Chapter 19
~BLAIR
I should have left the phone alone.
The villa was quiet after Grayson disappeared inside. The island breeze moved through the palm leaves like nothing in the world was wrong. Even though everything in my life had flipped upside down.
I sat on the lounge chair in a red bikini, sunscreen still sticky on my skin, and told myself I was only going to check the time.
Instead I opened the browser.
I had created the fake profile months ago, not knowing I’d be using it to stalk my ex-boyfriend after he married the coach’s daughter.
I told myself I was only looking because some petty part of me wanted confirmation that Chase had moved on completely.
That the past was as dead as it felt.
There were photos from the wedding I had already seen-Sophie in white, Chase looking proud, hands on her waist like she had always belonged there, right next to him. There were shots from the reception. Champagne. Speeches.
Then I saw the video.
The caption was short.
Our song. Forever starts now.
My thumb hovered over it for a second too long before I pressed play.
My heart dropped.
It was our song.
Our song?
The one we used to slow dance to in his tiny apartment when Chase barely had any money and I was pretending to be poor along with him.
The one he had played the night he told me he loved me for the first time. The one we had both said, more than once, half-joking, half-serious…would be the song at our wedding.
He had used it for Sophie. For their wedding together. And called it their song?
Why did it hurt so badly?
I watched them sway together under romantic lights while the same melody that had once belonged to us filled a room full of people celebrating a marriage I had never been warned about.
Chase was smiling down at her like she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Sophie had her eyes closed like the moment meant something.
The phone screen blurred.
It felt like someone had reached into my chest and ripped my heart out. All the careful distance I had built since the articles, since walking into this marriage with my head high, collapsed under the weight of one video.
Six years. Every late-night conversation. Every sacrifice. Every quiet hope I had carried while I waited for him to become the man I thought he was.
And it had meant nothing.
Successfully unlocked!
He hadn’t just moved on. He had taken the pieces of us that were supposed to be sacred and handed them
Chapter 19
to someone else without hesitation.
Flocked the phone and set it face down on the lounge chair like it might burn me.
5 voucher
For a while I just sat there, staring at the water, breathing through the sharp, humiliating ache. Then I stood up, walked into the villa, and went straight.to the bar cart in the living room.
I took the first drink.
Then the second. Not even looking at what I was gulping down.
By the third I had stopped measuring.
The alcohol spread through me fast in the heat, loosening the tight control I had been holding since the wedding.
The hurt didn’t disappear. It just got louder. Messier. Less contained. I carried the bottle back out to the pool deck and sat on the edge with my feet in the water, drinking straight from it while the sky started to shift toward evening.
I kept seeing the video.
Chase’s hand on Sophie’s back.
Our song playing for a life that no longer included me.
“Heartless,” I muttered to the empty deck. Then louder. “You complete heartless asshole.”
The words felt good in a raw, childish way. I took another drink and laughed once.
“Six years,” I told the pool. “Six years and you couldn’t even pick a different song. You couldn’t even give me that much.”
I pushed myself up, unsteady, and paced along the edge with the bottle hanging from my fingers.
The bikini I had put on earlier now felt irrelevant. Everything felt a little distant and too close at the same
time.
I started humming the melody without meaning to, the same notes that had just destroyed me and then the humming turned into actual singing, off-key and angry,
“You used our song,” I shouted at no one, voice echoing across the quiet villa grounds. “You absolute piece of shit. You heartless, selfish, spineless asshole!”
I spun in a clumsy circle and nearly slipped on the wet stone. The bottle sloshed. I drank anyway.
“I paid your bills,” I continued, the words tumbling out between swallows. “I believed in you when no one else did. I stayed. And you married her without even a text. Without even the dignity of looking me in the face. And then you played our song. Our freaking song!”
My voice broke on the last part. I hated that it did.
I dropped down onto a lounge chair, breathing hard, the bottle now significantly lighter than it had been.
The sky was turning pink and orange over the water. Somewhere inside the villa a door closed, but I barely registered it.
The hurt was too big, too loud, finally free of the composure I had forced myself to wear for days.
Chase had erased me so thoroughly he could destroy our memories without flinching.
And the worst part, the part that made me take another long drink, was that some small, stupid piece of me had still expected better from him, even now.
I leaned back against the chair, eyes stinging, and lifted the bottle in a mock toast toward the empty air.
“To the heartless asshole,” I said. “May he get everything he deserves.”
Then I started singing again, louder this time, the melody mixing with alcohol and anger. Never a good combination. I felt sorry for anyone who had to listen to this.
Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.