Chapter 2

I waited until Luka finished his morning routine, watching him hum while he knotted his tie—the same tie I'd bought him for his birthday last year. The normalcy of it made my stomach turn. How could he stand there, preparing for another day of secret messages and stolen glances, while I sat here with the weight of his betrayal crushing my chest?

"We need to talk," I said when he walked into the kitchen, his phone already in his hand.

He glanced up, and I saw the exact moment he registered my expression. His face shifted from casual morning pleasantness to wariness.

"About what?" But his voice had that careful quality it got when he knew he was in trouble.

I held up his phone. "About Brielle Cooper. About the months of messages. About the matching necklaces."

The color drained from his face. "Kyla, I can explain—"

"Good morning, beautiful," I read aloud from his phone, my voice steady despite the tremor in my hands. "That's what you texted her yesterday morning. At seven-fifteen. While you were still in bed. With me."

Luka sank into the chair across from me, his mouth opening and closing like he couldn't find words.

I kept reading. "'You understand me in ways no one else does.' 'Can't stop thinking about our talk yesterday.' 'Our special connection means everything.'" Each word felt like glass in my throat. "Five months, Luka. Five months of this."

"It's not what you think—"

"Then what is it?" I set the phone down with deliberate care. "Because it looks like you've been having an emotional affair with your subordinate while planning a wedding with me."

He ran both hands through his hair, destroying the careful styling. "It's just... it's just friendly workplace banter. She's young, she looks up to me. I was being a mentor."

"Mentors don't send good morning texts calling their mentees beautiful."

"You're overreacting," he said, and I watched something shift in his expression—desperation morphing into defensiveness. "Nothing physical happened. I never touched her. I never even kissed her."

The casual way he said it—like he deserved credit for not crossing that particular line—made fury rise in my chest like a tide.

"Oh, I should be grateful?" My voice came out sharper than I intended. "You've been emotionally intimate with another woman for months, buying her the same gifts you buy me, sharing inside jokes, having deep conversations, and I should thank you because you kept your hands to yourself?"

"That's not what I meant—"

"That's exactly what you meant." I stood up, needing distance from his wounded expression. "You think because you didn't sleep with her, this doesn't count as cheating."

"It was a minor mistake," he said, reaching for me. "People make mistakes, Kyla. We can work through this."

I stepped back before he could touch me. "A mistake is forgetting to pick up milk. This is a choice. Hundreds of choices, made every single day for months."

My phone buzzed on the counter—a text from my mother asking about dinner plans for the weekend. Without thinking, I called her, my hands shaking as I dialed.

"Mom," I said when she answered, and my voice broke on the word.

Twenty minutes later, she was at our door, still in her yoga clothes, her face set in the no-nonsense expression she'd worn when I was a child and had scraped my knee.

"What's all this about?" she asked, looking between Luka's stricken face and my tear-stained one.

I explained everything—the necklaces, the messages, the months of deception. I waited for her maternal outrage, for her to wrap me in her arms and tell me I deserved better.

Instead, she sighed and sat down heavily on our couch.

"Honey," she said, her tone gentle but firm, "you need to put this in perspective. He didn't sleep with her. He didn't have a physical affair. This is just talking."

I stared at her, feeling like the ground was shifting beneath my feet. "Just talking?"

"Men need attention. It's how they're wired." She glanced at Luka, who was nodding eagerly. "At least he chose someone appropriate—a colleague, not some random woman. And he came home to you every night."

"He was building a relationship with another woman," I said, my voice hollow. "An intimate, emotional relationship."

"But not a physical one," Mom emphasized. "That's what matters. That's the line that counts."

I looked at Luka, saw the hope flickering in his eyes as my mother spoke. Saw him thinking this might save him.

"You two need to work this out," Mom continued. "Five years together. An engagement. You can't throw that away over some text messages."

The room felt like it was closing in on me. My fiancé had betrayed me, and my mother was telling me to be grateful it wasn't worse.