Too Late: She Chose The Billionaire Heir

"She's just like a sister to me, Eliana. You're being dramatic."

That was Jax's excuse every time he chose Catalina over me for three years.

When Catalina staged a fake drowning in three feet of water, he pushed me aside to save her, telling me my life wasn't his problem.

But the breaking point came when she deliberately pushed me down a flight of stairs.

My ankle shattered on the concrete. I was lying there in agony, unable to move.

Yet, Jax didn't check on me.

He stepped over my bleeding body to scoop Catalina up because she had a minor scratch on her elbow.

He screamed at me for "hurting" her.

While I lay in the hospital alone, waiting for surgery, he was spoon-feeding her soup in her dorm, posting photos captioned "My Hero."

He thought I would always be his "Elie Bear," the doormat waiting at home to clean up his messes.

He was convinced that no matter how much he hurt me, I would never actually leave.

But he was wrong.

I didn't scream. I didn't fight.

I simply signed the withdrawal papers, blocked his number, and boarded a one-way flight to New York without saying goodbye.

Three months later, when Jax finally realized his "sister" was a nightmare and came crawling back to beg for forgiveness, he found me.

But I wasn't alone.

I was holding the hand of a billionaire heir who looked at Jax with cold, deadly eyes.

"Touch her again," my new fiancé whispered, "and I will destroy your entire family by morning."

Chapter 1

The splash shattered the curated perfection of the pool party-a violent intrusion-yet it paled in comparison to the brutality of the words that followed.

Catalina had fallen into the water. It was a performance, a clumsy pirouette of limbs that anyone with eyes could identify as staged, her gaze locked onto Jax the entire way down. But Jax didn't see the performance. He only saw the damsel.

He didn't hesitate. He didn't glance my way. He launched himself into the pool, creating a second wave that sent cold, chlorinated water slapping against my legs.

I stood frozen on the concrete, the memory of our agreement clawing at my throat. Just yesterday, he had promised me.

"If she causes one more scene, Eliana, I'm done. I promise."

He surfaced, gasping, clutching a coughing Catalina against his chest as if she were fragile porcelain. He swam her to the edge, right to my feet.

"Jax," I whispered, my voice fracturing. "You promised."

He looked up then, water dripping from his dark hair, his eyes hard and unfamiliar. He didn't see his girlfriend of three years standing there. He saw an obstacle.

"Not now, Eliana," he snapped, hoisting Catalina onto the deck. "Your life is not my problem right now."

The air left my lungs.

It wasn't just a rejection. It was an eviction notice from his life.

I stood there, shivering in the heat of the afternoon sun. My heart felt compressed by a giant, icy hand. Around us, the music kept playing, people kept laughing, but the world had gone silent for me.

I watched them. He was wrapping a towel around her, rubbing her arms, whispering things into her ear that made her sob harder into his neck. Then, she looked over his shoulder at me.

Her eyes were dry. There was no fear in them, only a cold, triumphant smirk.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry. A strange, terrifying calm washed over me-the silence of a building that had finally finished collapsing.

*Elie Bear.*

The nickname echoed in my head, a ghost from our childhood. That's what he used to call me when he wanted me to do something.

*Trust me, Elie Bear. I know what's best.*

It was how he conditioned me. How he trained me to accept the scraps of his affection, to believe that every betrayal was just a misunderstanding, that every time he chose her, it was an exception.

He always said, "Next time will be different."

But there was no next time.

I turned. My legs felt heavy, dragging through invisible wet cement, but I moved. I walked away from the pool, away from the eyes of our friends who were pretending not to stare, away from the boy who had just told me exactly what I was worth.

I didn't go to him. I didn't offer a towel. I just kept walking until I reached the parking lot.

Driving home was a blur. I didn't feel the steering wheel under my hands. I felt... excavated. Hollow.

When I got to my room, the silence was deafening. I sat at my desk, my hands shaking as I pulled out the folder I had hidden under a stack of textbooks.

The UCLA application packet.

For months, I had hesitated. Jax wanted us to go to the local state college together. He wanted me close. He wanted his "Elie Bear" right where he could reach her.

I looked at the acceptance letter. It was a ticket to a life where I didn't have to compete for air.

Outside, the sky opened up. Rain lashed against the window, mimicking the storm that should have been raging inside me, but wasn't. I was done raging.

I picked up my phone. My fingers hovered over his name.

"I am not your Elie Bear."

I hit send.

I stared at the screen for a moment, waiting for the regret to hit. It didn't.

I put the phone down and looked at the State College enrollment form lying next to my acceptance letter. Jax thought my life was wrapped around his finger. He thought I would be there when he got home, ready to listen to his excuses, ready to believe that Catalina just slipped.

