I had to think about everything else.
"I'm sorry." The words came out rough and too quiet, almost lost under the sound of traffic and the cab's rattling suspension. "Alex, I'm so sorry. I didn't know he was going to—I never thought he'd—"
"Emily." Alex's voice cut through my spiraling apology, still calm despite the blood and the swelling already distorting the shape of his jaw. "Stop."
But I couldn't stop because if I stopped talking I'd start thinking and if I started thinking I'd have to process what just happened in that restaurant, the way Ethan looked at me before he walked out, the sound his voice made when he said we're fucking done like he was ripping the words out of his own chest.
So I kept going, the apology spilling out faster and more desperate.
"I should have answered his calls earlier. I should have explained better about the shirt. This is my fault, I should have—"
"Emily." Firmer this time. Alex shifted in his seat to face me more fully, pulling the towel away from his mouth. The cut on his lip looked worse now that I could see it clearly—deep enough that it was definitely going to need stitches, the edges ragged and still seeping blood. "Are you apologizing for yourself or for him?"
The question caught me off guard. I blinked at him, trying to parse what he was actually asking. "What?"
"Are you apologizing because you feel responsible for what happened to me?" He was watching my face with that intense focus he got sometimes, like he was reading a recipe and checking for missing ingredients. "Or are you apologizing on Ethan's behalf because he's not here to do it himself?"
I opened my mouth and then closed it again because I genuinely didn't know how to answer. Both? Neither? The distinction felt important but I was too exhausted and heartsick to figure out why.
"If you're apologizing for yourself—for your choices, for the situation—you don't need to." His tone was measured and careful, each word placed deliberately.
"I went into this with my eyes open, Emily. I knew exactly what I was doing when I offered you that internship. When I moved you into the building. When I answered Ethan's call this afternoon. I made choices too. I'm just as responsible for how this played out as you are."
Something about the way he said I knew exactly what I was doing made my stomach clench with an emotion I couldn't quite name. Like he was admitting to something without actually admitting to it. Like there was a subtext I should be catching.
"But if you're apologizing for him—" Alex continued, pressing the towel back against his lip. "If you're trying to smooth things over or make excuses for why your ex-boyfriend just punched me in the face, then don't. Based on what I saw back there, you two don't have a relationship anymore. You don't owe him your loyalty or your explanations."
Ex-boyfriend. The way he emphasized ex made something click into place with uncomfortable clarity. He knew exactly what he was doing. The whole careful construction of his question, the strategic framing, even this—especially this—dropping ex-boyfriend into the conversation like it was already established fact when the breakup had happened less than ten minutes ago.
"Can you not do this right now?" My voice came out sharper than I intended, frustration cutting through the exhaustion. "I'm really, really tired, Alex. I don't have the bandwidth for whatever mind game you're trying to play."
He blinked at me, something like surprise flickering across his features before his expression smoothed back into neutrality. "I'm not—"
"Yes you are." I was too drained to soften my words. "You're trying to get me to think about things in a specific way. Frame the narrative so I end up where you want me to end up. And maybe that works most of the time because you're good at it and I'm usually too focused on work to notice. But right now I just watched my relationship implode in your restaurant lobby and I really can't handle you trying to shape how I feel about it."
Even as the words left my mouth I felt something ugly twist in my stomach, a question I didn't want to ask myself but couldn't quite suppress. Was I really too busy to notice Alex's psychological games? Or had I seen them perfectly clearly all along and just chosen not to care because some dark part of me enjoyed it?
Enjoyed having two men circle each other over me, enjoyed the attention and the competition and the twisted validation of being wanted enough to fight over. Had there been moments—even just seconds—where I felt a sick thrill watching Ethan's jealousy escalate, watching Alex's calculated provocations land exactly where he intended them?
Maybe that was the real truth I didn't want to face. Maybe I wasn't just the girl who couldn't handle love. Maybe I was the kind of woman who had one man's unconditional devotion and still craved more, still engineered situations where I could watch them destroy each other over me.
Maybe I was exactly that cheap. That shallow. That fundamentally rotten at my core.
The silence that followed was thick and uncomfortable. The cab driver glanced at us in the rearview mirror—probably wondering if he was about to have another incident on his hands—but didn't say anything. Alex looked at me for a long moment and I saw something complicated move through his expression. Calculation maybe. Or possibly regret. It was gone too fast for me to read properly.
"I'm sorry." He said it simply, without qualification or excuse, and somehow that was worse than if he'd tried to argue with me. "You're right. That was—you have enough to deal with right now."
I turned back to the window because looking at his battered face made my chest hurt in ways I didn't want to examine. We spent the rest of the drive in silence, the city sliding past outside in a blur of lights and shadows and people living their normal lives completely unaware that mine just fell apart.