Chapter 51
~BLAIR
I was in the hallway when theard movement upstairs. I’d just returned home from visiting my family.
For one stupid second I thought Grayson had missed his flight after all. That he had come back.
I took the stairs two at a time and pushed open the bedroom door.
I froze. Not prepared for who I saw on our bed.
Lily.
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She was in a black lingerie like she had been left there on purpose, hair slightly messy, the sheets tangled around her legs that suggested she had slept in them. Or done more than sleep. The sight knocked the air out of my chest.
‘Get out!” I said.
Lily’s smile was slow and satisfied. “Welcome home.”
‘I mean it. Get out of my bed. This isn’t your place.”
‘Isn’t it?” She stretched one arm along the headboard, completely unbothered. “You’ve always been temporary, Blair. A debt payment. My Grayson never wanted to be with you. You heard him admit it multiple times in the past. I’m the part of his life that existed before your father decided to force this marriage, and I’ Il be the part that remains after. You’re renting space in a story that was never about you.”
My fingers tightened on the doorframe. “You don’t live here. You need to get out before I’m forced to call security. This is my marriage-”
“Your marriage.” She laughed loudly. “You mean the arrangement he agreed to under pressure? The one he promised me he’d leave as soon as he could? In case you haven’t noticed yet, he had sex with me before he left for his flight today.”
I froze.
W-what?
“Right here. Like he always has. Like he will again daily once the public stops watching so closely.”
My heart squeezed so hard it felt briefly difficult to breathe.
He’d really slept with her after admitting to being jealous earlier?
I had let myself read meaning into this marriage when the simpler explanation had been sitting in this bed the whole time almost naked. He could want me in the heat of competition with Chase, and still belong somewhere else. Still choose someone else.
This was the cold water I needed.
Grayson would eventually divorce me and choose Lily. That had always been the plan. My feelings for him- messy, growing, humiliatingly real, didn’t rewrite the ending just because I had started hoping they might.
I hated that I had let them form at all.
“You’re lying,” I said, but my voice lacked the confidence I wanted.
Lily reached for her phone on the nightstand. “Am I?”
She turned the screen toward me.
For a second my mind refused to assemble the images properly. Then it did. Grayson’s shoulders. Lily’s hands. The unmistakable intimacy of bodies that knew each other, all of it captured on her phone.
Successfully unlocked! “Stop.”
She didn’t. She scrolled once, enough to make the point undeniable, then set the phone down like a card
Chapter 51
she had already won with.
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The can play the devoted husband in front of the media, in public places,” Lily said quietly. “None of that changes where he ends up. He’s loved me for years. That is not going to change just because you suddenly showed up. There is no place for you in his life. You need to come to terms with that before you get yourself hurt. Not that I care
I stood in the doorway, feeling a bitter taste in my mouth. I was foolish to think there was anything real between Grayson and me. Clearly, I hadn’t learned my lesson from Chase’s betrayal.
“Get dressed and leave,” I said. “You can claim Grayson all you want. This house belongs to both of us.”
Lily tilted her head. “Does it hurt? Realizing you were starting to believe he actually wanted you?”
“Get out.”
“He’ll come back to me,” she continued, as she grabbed her jacket from the ground. “He always does. The second the pressure eases and the cameras move on, he’ll remember the life he actually planned. You’re the detour, Blair. I’m the destination. The sooner you accept that, the less this has to hurt you. I know Grayson is every girl’s dream man, especially after Chase embarrassed you and left you for my best friend… but it’s time you realize that no one wants you. Grayson is simply kind. That is all. He feels sorry for you.”
I walked to the closet, pulled out a spare blanket and pillow. When I turned back, Lily was watching me with something like pity.
“You can take the bed with you,” I said. “It seems to be yours anyway.”
I refused to sleep in that bed after seeing her on it.
I moved to downstairs, trying to stop the ache in my chest. I sat on the edge of the couch in the dark living room and pressed my palms hard against my thighs until the sick feeling in my stomach dulled to a manageable ache.
He had sex with her before he left. Sex. I felt like puking, I did not want to imagine him sleeping with her. I squeezed my temples.
What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I move on from the pain?
It was obvious I had feelings for Grayson.
But the woman upstairs still in lingerie had just reminded me, with pictures, exactly how little that was going to matter when he finally chose her.
E
Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.