Chapter 30
Chapter 30
~CHASE
30 voucher
The second the front door closed behind us, the control I had been holding onto at the party snapped.
threw my keys across the Kitchen. They hit the far wall and clattered into the sink. The jacket came next, shoved hard enough off my shoulders that a chair scraped backward across the floor,
Sophie said something from the hallway-my name, maybe a question, but the sound barely registered. My pulse was too loud. My thoughts were moving too fast and colliding into each other without order.
Blair had gotten me that invitation.
Blair?
Months ago. Before the wedding. Before the breakup. Before any of this. I had walked into Ethan Monroe’s yearly athletes’ mixer thinking it was networking, timing, my own rising profile opening doors. And the entire time the only reason my name had been on the list was because of her.
Blair was a billionaire.
Not comfortable. Not “her family did well.” A Monroe. Monroe Athletics. The kind of money and influence that sat above sponsorship deals and coach’s daughters and the version of success I had been so proud of building.
She had sat in my apartment in oversized hoodies and paid my bills without blinking. She had listened to me talk about making it like she was standing on the same ground I was. And the whole time she could have bought the ground.
I braced both hands on the counter and tried to breathe through the thoughts. It didn’t work. A glass ended up in the sink in pieces. I didn’t remember deciding to throw it.
Her family was the Monroes.
The same family whose name was stamped on equipment, arenas, and league partnerships. The same family connected to Grayson Shaw’s rise in ways I was only beginning to understand. The same family I had publicly discarded when I married Sophie without warning and then accused of lying when the truth was
inconvenient.
I had called her desperate.
I had called her a stand-in.
I had stood in a hallway after a loss and accused her of feeding my plays to her new husband.
The memory made my stomach hurt.
A knock sounded at the front door.
I froze, breathing hard, the kitchen looking like the aftermath of a much longer fight than the few minutes it had actually been. Sophie appeared at the edge of the room, took one look at my face, and went to answer it without comment.
My mother’s voice was happy. Pleased.
“There you are. I was in the area and thought I’d stop by. You looked so good in the photos from that party.”
She walked in already smiling, the same proud expression she wore whenever she decided I had finally made a decision she approved of. Her eyes moved over me, then past the tension in the room.
“I’m so happy you upgraded,” she said warmly. “The coach’s daughter is exactly the kind of woman who matches where you’re going. You always re successfully unlockedderstood success at that level. Someone who belongs in those rooms with you.”
I stared at her, still half stuck on Ethan Monroe’s voice saying you’re the guy that cheated on my sister.
Chapter 30
30 voucher
My mother kept going, settling her purse on the island like she was delivering good news. “Blair was sweet,
her way, but she was never going to keep up. Quiet Small life. No real ambition beyond whatever you were doing. You would have spent your whole career dragging her into rooms she didn’t fit in. Sophie understands the world you’re in. She looks the part. She is the part
Sophie, to her credit or her shame, didn’t interrupt. She just stood near the doorway with her arms folded, watching me carefully.
My mother reached out and squeezed my arm. “You made the right decision. I know breakups are messy, but this one cleared the path for what you actually needed. A partner who elevates you. Not one who stays in the background and hopes it’s enough.”
The words landed on top of the night’s revelations like salt. It burned.
Blair had not been in the background because she lacked ambition. She had been there because she chose not to weaponize her last name. She had paid for things quietly. Opened doors quietly. Loved me in a way that never demanded public credit. And I had traded that for a version of status my mother could brag about at lunch.
I opened my mouth.
The truth sat right there-Blair was richer than Sophie by a distance that made the comparison almost funny. Her family could buy the coach’s entire world and not feel it. The “upgrade” my mother was celebrating was, by every practical measure, a downgrade so severe I still couldn’t fully process it.
I didn’t say it.
Not yet.
The information was too fresh, too destabilizing, and my mother’s certainty was so strong that dropping the truth into it felt like setting off a bomb I didn’t have the energy to manage tonight.
Sophie already looked one wrong sentence away from another argument. My hands were still shaking from the party.
So I held it back.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, the words rough.
She beamed, missing everything underneath. “I’m proud of you. You’re thinking like a man who knows his
worth.”
She stayed another twenty minutes, talking through appearances, league wives, and how Sophie and I should be photographed more at the right events.
I nodded when I was supposed to. I walked her back to the door when she was ready to leave. I even accepted the kiss on the cheek and the final reminder that I had “done the smart thing.”
When the door closed, the apartment felt too quiet again.
Sophie watched me from the living room. “You’re not going to tell her.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Not tonight,” I said.
I walked past her, past the broken glass still in the sink, and into the bedroom before the weight of what I now knew could knock me over.
Blair Monroe had been the real thing the entire time.
And I had thrown her away for a story that only looked better from the outside.
Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.