Chapter 105
-LILY-
The video loaded before my bag did.
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I was still at the carousel, phone in one hand, boarding pass crumpled in the other, when Grayson’s face filled the screen.
Not a clip someone had already edited. Live. His jaw set the way it always set when he was done pretending.
Yes. She is still my wife.
I stopped walking.
People kept moving around me like I had become part of the floor.
A kid dragged a sticker-covered suitcase over my shoe and didn’t even look up. I narrowed my eyes at him, while his mother snatched him back and apologized.
I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t. The airport noise had gone far away.
I stared at the screen again. I did not move. I turned the volume up until Grayson’s voice could be heard loud enough for me to confirm what he was saying.
He kept talking. Answering questions like he was running out of time to get back to her. Blair. He explained that he had never signed the divorce papers. That the marriage was real. That it had always been real.
I am in love with her.
In love with her?
No. Why was he saying those words in front of everyone? He’d told me a week ago, that we were working on it. That he needed space. That I should take the trip. That nothing was over.
People around me were watching the same interview. I could hear it from other phones and from a television mounted above the oversized luggage sign.
His voice was everywhere. My humiliation was public before I even had my suitcase.
He said he could not imagine his life with anyone else.
My eyes widened when a reporter asked about me.
Lily was the past.
The fucking past. That was his response?
Blair was the future.
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14:54 Thu, Sep 17
The Hockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife
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I almost dropped the phone. This could not be happening. This had to be a nightmare I would wake from if I just stood still long enough.
A week. I had been gone one week. Now I was back and he was announcing to the world that he loved Blair?
My fingers locked around the phone until my knuckles ached.
Then I screamed.
It tore out of me, loud enough to draw attention. A woman jumped and yanked her daughter behind her hip like I was insane. A businessman spun so quickly his laptop bag slammed his knee.
Two flight attendants near the oversize sign stopped mid-sentence. A security guard started walking over, slow, assessing whether this was a medical situation or a woman coming apart in public.
I did not lower my voice.
“Are you kidding me?” I shouted at the phone, at him, at the entire building. “A week. I was gone a week—*
Heads turned. A man filming a reunion swung his camera toward me instead. A girl in a university hoodie already had her phone up, recording, eyes bright with recognition.
Someone said, not quietly, “Is that Lily Sinclair?”
“Do you know who I am?” I asked the strangers in front of me. My voice shook. I hated that it shook.
The university girl blinked. “I-yeah. You’re-”
“Do you know who I am?” I said again, louder, stepping closer. “I have been with Grayson Shaw since we were young. I am his childhood sweetheart. I stood through that circus of a wedding. I stood through every article that called me the other woman in a marriage that was supposed to be fake. I stood in that house with her pictures still on the wall because he asked me to wait. And he waits until I leave the country to announce that she is still his wife? That he is in love with her?”
“Ma’am.” The guard lifted a hand. “You need to lower your voice.”
I laughed. It came out ugly. “Lower my voice? He just told the entire country I am the past. On live television. While I am standing here waiting for a suitcase. And you want me to be quiet? I will not be quiet. Grayson is mine. Blair is stupid, there is no way he actually loves her!”
A toddler started crying from the noise. His mother shot me a look of pure disgust and muttered something about making a scene.
I hoped she posted it. I hoped the whole terminal saw that I was not going to swallow this like I had no spine. Like I was some temporary girl he could put on a plane and replace.
“You think this is a scene?” I asked the mother, the guard, the girl still recording. “I am the one who was supposed to be standing next to him when this season ended. Do you understand that? Do you know who I am? I am supposed to be Grayson’s wife. We were shopping for wedding dresses together right before Blair walked into his pathetic life and he decided a forced marriage was more convenient than the girl who had already given him everything.”
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14:54 Thu, Sep 17
The Hockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife
Nobody answered.
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The suitcase came around. I wrenched it off the belt so hard a wheel slammed the floor and skidded.
The guard said something about escorting me outside if I could not compose myself. I walked past him. My legs felt disconnected from the rest of me.
On the curb a man already had the clip playing on speaker.
I am so fucking in love with her. That was his voice. Yet again announcing he loved her.
I wanted to put my fist through the nearest screen. I wanted to reach through the glass and drag him out of that screen and make him say it to my face.
This interview was not about honesty. He had done it so people would stop tearing her apart online.
Because of rumors I had already started. And instead of calling me, instead of waiting until I landed, he chose to defend her.
He chose her in front of the world.
I wanted him to look at me when he said I was the past.
I refused to accept this.
I was not giving him up.
No one got rid of me that easily. I had waited through the wedding. Through the honeymoon pictures. Through the articles. Through the nights he swore nothing would change while her face still stayed on his walls. I had bent myself around his schedule, his team, his silence, his space.
I was not walking away.
My thumb shook to the point that I almost booked the wrong car. I booked it anyway.
On the curb a man with a camera stepped into my path. “Are you okay? You want to comment on Shaw’s interview-”
“Get away from me.”
“So you didn’t know he was going to-”
“Get.Away. From me.”
The car door slammed. I sat in the back with the clip playing on mute now, reading captions under Grayson’s face.
SHAW: BLAIR IS MY FUTURE.
My nails dug into the suitcase handle until I felt the sting.
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14:54 Thu, Sep 17
The Hockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife
I was going straight to his house.
He was going to explain this to my face.
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And if he thought a press conference was the end of me, he had forgotten who I was when I decided something was mine.
He had forgotten that I did not leave quietly.
I was still here. I didn’t care what he said for the cameras.
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14:54 Thu, Sep 17
The Hockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife
Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.