Chapter 2

The next morning, I watched Chloe as she moved around the kitchen. She was making a smoothie, the blender whirring loudly, filling the silence between us. She was dressed for work, her movements efficient and precise. She acted as if nothing had happened. She poured the green sludge into a travel cup, her back to me. Her focus was entirely on her task, on the day ahead of her. It was in that moment I saw it clearly. I was not part of her routine. I was an interruption. An obligation she had to manage.

I thought about all the times I had made excuses for her, for us. I remembered the early days after the fire, how I'd convinced myself her distraction was just her way of being strong for me, of handling the logistics so I could grieve. But now, looking at her, I saw it was never about me. It was about her inability to be present, her constant need to be attending to someone else's crisis. I was a crisis she had already managed, and now she was bored.

"I put the tuna in the fridge," I said, my voice quiet.

"Oh, good," she said without turning around. "We can have it for dinner tonight. I should be home early." It was a casual promise, one I knew she wouldn't keep if something more important came up. And something more important always came up. His name was Daniel.

I remembered a conversation we had a month ago. I had tried to talk to her about it, about how much time she was spending with him.

"He needs me, Liam," she had said, her tone patient, as if explaining something to a child. "You of all people should understand what it's like to go through a trauma. His career almost ended. His anxiety is real."

"I do understand," I had said. "But I need you too, Chloe."

She had sighed, a sound of pure exhaustion. "It's not a competition. I'm trying to be there for everyone. Can you please not make this about you?"

Her words had stunned me into silence. She had framed her neglect as a virtue, and my need for my own girlfriend's attention as a form of selfishness. I had backed down, ashamed. Now I saw it for what it was: a manipulation. She used Daniel' s supposed illness as a shield, a perfect excuse to be absent, and my own grief as a weapon to keep me quiet. Her actions weren't about compassion, they were about control.

I started packing a bag. I moved quietly through her apartment, gathering my few belongings. My clothes, my toiletries, the one framed photo of my parents that had survived because it was at my old place. Everything else I owned had turned to ash. There wasn't much to pack. Each item I placed in the duffel bag felt heavy, not with its own weight, but with the weight of my realization. This place was never my home. It was just a place I had been staying, a temporary shelter that was no longer safe.

The apartment itself felt like a symbol of our relationship. It was beautiful on the surface, perfectly curated, but it was cold. There was no warmth, no mess, no life. It was a showroom, and I was an out-of-place piece of furniture. I looked at the kitchen, the stove I was afraid to use, the counter where our anniversary dinner had been abandoned. It was a room full of ghosts and broken promises. I felt a profound sense of loneliness, a feeling that went deeper than just being by myself. It was the loneliness of being with someone who doesn't see you.

My phone buzzed. It was Tom again. Hey, don't want to be that guy, but I saw Chloe's latest article just went live. It's a rave review for a new tasting menu.

My stomach tightened. I opened the browser on my phone and found the article. The headline was glowing: "A Triumph of a Troubled Genius: Daniel's Triumphant Return." The article was a masterpiece of praise, painting Daniel not just as a great chef, but as a resilient hero who had overcome immense personal demons to create culinary art. Chloe's writing was passionate, full of admiration and a deep, personal understanding of his journey. She wrote about his "fragile genius," his "courage in the face of crippling anxiety." It was a love letter disguised as a food review.

Then I saw the date of the tasting she was reviewing. It was last night. Our anniversary. She hadn't been helping him with a menu proposal. She had been at his restaurant, dining on his food, writing a review that would relaunch his career. The lie was so blatant, so complete. It wasn't just a white lie to spare my feelings, it was a calculated deception to hide her priorities. The anger began to burn through the fog of my grief, a clean, hot flame.

Just as I zipped my bag shut, I heard her keys in the door. She had forgotten her travel cup. She walked in, saw me standing in the hallway with the duffel bag at my feet, and her face registered a flicker of surprise, quickly replaced by weariness.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice already defensive.

"I read your article," I said, my voice shaking slightly with a rage I hadn't felt in months. "The one about Daniel's triumphant return."

A flicker of panic in her eyes. "I was going to tell you."

"When?" I demanded. "This weekend, when we were supposed to be celebrating our anniversary? Or was that another lie?"

"It was work, Liam!" she said, her voice rising. "It was a last-minute opportunity. His publicist called me. It was a huge deal for him, for his career. I couldn't say no."

"You could have said no to him and yes to me," I said, the words tasting bitter. "For one night. Our anniversary. Or you could have just told me the truth. But you chose to lie. You went to dinner with him and pretended you were working late on a proposal." The air in the pristine hallway crackled with the ugly truth. Her carefully constructed world of compassion and duty was crumbling, and she looked at me with a coldness that froze the last bit of hope in my heart.