Chapter 28
Sophia’s P.O.V
I don’t remember how I made it back to my room, the entire world felt blurry at the moment, but once I was inside, I shut the door and locked it, before taking slow, deliberate steps towards my bed, and almost collapsing onto it.
The air felt thick in my throat as I scrolled through Gabriella’s Instagram feed, my thumb pausing over each image but my eyes locked onto them like they were oxygen and poison all at once. My heart beat louder in my chest with every photo, a hollow pounding that echoed between my ribs and screamed at me, Look closer.
I didn’t want to–I didn’t want to–but I had to. Because somewhere in my gut, something told me I was standing at the edge of a truth I’d been too blind–or too in love–to see before.
There they were. Tristan and Gabriella.
Laughing in the streets of Paris, arms wrapped around each other in that effortless, intimate way that people who share secrets do. Smiling under the sun in Santorin, with the Aegean Sea behind them as if the world had given them its blessing. And then again in Kyoto, New York, Rome–city after city like trophies in some twisted love affair that I had never been invited to.
He never even took me to the coast.
My breath caught somewhere in my throat, and I blinked against the sting in my eyes. “No,” I whispered, voice cracking in the stillness of my bedroom. “No, no, no.”
The longer I stared at the photos, the tighter something twisted inside me. At first, it was disbelief, confusion maybe. But now? It was rage. A slow, venomous rage that curled in my chest and threatened to burn its way out.
That meeting he rushed off to last spring–it wasn’t a client emergency, it wasn’t an investor who needed hand–holding. It was her. Gabriella. I remember asking him, “Should I wait up?” and he smiled that tired, distracted smile and kissed my forehead. “Don’t, baby. It might go late.”
Late because you were tending to her scraped fucking knee.
I clenched my jaw and threw my phone across the bed, unable to look at the screen any longer. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t afford to break, not yet. Not when the pieces of this twisted puzzle were finally snapping into place.
The business trips. God. The business trips.
All those nights I spent alone in our house, wrapped in his hoodie, making excuses for him. “He’s working hard. He’s tired. He’s building something for us.” But it wasn’t for us. It was never about us. It was about her. About Gabriella and her damn smile, and how she got to have all the pieces of him that he told me weren’t for sharing.
“You said you hated traveling,” I muttered, voice bitter as acid. “You said planes gave you anxiety.”
I remember begging him to go to Venice with me once. He had laughed gently, wrapped his arms around me, and said, “Maybe next year, Soph. Work’s insane right now.” That same goddamn week, he had posted a story from Venice. I thought it was an old video. He said it was. I believed
him. Like a fool.
I shot to my feet, pacing the room with trembling hands. I needed to feel this. Every ounce of this betrayal. Every time he lied. Every fake smile. Every “I love you” whispered like a secret he was already giving away to someone else.
And what hurt the most–what killed me–was that I loved him. Still did. Somewhere beneath the fury and the heartbreak, I still loved the version of him I thought I had. The version that had never existed.
I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to calm the storm inside. “How could you, Tristan?” I said to no one, just the empty room and the memories that haunted its walls. “How could you lie to my face every single day and still hold me like I was the only one?”
But I knew the answer. Because I let him. Because I trusted him. And now, all I had left were his lies, her photos, and a heart that didn’t know whether to shatter or scream.
