Chapter 39 Not the Villain
KARA’S POV
Thursday comes quietly, too quietly.
The office is barely awake when I step inside, lights still dimmed, and the hum of the air-conditioning louder than usual. My heels click softly against the floor and the sound too sharp in the stillness. I’m halfway to my desk when a voice cuts through the calm like a blade.
“I never thought snakes had to work.”
I stop not because I don’t know who said it, but because a part of me hopes I heard wrong. I turn slowly and saw Cathy standing near the pantry, arms crossed, and lips curled into something sharp and smug. Beside her are Eureka and Lucy, leaning against the counter like loyal sentries. All three sets of eyes are on me, unapologetic, assessing, and already convinced of something I was never part of.
My stomach tightens.
“What?” I say quietly.
Cathy doesn’t answer me. She tilts her head instead, eyes flicking over me from head to toe like I’m something she scraped off from her shoe.
“Well,” she says lightly, “I guess it makes sense.”
Eureka snorts. “Yeah. I mean, she was a party-goer before, right? Random nights out, random men.” She shrugs exaggeratedly. “Guess she finally found the right one to climb.”
Lucy laughs under her breath.
The words land one by one, precise and practiced. My fingers curl slowly at my side. I look away for a second, not because I’m ashamed, but because if I look at them any longer, I might say something I can’t take back. Only the four of us are here. No witnesses and no buffer. Cathy pushes herself off the counter and takes a few deliberate steps toward me. The click of her heels echoes loudly in the empty office.
“So,” she says, stopping a foot away from me. “How did you do it?”
I meet her eyes. “Do what?”
She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Don’t play dumb, Kara. You’re too smart for that.” Her gaze drops pointedly to my wrist.
The bracelet and my pulse stutters.
“You manage to steal Finnian from me,” she continues, voice calm but tight. “While pretending to be all quiet and innocent.”
“I didn’t steal anything,” I say evenly.
Her smile disappears. “Oh, please.”
“I mean it,” I reply, my voice firmer now. “There was nothing to steal.”
Eureka scoffs. “That’s rich.”
Cathy’s eyes glisten as anger is sharpening into something more volatile. “Do you know how humiliating it is,” she snaps, “to find out the man you were seeing never really stopped thinking about someone else?”
My chest tightens, not with guilt, but with a strange-heavy sadness.
“You’re mad at the wrong person,” I say softly.
Her jaw clenches. “Don’t you dare take the moral high ground with me.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m just telling you the truth. I didn’t plan this, I didn’t chase him, and I didn’t even know about the flowers until recently.”
Lucy laughs sharply. “Convenient.”
I look at her. “Believe what you want.”
Cathy steps closer, her voice dropping. “You think wearing that bracelet makes you special?”
I glance down at my wrist, then back at her. “No. I think it means he finally asked instead of assuming.”
How did she knew that Finnian gave this?
Her eyes flicker, just for a second.
“That doesn’t make me a snake,” I continue, my voice steady despite the ache in my chest. “It makes me someone who didn’t say no.”
Silence falls, thick and uncomfortable.
"You knew I liked him.” Cathy’s breathing quickens.
“I didn’t know you were entitled to him,” I say quietly.
That lands harder than I expect. For a moment, she looks like she might say something else, something crueler and sharper, then her shoulders stiffen.
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” she says coldly. “Men like Finnian don’t stay.”
I hold her gaze. “Neither do lies.”
She scoffs and turns away, grabbing her bag with sharp movements. Eureka and Lucy follow her, murmuring under their breaths as they leave the office, heels clicking away like punctuation marks. The door shuts after.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. My legs feel weak as I lower myself into my chair. The office feels bigger now and emptier. I stare at my desk, at the soft glow of my monitor powering on, and finally at the bracelet again.
This is the part no one warns you about, not the romance, not the flowers, and not the kneeling in restaurants, but the judgment, assumptions, and the way people rewrite your story for you and paint you as the villain because it’s easier than accepting the truth.
I press my fingers against the cool gold.
If this is what choosing him means, the whispers, the looks, the quiet wars I didn’t ask for, then I need to be honest with myself.
I don’t know how this ends, but for the first time, I’m not walking away just because it’s easier. And that terrifies me more than anything else.
I sit there long after they’re gone, the office slowly filling with noise and movement like nothing just happened. The world keeps going, indifferent to the small war that just passed through my chest.
That’s when it sinks in.
This is what choosing looks like.
Not the grand gestures or rain-soaked apologies, not flowers or gold catching sunlight just right.
It’s this.
Being talked about when you’re not in the room, being judged for a story you didn’t write, and being brave enough to stay when leaving would be easier and quieter.
I roll my chair back slightly and rest my head against the backrest, eyes closed.
Am I ready for this?
Because loving Finnian, or even letting him try, doesn’t just mean risking my heart. It means standing in places like this, absorbing words meant to cut me down, and deciding whether I’ll let them define me. It means being seen as the other woman in someone else’s narrative, even when the truth is far less dramatic and far more painful.
I think about Cathy’s eyes, the hurt hiding behind the anger. I don’t hate her for it, I understand it more than I want to. Hurt makes villains out of people we don’t fully know, and sometimes it makes us cruel in ways we don’t recognize until later.
But understanding doesn’t mean accepting blame that isn’t mine.
I glance down at my wrist again.
The bracelet isn’t a trophy, it isn’t proof that I won something. If anything, it feels like a quiet responsibility. A reminder that if I stay, I have to stay honestly. No hiding, no pretending this doesn’t affect me, and no shrinking myself to make others more comfortable.
I’ve spent so much of my life choosing peace over truth and silence over confrontation. Walking away before things got complicated because complicated felt like danger. And now here I am, standing in the middle of it, heart exposed, reputation questioned, and still not moving.
Maybe that’s growth.
Or maybe that’s recklessness dressed up as hope.
I don’t know yet.
What I do know is this, I didn’t steal anyone and I didn’t manipulate fate or step on someone else to get here. I was chosen, late and imperfectly, and I chose back, cautiously, with shaking hands and open eyes. If this falls apart, I want it to be because it truly couldn’t stand, not because I ran at the first sign of discomfort.
I straighten in my chair and open my laptop, fingers hovering over the keyboard.
Whatever this is, whatever Finnian and I are trying to build from broken timing and bruised feelings, I want to meet it as myself. Not as the villain in someone else’s story and not as the woman who always leaves.
Just Kara.
And for now, that has to be enough.