Anger rolls and crackles through my chest. I get to my feet and explode, like I did the day he broke up with me. “You know what, James, first of all, fuck you.” My voice comes out strained with pain and disbelief. “Really, how dare you get engaged to me and then just… cheat like I meant nothing to you? If you were that unsatisfied in our relationship, why couldn’t you tell me without wasting seven years of my life?”

James gets on his feet, too. He finally meets my gaze, and I’m taken aback by how there’s not even a single bit of remorse in his face. He looks angry.

“Because I still loved you!” he yells. “I was just… scared. I only started seeing Daphne as a way to blow off steam so I could stay with you. But then one day, she asked me to choose. And at the time, she seemed like the more fun, less stressful option.”

I step back, baffled at his logic. While I was changing myself, making myself smaller and more palatable to keep the peace between us, he was… fucking someone else? And then he chose her over me, when I was the one with the ring?

“Why didn’t you tell me you were struggling so much with all the pressure?” I ask through gritted teeth. “We could have gone to couples counseling.”

He scoffs. “And what, have two therapy people breathing down my neck? You’re a fucking relationship advice columnist. Do you not realize how intimidating that is? If I told you everything that I was feeling, you’d probably try to therapize me like I’m one of your readers. And then you’d get an actual professional for backup to basically repeat everything you told me.”

I briefly close my eyes. Every single one of James’s words cuts through my heart like a knife. “You don’t know that, and we’ll never know how I’ll really react, because you didn’t even try to get help. Also, don’t blame me for something you did. Cheating to cope with things instead of talking is not normal!”

We glare at each other, wide-eyed and red-faced, breathing heavily and our nostrils flaring in the living room where we previously only used to laugh.

“This was a mistake,” I say, heading back to the door. “Just donate all my stuff to charity. Or dump it. I don’t want any reminders of the time we spent together.”

I don’t even give him a chance to respond before I leave the condo.

39: Gemma