Page 106 of Wells

His hand comes up to his face and he drags it down, mouth open, no sound.

The silence stretches. I wait for him to say something, anything.

"You're not proving you're innocent by telling me the lie was recent. You're confessing that every single day since you found out was a day you chose not to tell me. And the days that mattered most to me were the ones where you kept choosing silence."

He exhales hard, shoulders dropping, and his voice comes out low and raw.

"You're right."

The agreement hits me harder than an argument would have. I wanted him to push back, to give me something to fight against so he could prove me wrong, he could show me how this is different.

There is no defense, no excuse, no attempt to rewrite what he did into something softer.

He opens his eyes and looks straight at me.

"I will tell anyone you want what I did, how I betrayed you. Ridge. HR. Your friend. I'll never lie to you again, never withhold anything from you."

He's trying to make this lie different than the one my parents built our life on. But what he doesn't get is that the original lie, the betrayal, is the point. And it can't be undone, no matter what he says or does now.

"It doesn't matter."

He goes still.

"It doesn't matter how sorry you are, Wells. You can be devastated and you can tattoo it across your forehead, but it doesn't change what I now know."

His face shifts, and I see the question before he asks it.

"Which is what?"

"That I don't get to be loved without a lie underneath it. That I'm always the last one to know the truth about my own life."

I watch my words land on him. His hand drops from his chest. His breathing goes shallow.

He turns his head to the side and purses his lips before turning back to me, his eyes locking on mine.

"I'm not doing this, Wells," I say calmly. "There's nothing you can say or do that will undo what has been done. I will never trust you fully again, and I can't live like that."

I take a breath, and it hurts going in.

The silence stretches. I watch him accept it. He can't argue the point. He can't reframe it into something softer. He nods once and keeps his gaze on my eyes.

I realize he's not going to try to change my mind.

That should feel like relief.

"I need you to leave."

He straightens and turns toward the door. He moves slowly. His hand closes around the doorknob before he stops.

I force the words out before I lose them.

"I'm leaving Stone Intermodal."

He turns his head but doesn't look back at me fully.

"I can't walk into that building and sit across from you. I can't do the work and pretend this didn't happen. It's too painful."

He faces me now, his expression is unreadable.