Chapter 3
I stumbled out of the Veridian Path's building, my vision blurred with tears.
As if on cue, the sky opened up, and a hard rain began to fall.
Without thinking, my hand moved on its own, my thumb already hovering over Sebastian's contact in my phone.
Then the cold truth hit me: I could not call him. I had given up the right to ever call him for help again.
It was a ridiculous thought, but I suddenly realized that I did not even own an umbrella.
In twenty-six years, I had never needed one, because if it was raining, Sebastian just appeared.
My mind drifted to a memory from years ago, when I had chased a rare book all the way to the city's western edge.
It was pouring that day, a total downpour.
One call was all it took. Sebastian had run clear across the city from his campus on the east side to find me, umbrella in hand.
He had just smiled, wrapping my cold hands around a cup of hot chocolate.
"See, Violet?" he had said, pulling me under his umbrella. "You have me. I'll be your umbrella for life."
I blinked the memory away and sighed.
I was bracing myself to sprint into the rain when a hand shot out and grabbed my arm.
Sebastian pulled me back under the building's awning and guided me toward the underground garage.
"I'm taking you home," he said, his voice flat.
I'd deliberately moved to a place on the other side of the universe to get away from him.
It was a two-hour drive in the pounding rain.
When Sebastian finally pulled up to my building, I let myself look at him.
The circles under his eyes were deep and dark, like bruises. He looked like he hadn't slept in weeks.
And with a sickening certainty, it all clicked into place.
For sixty days, he had made this insane, four-hour round trip from the office to my apartment, just on the faint hope that I might open the door.
A bitter guilt burned in my throat.
"Thank you," I whispered.
When he finally spoke, his voice was hollowed out. "Three days from now, we're meeting at the jeweler's to cancel the order for our engagement ring."
I must have flinched, because his face hardened.
"What?" he sneered. "Still holding out for a wedding?
"Too late. While you were walking out of the office, I accepted the investment offer from the Brown family.
"You're ruthless, Violet. Did you really think I'd just wait around for you forever?"
It had all started three months ago, when I botched a career-making international merger.
Our company had lost almost all of its cash reserves and was facing total collapse.
That was when Evelyn Brown walked into my life.
She had offered me two choices.
Option A was that I could watch Veridian Path die.
Option B was that I had to leave Sebastian. Then, the Brown family would invest the money needed to save Veridian Path. And Evelyn would marry him.
Sebastian and I had spent five years building our company from nothing.
But the thought of starting over did not scare me. We had done it once, so we could do it again.
Without hesitation, I had torn her proposal to shreds right in front of her.
But that was when something truly hopeless happened.
In the middle of that financial crisis, I was diagnosed with bone cancer.
It was already stage four.
The doctors told me I had no chance of survival.
Javeriton was such a huge city.
Sebastian and I had clawed our way here from a town no one had ever heard of. We went from top students to running our own business.
Every single step of that journey had been a fight.
We had survived on spoiled food in a damp basement, and we had drunk ourselves sick at networking events trying to get anyone to believe in us.
We'd ended more than one night puking on the side of the road together.
We had paid for our success with our youth and our health.
I could not bear the idea of him having to do it all over again, alone, after I was gone.
For kids like us from poor families, nothing ever came easy. Surviving in this cutthroat, dog-eat-dog world was a battle from the start.
If my life was over, then Sebastian's had to be a good one.
I needed him to keep our dream, our company, Veridian Path, alive.
That was why I went back to Evelyn and took her deal.
Evelyn had known Sebastian and me since college.
She had been obsessed with Sebastian for years. I knew she was trying to steal him from me because she never bothered to hide it.
Now, she was finally getting what she always wanted.
I looked at Sebastian in the driver's seat and managed to crack a smile.
My throat was so tight that I could barely get the words out. "Alright," I said.
*****
Sebastian posted a picture of himself with Evelyn on Instagram, making them official.
My phone began to buzz and did not stop.
It was a flood of messages from all our friends, and every single one of them said the same thing: [Violet, what the hell happened? Did you dump Sebastian?]
I scrolled through all those messages, and it left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Of course, they all assumed it was me. If someone was leaving, it had to be me.
I couldn't blame them for thinking that, though.
I remembered a stupid game of Truth or Dare we played once at a college party.
Someone had asked what would make Sebastian and me break up with each other.
I was tipsy, and I pointed a finger at Sebastian, slurring my words. "If you cheated, I'd kill you. Slowly."
I remembered how the light from the window had caught his hair.
He merely laughed, tugging me onto his lap as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Then he kissed me, right there in front of all our friends, until I was quiet.
"Violet, babe, don't worry," he had whispered for only me to hear. "I'm yours. The only way this ends is if you get tired of me. I would never, ever hurt you."
The memory made my eyes burn.
We had done everything together, from leaving home for college in Javeriton to building this life.
Everyone who knew us saw how completely devoted he was to me. It felt like he saved all the best parts of himself just for me.
Nobody would ever believe Sebastian would be the one to walk away.
So, the questions just kept coming, all asking the same thing in different ways: [Violet, how could you? Did you find someone else? Sebastian loved you so much.]
The door at my back was the only thing holding me up, and then it was not. My legs gave out, and I crumpled to the floor.
The last of the day's sun bled through the window, painting streaks of orange and deep blue across the sky.
I had picked this apartment just because it was on the other side of the city from Sebastian.
It did not matter. The place was still full of him.
The mug on the table, the clothes in the closet, my laptop, the AC unit, the washer and dryer, all of it was from him.
He was the kind of man women dream of, the kind who was just built to be a husband.
He had been so good at loving me.
He took such incredible care of me that my friends were all shamelessly jealous.
He had planned our whole future, slotting me into every part of it with careful, loving hands.
But life was just a damn cruel joke.
We had loved each other with everything we had, but we were never going to get our happy ending.