The Unseen Cost of Love

For ten years, I gave up everything for my boyfriend, Damien. After a family scandal left him ostracized and broken, I worked two jobs to send him to a prestigious university, believing in the genius everyone else had abandoned.

But the moment he became the tech innovator I always knew he could be, he fell for someone else-a wealthy, brilliant colleague named Carson Wall.

Suddenly, I was an embarrassment. His new friends whispered about the "waitress" dragging him down. He started forgetting me, too. He forgot my birthday. He forgot my favorite food. During a fire alarm at a restaurant, he ran right past me to save her, leaving me to fall in the panicked crowd.

I was the one who pulled him off a rooftop when he wanted to die. I sacrificed my own dreams so he could have his. I thought he loved me, but I was just a debt he felt obligated to repay.

After he left me in that fire, I finally gave up. I booked a one-way ticket home, ready to disappear from his life.

Then, I received a video from Carson-her tearful love confession to him.

I took a deep breath, sent him one last message telling him we were over, and blocked his number forever.

Chapter 1

"You're really coming back?" Maya' s voice crackled over the phone, full of disbelief.

I watched the city lights blur through the cheap glass of my apartment window. Rain slid down the pane, making the neon signs bleed into long, sad streaks.

"Yeah. I'm coming home."

"Just like that? After ten years? You're giving up on everything you built there?"

Her questions hung in the air. I knew what she was really asking. She was asking about him.

"There's nothing here for me anymore," I said, my voice flat. I traced a raindrop with my finger, watching it join another and slide away.

"Is Damien coming with you?" Maya finally asked the question we were both avoiding.

A hollow space opened in my chest. The name felt heavy, a stone I'd been carrying for a decade. I didn't answer right away. The silence stretched, filled only by the hum of the old refrigerator.

"No," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "I'm leaving alone."

Just then, my phone buzzed with a text. It was from a number I didn't recognize, but the message was clear.

A single, pristine photo of a train ticket. My ticket. For tomorrow morning.

Below it, a short sentence: "He won't be held back by you anymore. This is for the best."

It was from her. Carson Wall.

I typed back a simple reply, my thumb steady despite the tremor in my heart.

"I know."

Then I deleted the conversation and blocked the number.

The name Damien echoed in my mind. It was a name that once meant the world to me.

I remembered the first time I saw him. He was on stage, accepting a university award for a coding competition he' d won. He was brilliant, the golden boy of our state school, his future as bright as the stage lights that shone on him. Everyone knew his name.

I was just Blanche Forbes, a girl from a forgotten Rust Belt town, sitting in the back of the auditorium. I felt plain, invisible. I worked two jobs to pay my tuition and barely had time to study. He was a star, and I was just a shadow in the crowd.

Then his world fell apart.

A family scandal erupted. His father, a local businessman, was arrested for fraud. Suddenly, the golden boy was the son of a criminal. The whispers followed him everywhere. Old family secrets, sealed juvenile records, everything was dragged into the light by the local news.

People who once admired him now pointed and sneered. He was ostracized, humiliated.

One night, during a campus party, I saw him slip away. A gut feeling made me follow. I found him on the roof of the tallest building on campus, standing on the ledge. The wind tore at his clothes, and he looked so broken, so small against the vast, dark sky.

He was going to jump.

I didn't think. I just ran. I grabbed his arm, my fingers digging into his jacket. I pulled with all my strength, my own fear making me strong. We stumbled backward, collapsing onto the gritty rooftop together.

He looked at me, his eyes empty. "Why did you stop me?"

I didn't have an answer. I couldn't explain why the thought of him being gone felt like a tear in the fabric of the world. So I just held onto his arm, my knuckles white, and refused to let go.

We stayed there for hours, not speaking, just two broken people in the cold night air.

That was the beginning. He dropped out of school, unable to face the shame. I found him a small, cheap apartment away from campus. And then I made a decision. I dropped out too.

I gave up my own future.

I worked as a waitress, a barista, a cleaner. I took any shift I could get, my hands raw, my body aching. I saved every penny to send him back to school, not to our state university, but to a prestigious one on the coast, a place where no one knew his name, where he could start over.

He asked me once, his eyes full of a mixture of guilt and confusion, "Blanche, why are you doing this?"

I was exhausted, smelling of stale coffee and disinfectant, but I forced a smile. "Because you're a genius, Damien. The world needs to see it. I'm just... not."

He looked at me then, his expression serious. "I'll pay you back. I swear. One day, I'll give you everything."

And he did. He graduated with top honors. He was recruited by a major tech firm. He became the Damien Rowe everyone had once expected him to be-a rising star, an innovator.

We moved into a beautiful high-rise apartment, the kind I used to clean. The city lights that once seemed so distant were now our nightly view.

