<b>Chapter </b>119
(Jasper’s POV)
<b>+25 </b><b>Points </b>
It’s been days since she cut me off. Since she stopped answering my texts, my calls, my emails. But I keep trying. I tell myself every time that this is thest time. But the cycle never ends. I can’t stop.
I try to tell myself to let her go. To respect her space. But every time I think I’ve gotten through it, every time I try to move on, something drags me back.
I wonder if she’s doing okay. I wonder if she thinks of me, even a little. I wonder if the emptiness inside her is as heavy as mine.
“Scarlett. Please, just let me exin. One call. Five minutes.”
<i>Delete</i><i>. </i>
“Scarlett, it isn’t what you think.”
Okay, she’ll definitely not reply to that.
“I am so sorry. I know sorry isn’t enough, but I am losing my mind. This silence is driving me crazy. Please, baby, tell me what to do to fix this.”
<i>Delete</i><i>. </i>
Too groveling. She’d hate that. She always said she hated the word “baby” when people used it out of context.
I finally settle on a simple, agonizing truth and hit send, the screen shing the dreaded “Delivered” acknowledgment:
“Scarlett, I need to see you. I’ll be at the old coffee shop tomorrow morning, ten o’clock. If you don’t show up, I’ll go to your apartment. Don’t make me do that. Please.”
I toss the phone on the couch, andy in a daze.
I wish I can stop thinking about her. But I don’t know how.
I try <i>to </i>keep busy–work, friends, anything—but it’s like I’m moving through a fog. Every moment feels hollow, muted. Even the things I used to enjoy don’t matter anymore.
The worst part is how much I regret not doing things differently. Not being the man she needed. Not being enough.
<Chapter 119
<b>+25 </b>Points
The next morning, I arrive at the coffee shop at nine forty–five, and order a ck coffee, though the caffeine only makes my hands shake more. Sitting at the booth by the window, the one that looked out onto the street, I watch the clock tick by.
Nine fifty. Nine fifty–five. Ten o’clock.
The bell above the door jangles, and my head snaps up, my heart hammering against my ribs. In the next second, though, ites to a still.
A young couple. Not her.
Ten fifteen. Ten thirty.
She isn’ting. The sick, heavy certainty settles over me.
I leave the coffee and drive aimlessly for an hour, the city a blur of indifferent faces and towering buildings. I needed air. I needed to <i>breathe</i><i>. </i>I find myself pulling up to the park, the one with the huge oak tree where we spent our first anniversary.
I sit on a bench, head in my hands. Who ever knew the feeling of powerlessness can be so all–consuming?
I’m about to leave, to head back to the purgatory of our empty house, when a sight ms into me, knocking the breath from my lungs and making the blood rush to my ears.
Scarlett.
She is across the street, emerging from an expensive–looking French bistro.
I don’t stop to think, to consider what she’s doing at a French shop, when I’ve been waiting for her for hours at the coffee shop.
I plunge into traffic, the re of horns and the screech of tires a distant, irrelevant noisepared to the thunder of my own pulse.
“Scarlett! <i>Scarlett</i>!”
I know the second she hears me. Herughter dies in her throat, and she turns, her face a mask of shock, which quickly transforms into a cold indifference that slices deeper than any
anger.
I try not to let that bother me, focusing instead on her, her, and only her.
The woman I’ve been dying to talk to for days:
I reach the curb, gasping, my shirt clinging to my back. “Scarlett, thank God. We need to talk. I need you to listen,” I plead, ignoring the man standing beside her.
< Chapter 119
<b>+25 </b><b>Points </b>
The next morning, I arrive at the coffee shop at nine forty–five, and order a ck coffee, though the caffeine only makes my hands shake more. Sitting at the booth by the window, the one that looked out onto the street, I watch the clock tick by.
Nine fifty. Nine fifty–five. Ten o’clock.
The bell above the door jangles, and my head snaps up, my heart hammering against my ribs. In the next second, though, ites to a still.
A young couple. Not her.
Ten fifteen. Ten thirty.
She isn’ting. The sick, heavy certainty settles over me.
I leave the coffee and drive aimlessly for an hour, the city a blur of indifferent faces and towering buildings. I needed air. I needed to <i>breathe</i>. I find myself pulling up to the park, the one with the huge oak tree where we spent our first anniversary.
I sit on a bench, head in my hands. Who ever knew the feeling of powerlessness can be so all–consuming?
I’m about to leave, to head back to the purgatory of our empty house, when a sight ms into me, knocking the breath from my lungs and making the blood rush to my ears.
Scarlett.
She is across the street, emerging from an expensive–looking French bistro.
I don’t stop to think, to consider what she’s doing at a French shop, when I’ve been waiting for her for hours at the coffee shop.
I plunge into traffic, the re of horns and the screech of tires a distant, irrelevant noisepared to the thunder of my own pulse.
