A sharp stab of pain, quick and brutal, pierced through my carefully constructed calm. It surprised me. I thought all that was gone. Buried. But some ghosts, it seemed, still lingered. Even if they only made themselves known in fleeting, agonizing moments.

It was hard to believe how deeply I had loved him once. Jonathan. My Jonathan. We had grown up in the same small town, two bright kids from different worlds. He was the golden boy, charming and effortlessly brilliant, destined for greatness. I was the quiet, determined girl, always pushing harder, always striving for more.

We were rivals in school, neck and neck for every academic prize. He' d tease me, call me "bookworm," but there was always a playful glint in his eyes. I fell for him, of course. Who wouldn't? He was everything the town admired.

I remembered the day I finally confessed. We were nineteen, about to head off to different universities. My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs.

"Jonathan," I' d mumbled, my cheeks burning, "I... I think I love you."

He' d just laughed, a rich, warm sound that usually made my insides melt. "Love me, Krystal? Get the highest score on the national engineering exam, and maybe I'll consider it." It was a joke, of course. A playful dare.

But I wasn't joking. I poured every ounce of my being into that exam. I studied until my eyes burned, until my fingers cramped, until I slept for only a few hours each night. I aced it. Not just the highest score, but a record-breaking performance. I did it for him.

And he, true to his word, had made a grand spectacle of it. A public proposal, roses, a diamond ring that sparkled under the television lights. He called me his "brilliant muse," his "partner in greatness." I felt like the luckiest woman alive. I floated on air for months. I truly believed I had found my happily ever after.

But the truth, like most truths, was far uglier. His proposal hadn' t been about love. It had been a calculated move. A scandalous affair with a campaign intern had threatened to derail his burgeoning political career. My "genius" image, our "academic power couple" narrative, was the perfect shield. A distraction. A carefully constructed facade to save his public image. And I, blinded by my own desperate love, had walked straight into his gilded cage.

"Dr. Mercado?" The voice on the phone pulled me back to the present, gentle but firm. "Are you still there? You seem... distant."

"I'm here," I said, my voice cutting through the lingering echoes of the past. "And I'm not distant. I'm just done. I don't love him anymore. Not even a little bit."

The words felt sharp, severing the last invisible threads. A sense of cold finality settled over me.

Just then, the hospital room door slammed open, rattling its frame. Jonathan stood there, his eyes blazing, his face contorted with a fury I hadn't seen directed at me in years. He must have somehow found out about the call, or at least suspected something was amiss.

"Who are you talking to, Krystal?" he demanded, his voice dangerously low. "What the hell is going on?"

My phone, still pressed against my ear, slipped from my fingers, clattering to the floor. The line went dead.

He took a step closer, his eyes scanning the room, then landing on me with an intensity that used to make me tremble. Now, it just felt... empty.

"What were you doing?" he repeated, his fists clenched at his sides. "Who were you planning to disappear with?"

Chapter 2

You might like