I thought the hard part was over. I thought we had finally made it.

But I was wrong. The worst was yet to come.

It started subtly. I was using his laptop to look up a recipe one evening when a message popped up. It was from someone named Carson.

The photo showed a woman with a bright, confident smile and eyes that sparkled with intelligence. She was beautiful, sophisticated, the kind of woman who belonged in his new world.

The messages were frequent, full of inside jokes about work, discussions about complex algorithms I didn't understand, and plans for coffee or lunch.

His replies were short, almost dismissive. "Busy." "No time." "Later."

I felt a small, foolish flicker of relief.

Then, one night, he came home looking troubled. He paced the living room, running a hand through his hair.

"Blanche," he said, stopping in front of me. "How do you... get a girl to like you?"

The question hit me like a physical blow. The air left my lungs.

"What kind of girl?" I asked, my voice tight.

"Someone... sophisticated. Smart. From a different world."

Carson.

My heart shattered. All these years, I had been his savior, his supporter, his rock. I had cooked for him, cleaned for him, held him when the nightmares of his past came back. I thought he loved me.

But I was a fool. He was grateful. He felt indebted. But he didn't love me.

I had never told him how I felt. I was always the strong one, the practical one. I thought my actions spoke for themselves. I thought he understood that everything I did, I did out of love.

Now I knew. He saw me as a debt to be repaid, not a woman to be loved.

The next day, Carson Wall found me at the coffee shop where I still worked part-time. She sat across from me, her expensive perfume filling the air. She didn't waste time.

She slid a file across the table. It was Damien's sealed juvenile record. The one thing that could still destroy his career if it got out.

"His cousin, Demetrius, is threatening to release this," she said calmly. "Damien is on the verge of a huge promotion. This would ruin him."

My blood ran cold.

"But don't worry," she continued, her smile sharp. "My father is on the board. I can make this problem disappear. I can protect him."

She paused, her eyes meeting mine.

"You can't. You're holding him back, Blanche. Look at you. Look at him. You live in two different worlds. He feels obligated to you, and it's crippling him. If you really love him, you'll let him go."

Every word was a carefully aimed dart, and they all hit their mark.

That night, I stayed up all night, her words replaying in my head. I looked at my rough hands, my simple clothes. I thought about the conversations he had with her, the world of ideas and ambition I couldn't share.

She was right. I couldn't protect him. He didn't love me.

Leaving was the only kind thing I could do. It was the last sacrifice I could make for him.

I would set him free. I would be free. Free from the hope that one day he would see me. Free from the pain of knowing he never would.

A sharp pain shot through my stomach, doubling me over. I gasped, clutching my abdomen. It was my old stomach problem, a gift from years of cheap food and stress.

I fumbled for my pills, but my hands were shaking too badly. The bottle slipped, scattering the small white tablets across the floor.

Just then, the front door opened. Damien was home.

He saw me on the floor, surrounded by pills, and rushed to my side.

"Blanche! What's wrong?"

He scooped me up and carried me to the sofa with an ease born of long practice. He knew exactly where the hot water bottle was, where I kept the emergency medication.

He pressed a warm mug into my hands, his touch gentle. "Thank you," I whispered, my voice hoarse.

"You need to take better care of yourself," he said, his brow furrowed with a familiar, distant worry. He was concerned, but it was the concern one has for a responsibility.

In the early days, when my stomach first started acting up, he would hold me for hours, whispering apologies, blaming himself for the stress that caused it. Now, his care felt like a routine, a checklist item.

He reached out to brush a strand of hair from my face, a gesture that once would have made my heart leap.

I flinched and turned my head away.

He froze, his hand hovering in the air. "Blanche?"

The confusion in his eyes was genuine. He had no idea.

"Damien, I..." I started to say it. I need to leave.

But his phone rang, shattering the moment.

He glanced at the caller ID. Carson. His expression softened.

He answered, his eyes still on me, but his attention was already gone. "Carson? What's wrong? ... Okay, okay, I'm on my way. Don't worry."

He hung up and stood up, already grabbing his keys. "Carson's in some trouble. I have to go."

He was out the door before I could say a word.

The click of the lock echoed in the silent apartment. It was the sound of my last hope dying.

I didn't try to say goodbye. He had already left.

I sat alone in the dark, the pain in my stomach a dull ache compared to the one in my heart. I walked to the refrigerator. Inside was a small, plain cheesecake I had bought.

Today was my birthday.

He had forgotten. He always forgot.

Every year, I would buy myself a small cake and make a silent wish. For ten years, the wish was always the same.

I wish for Damien's happiness.

I lit a single candle and watched the small flame dance. In its flickering light, I saw him again, the boy on the roof, lost and broken.

I had caught a falling star. But stars don't belong on the ground. They are meant to burn brightly in the sky, far away.