Chapter 66 The Past

Chapter 66 The Past
Dalton POV

—

The restaurant was quieter than I expected for a Friday night. A low hum of conversation filled the air, soft piano drifting through the speakers, the kind of atmosphere that felt intimate but not suffocating. Sloane sat across from me, her hair loose and brushed over one shoulder, a faint smile playing at her lips as she glanced down at the menu.

I couldn’t stop looking at her.

It wasn’t just that she looked beautiful, though she did, in that understated, unintentional way that made everything else in the room fade. It was that she looked at peace. For the first time in what felt like forever, she wasn’t tense, guarded, or running.

She caught me staring and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said, smiling into my glass. “Just wondering how I got you to agree to this.”

She tilted her head slightly. “You didn’t exactly give me a choice. You basically said, you’re coming with me, and then handed me a dress.”

“I remember it being more of a polite suggestion.”

“You don’t do polite suggestions.”

She wasn’t wrong. I gave a low laugh and leaned back in my chair as the waiter came by to take our order. I ordered a steak, medium rare. Sloane picked the pasta special, then flashed a quick smile at the waiter that had him blushing.

The moment I left, I gave her a mock glare. “You do that on purpose.”

“What, being nice?”

“Flirting with waiters.”

Her lips curved. “It’s called having good manners.”

“Mm-hm.”

She sipped her water, trying to hide her grin. “Are you jealous, Professor?”

“Not jealous,” I said slowly, eyes holding hers. “Just possessive.”

Her breath caught slightly, though she tried to play it off. I didn’t push further. I didn’t need to. The tension between us was already thick enough to taste.

Dinner came quickly, the aroma of garlic and herbs filling the air. Conversation flowed easily, small things at first, safe things. Music. Books. The drive back. She teased me for the way I sang along to every song on the radio. I teased her for secretly enjoying it.

But then, in a lull between bites, her voice softened. “Can I ask you something?”

I set my fork down, glancing up. “Sure.”

“Vanessa.” Her tone was careful. “You’ve never really talked about her. I mean, I know she hurt you, but…”

I exhaled slowly, resting my elbows on the table. “There’s a reason I don’t talk about her.”

“I figured,” she said gently. “But… if you ever want to.”

For a moment, I said nothing. The clinking of glasses, the quiet murmur of laughter from the nearby tables, it all faded into a distant blur. I hadn’t thought about Vanessa in detail for months. I’d tried not to. But Sloane’s eyes, open, patient, understanding, made it impossible to keep the walls up.

“She wasn’t always like that,” I began quietly. “When we first met, she was… incredible. Funny. Smart. The kind of person who walked into a room and made everyone turn their heads. We were happy for a long time.”

Sloane stayed silent, letting me speak.

“I was still building my career then, early teaching, research, trying to get tenure. She was supportive at first. Proud of me, even. But as things picked up, I started spending more time at the university. More late nights, grading, working on papers. And somewhere along the way, she started… doubting everything.”

“Doubting you?” Sloane asked softly.

“Yeah. She wanted to know where I was, every hour of the day. If I didn’t answer her call on the first ring, she’d accuse me of lying. If I stayed late, she’d show up on campus just to ‘check.’” I swallowed, running a thumb along the rim of my glass. “Then she started disappearing herself. Said she was going out with friends. But she’d come home late, smell like perfume that wasn’t hers. Wouldn’t say where she’d been. And when I asked—”

“She turned it on you,” Sloane finished quietly.

I nodded once. “Exactly.”

The weight of it settled between us, unspoken but thick. The flicker of candlelight reflected in her eyes, full of something between sympathy and sadness.

“You don’t have to keep going,” she said softly.

“I know,” I replied. “But maybe I need to.”

I remember the exact moment things started to change.

It wasn’t something big, not a fight or some dramatic scene. It was small. Subtle. One of those moments you don’t even realize is a warning until it’s too late.

She stopped saying I love you first.

At first, I thought nothing of it. We’d been together for years; routine settles in. But then she stopped saying it at all. I’d tell her before leaving for work, and she’d just smile, distracted, already halfway through her coffee, scrolling her phone.

I’d come home late, exhausted from lectures and grading, and she’d barely look up from the couch. “You work too much,” she’d say, without warmth. “You don’t even see me anymore.”

I tried explaining, tried balancing things better, but it never mattered. The more I tried to fix it, the more she pushed. And every argument turned into something darker, accusations, jealousy, resentment.

One night, I found her phone facedown on the counter, buzzing over and over. I shouldn’t have looked, I knew it even as I did it, but curiosity had rotted into suspicion by then.

The messages were from a guy named “Evan.”

Be there at 11pm. You smell like trouble. You’ll get rid of him right?

My hands were shaking when I put the phone down. Not from anger, not yet, but disbelief.

When she came home that night, laughing about some “girls’ night,” I asked her who Evan was.

She froze. Not the guilty kind of freeze, though. The defensive kind. Her chin lifted, and she said, “Don’t go through my phone again, Dalton.” She grabbed her phone and walked out. Didn’t return for 3 days.

That was the start of the end.

The weeks after that were a blur of shouting matches, slammed doors, and long silences. She swore nothing happened. That I was paranoid. That my work had made me “cold.” But I knew. I knew the way she stopped reaching for me at night. The way she avoided eye contact when I told her I loved her.

She told me she didn’t love me anymore. That she wanted a divorce. I didn’t believe her. She couldn’t stop shaking and crying, and she wouldn’t look me in the eye.

I tried to convince her that I could change, come home earlier, spend more time with her.

She just brushed me off.

And then came the night I’ll never forget.