“Scarlett! <i>Scarlett</i>!”
I know the second she hears me. Herughter dies in her throat, and she turns, her face a mask of shock, which quickly transforms into a cold indifference that slices deeper than any
anger. <fnc1c2> Fresh chapters posted on </fnc1c2>
I try not to let that bother me, focusing instead on her, her, and only her.
The woman I’ve been dying to talk to for days:
I reach the curb, gasping, my shirt clinging to my back. “Scarlett, thank God. We need to talk. I need you to listen,” I plead, ignoring the man standing beside her.
< Chapter 119
+25 Points
“What are you doing here, Jasper?” she asks, her voice cool, detached, devoid of the warmth that used to be a hallmark of her very being.
I swallow hard, the words clogging in my throat. “I… I’ve been trying to reach you…”
“Why?” she interrupts, crossing her arms. There’s a certain finality to her tone that stops me cold.
“Why? Of course, to exin. Virginia…”
“I don’t care.”
The words hit me like a punch. I thought–<i>hoped</i>–that she’d care. But hearing her say she doesn’t… it cuts me deeper than I ever expected.
“It’s just a house,<i>” </i>she continues, her voice quieter, but somehow colder. “Just bricks and wood. Nothing I can’t let go.”
“You’re joking, right? You’ve got to be joking. That’s your childhood home, Scar. The ce you grew up in. The house you built memories…”
She looks at me then, truly looks at me, and what I see in their depths isn’t pain, or regret, or even fury–it’s a chilling, empty eptance.
“I don’t need that house anymore, Jasper.”
“What are you talking about? I’m going to buy it back. I’ll offer them double what they paid. I have the money, Scar, I just need a little time, but it can be ours again. Our home.”
She shakes her head slowly, and with it, I feel my heart shatter into pieces.
“Don’t bother,” she says, a small, dismissiveugh escaping her. “It’s just a house. And I don’t want it anymore. I already found a new one.”
I stare at her, utterly bewildered by the cold, unfamiliar woman standing before me. The woman who cherished her history, who valued her past, is gone.
“What do you mean, a new one? What is with this… sudden indifference? That house means everything to you. Everything,” I choke out, the air feeling suddenly too thin to breathe.
That’s when Dorian steps in, his voice a low, authoritative rumble that’s meant to be soothing, but only grates on my raw nerves.
“I think you need to respect Scarlett’s wishes, Jasper. She said she’s done. She’s moving on,” he says, the hand on her back tightening slightly, a proprietary touch that makes my fists clench.
< Chapter 119
I re at him. “Stay out of this. This is between me and my wife.”
+25 Points
Dorian raises an eyebrow, a practiced, arrogant gesture. “She doesn’t seem to want to be your wife anymore, does she? And she’s on a date with me. Now, please, walk away.”
The arrogance of him, the audacity, is the spark that ignites my final, reckless move. I take a step toward Scarlett, my focus zeroed in on her face, demanding an answer to the question that’s tearing me apart.
“Is that true, Scarlett?” I demand. “Is he right? Is this… is he your…” I can’t even say the word. It guts me just to think about it. “Is this why you’re suddenly okay with losing the house? Because you’ve moved on?”
She takes a deep, steadying breath, her eyes flicking from my desperate face to Dorian’s calm, waiting one.
The look she gives me is the final, fatal blow. It is a look ofplete, unadulterated finality.
“Yes, Jasper,” she says, her voice clear and cutting, “Dorian is my new life. He’s my boyfriend, and he’s helping me find a new home, one that doesn’t have a Virginia in the basement and a husband who lies about it for months. You can keep the old life. I don’t want it anymore.”
The world tilts. The noise of the city, the horns, the people, all of it fades away, leaving a ringing emptiness in my ears. The word “boyfriend” echoes, a heavy, final sentence.
Scarlett ces her hand on Dorian’s arm, a deliberate, intimate gesture, cementing the narrative for both of us.
“We have to go, Dorian. I don’t want to bete for our reservation,” she says, her voice softer now, aimed at him, a tone I realize I haven’t heard from her in weeks.
Dorian smiles, a triumphant, smooth smile that makes me want to hit him. He puts his arm around her shoulders, turning her gently away from me, and they begin to walk.
I stand there, paralyzed, watching them go. Their backs are straight, their steps synchronized. They look like a finished thing, a beautiful, devastating portrait of a future I will never be a part of. The blue dress, the lightughter, the intimate touch–it all belongs to him now.
I feel the burning behind my eyes, a heat that turns into the salty, shaming flood of tears.
I have never felt suchplete, utter heartbreak. It isn’t just the loss of my wife; it is the loss of her–the woman who cares, the woman who fights.
This new, cold Scarlett, the one walking away with Dorian, is aplete stranger.