Slowly, deliberately, I tore the State form in half.

Then I tore it again. And again. Until the future he thought we were going to have was nothing but confetti on the floor.

My phone buzzed. A text from Mason, Jax's best friend.

"Jax says you're being dramatic again. He's driving Cat home. Don't wait up."

I looked at the pile of torn paper. I wasn't waiting up. I wasn't waiting at all.

He came home three hours later, smelling of rain and the cloying sweetness of Catalina's vanilla shampoo.

I was sitting on the couch, staring at a blank TV screen. I hadn't moved in an hour, fused to the cushions like a ghost haunting her own living room.

"Eliana," Jax said, tossing his keys on the counter. His voice was casual, light, as if he hadn't ripped my heart out earlier that afternoon. "Cat's fine. Shaken up, obviously, but fine. You really didn't need to make a scene like that."

He walked into the living room, loosening his tie. He looked at me, expecting the usual fight. Expecting tears. Expecting me to demand an apology so he could charm his way out of it.

I didn't blink. I didn't look at him. I looked through him.

"Are you hungry?" he asked, trying to pivot to normal. He walked over and sat next to me, reaching for my hand. "I can order Thai."

I recoiled before he could touch me. It wasn't a violent motion, just instinctive-like jerking back from a hot stove.

"I'm not hungry," I said. My voice sounded flat, foreign to my own ears. "My stomach hurts."

It was a lie, but it was the only way to keep a barrier between us.

"You're still mad," he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Look, I know what I said at the pool was harsh. But she was drowning, El. I had to prioritize."

*Drowning in three feet of water,* I thought.

But I didn't say it. There was no point. You can't explain the concept of drowning to someone who is convinced they are the lifeguard.

"It's fine, Jax," I said.

He paused, surprised by the lack of resistance. "Okay. Good. I knew you'd understand. I promised her dad I'd look out for her."

He got up and went to the kitchen. I stood up and walked to our bedroom.

I looked around the room. It was filled with *us*. Photos, gifts, memories. It felt like a museum dedicated to a civilization that had already collapsed.

I walked to the dresser and saw it immediately. A small glass bottle.

Catalina's perfume.

It was sitting right next to my hairbrush. It was an invasion. A deliberate territory marker. She must have left it here the last time the "group" hung out before the party.

Jax walked in, holding a glass of water. He saw me staring at the bottle.

"Oh," he said, a flicker of something-guilt? annoyance?-crossing his face. "Cat must have left that. I'll give it back to her tomorrow."

"It's fine," I said again.

He frowned. "Why do you keep saying that?"

"Because it is."

I walked over to the corner of the room where a giant teddy bear sat. He had won it for me at the county fair on our first date. He had named it Elie Bear.

I picked it up. It was heavy, burdened with dust.

"What are you doing?" Jax asked.

I walked out of the room, down the hall, and into the kitchen. I opened the trash can and shoved the bear inside. It was too big, resisting its fate, so I forced it down, crushing its synthetic smile against the wet, dark sludge of yesterday's coffee grounds.

"Eliana!" Jax snapped. "What the hell? That's sentimental."

"I'm cleaning," I said calmly. "It attracts dust."

The next day at school was worse.

I was in the cafeteria line when I heard her voice. Catalina was holding court at a center table, her arm draped with practiced casualness over the back of Jax's chair.

"He's just so protective," she was saying, loud enough for the next three tables to hear. "Even his mom says he's always been that way with me. Since we were kids. He just knows what I need before I even ask."

My friends were sitting nearby, looking at their trays, uncomfortable. They knew. Everyone knew.

"I heard he left Eliana at the party just to drive you home," a girl asked.

Catalina laughed, a tinkling, artificial sound. "Oh, Eliana is sweet, but she gets so anxious. Jax just had to handle the situation."

I felt the eyes on me. Pity. Amusement.

Jax was sitting right there. He was eating his sandwich, nodding along, not correcting her. Not defending me.

He looked up and saw me. For a second, he looked guilty. He started to stand up.

I turned around and walked out of the cafeteria.

Later that afternoon, I found my locker open. Inside, my dance trophy-the one I had won last year, the one Jax said he was so proud of-had been moved to the bottom shelf, turned backward. In its place was a framed photo of the cheer squad. Catalina was front and center.

I didn't scream. I didn't smash the frame.

I just closed the locker.

"Hey," Jax appeared beside me, breathless. "I was looking for you. Do you want to go to the movies tonight? Just us?"

He was trying. He was buying tickets for a voyage on a ship that had already sunk.

"I can't," I said. "I have cramps."

"Again?" He rolled his eyes. "You're punishing me."

"No," I said, looking at the necklace he was wearing. It was new. A silver chain. Catalina was wearing a matching bracelet in the cafeteria.

"I'm just tired, Jax."

"Fine," he huffed. "Go rest. Cat wanted help with her trig homework anyway."

"Okay," I said.

He waited for me to argue. To tell him he couldn't go. To fight for him.

I just walked away.

"Eliana?" he called out.

I didn't turn back.

The annual spring formal was supposed to be the highlight of the year. Instead, it felt like an autopsy of my relationship.

I stood by the punch bowl, gripping a plastic cup as I watched them on the dance floor. Jax and Catalina moved with a synchronization that made my stomach turn. It wasn't overtly sexual; it was something worse. It was intimate.

It was a language of shared history that I didn't speak. He knew exactly when she would spin; she knew exactly how he would catch her.

"They look like they were made for each other," someone whispered behind me.

"Totally. I heard they're practically soulmates," another voice agreed.

I took a sip of the overly sweet punch to keep from gagging.

Catalina broke away from Jax and floated toward me, her dress shimmering under the strobe lights. She didn't look malicious. She looked helpful. That was the cruelty of it.

"You look tired, El," she said, touching my arm. Her fingers were cold against my skin.

"I'm fine," I said, pulling away.

She leaned in closer, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "You know, I'm really glad you and Jax are still trying. I actually told him he should ask you out back in sophomore year. He was so unsure, but I said, 'Give her a chance, she needs someone.'"

The room tilted.

*She told him to ask me out.*

The ground beneath my feet felt like it dissolved. All those memories-Jax asking me to the movies, the shy confession, the first kiss-it wasn't passion. It was an assignment.

I was a project Catalina had assigned him because she wasn't ready for him yet.

"Excuse me," I mumbled.

I rushed to the bathroom, locking myself in a stall. I dry-heaved over the toilet, but nothing came up except the bitter taste of bile.

I left the dance early. I didn't tell Jax. He wouldn't notice anyway.

A few days later, I was in the student lounge working on an essay. A group of students from the drama club were drinking wine in the corner-technically illegal on campus, but no one cared. Catalina was holding court again.

She was tipsy, her cheeks flushed a deep rose.

"Jax is just... intense," she giggled. "You guys don't know the half of it. When we were twelve, I lost my charm bracelet in the lake. He spent four hours diving for it until his lips turned blue. He missed his own baseball championship game just to find a piece of cheap jewelry for me."

The group swooned.

"He's always been yours, hasn't he?" a girl asked.

"Basically," Catalina shrugged, swirling her wine. "I mean, he dates other people to pass the time, but when I call? He answers. Always."

I sat frozen behind a bookshelf.

*Dates other people to pass the time.*

Every detail she spilled matched a memory I had of Jax cancelling plans.

*Sorry, El, family emergency.* (He had been diving in a lake.)

*Sorry, El, got stuck at practice.* (He had been fixing her flat tire.)

The lies fit together like a perfect, horrifying puzzle. I wasn't his girlfriend. I was the commercial break in the Catalina show.

Jax walked into the lounge then. He looked around, spotting Catalina.

"Cat," he called out. It was automatic. A reflex.

Then he saw me sitting in the shadows.

His face went pale. He looked from Catalina, who was beaming at him like a prize she had won, to me.

"Eliana," he stammered. "I didn't know you were here."

He walked over, reaching for my water bottle on the table. "You look thirsty. Here."

I stared at his hand. The hand that had held mine. The hand that had held hers.

"No thanks," I said. My voice was steady, which surprised me. "I'm not thirsty."

Catalina watched us, a smirk playing on her lips. She raised her glass to me.

"Don't be rude, Eliana," she called out. "He's just being nice."

Panic flared in Jax's eyes. "Cat, stop."

"What?" She laughed. "I'm just saying. You'd do anything for me, right Jax? Even fight your parents?"

Jax flinched. "That was a long time ago."

"But you did it," she insisted. "You told your dad you'd never take over the company if he didn't let me come to dinner."

I closed my laptop. The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet room.

I stood up.

"Eliana, wait," Jax said, stepping in front of me. "Did you eat? We can go grab a burger."

He was terrified. He could see it in my eyes. The adoration was gone. The patience was gone.

"I ate," I lied.

I looked at him, really looked at him. He was handsome. He was charming. And he was completely hollow.

"I have to go," I said.

"Eliana-"

I walked past him. I didn't look back at Catalina. I didn't need to. I knew exactly what her face looked like.

It looked like victory.