Page 123 of The Love Operation

Nausea balls up in my gut. I don’t want to see the things I missed—the subtle signs that he wasn’t right.

But the picture’s incomplete without him.

Chapter 31

How It Ended with Benedict Calder

Before I dive too far into the past, I start with his most recent words to me.

I was so in love with you that I couldn’t move on. Not even when I tried.

His face as he said it—the rawness, the crack in his voice, the physical manifestation of heartbreak—fills my vision.

I’m not over you. I never was.

Even now, my body responds the same way it did then: a throb of desire, a spike of anger, a wave of sadness. It swirls together into a familiar confusion that has followed me like a shadow for years.

I fall back on my bed, eyes to the ceiling. My body sinks as if the mattress is trying to swallow me whole.

How can someone be that convincing if he wasn’t telling the truth?

And if he was telling the truth, why did we end like we did?

The question clamps around my chest, cutting off blood supply. For a moment, I go cold all over. Gooseflesh rises on my skin—fear, prickling up like a warning of something I can’t see, only feel.

I could spiral here. I’ve done it before. But I push through the heaviness, the questions, the ache. I want the truth. The full story. Not just the pain at the end, but everything that came before it. I want resolution.

I start at the breakup—again.

My surroundings change.

The warmth hits me first—his hand wrapped around mine, the familiar pressure of skin against skin. The same picnic table sits between us. I thought we’d been having ice cream, but that wasn’t right. Afternoon light filters through wispy clouds, drawn across the sky like sheer curtains. His eyes are red rimmed, his shoulders hunched, like he’s already halfway gone.

“I can’t do this anymore, Cordelia,” he says.

The words land differently this time. Not softer. Just . . . slower, like a procedure he’s studied a hundred times but is now performing for the first time.

What do you mean? I hear my past self ask. Her voice is tight, already bracing. I feel her tension layered over mine. The dread arrives fast and mean. I want to save her, warn her, because she doesn’t see it coming.

“I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not anymore. I don’t feel the same way you do. Life is different for me. And it kills me to tell you this because I do care about you. Too much.”

But not enough.

She can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

We can’t breathe.

And though I try—try to remain separate, an observer—I feel myself pulled under by her pain. Unlike her—that version of me—I know what’s coming, and still, it hurts like it’s happening all over again.

And then:

“I can’t be with you. No matter how much I want to be.”

I watch myself go still. Harden. The way I locked down and stayed rigid just to survive it. I suck in air, like a syringe pulling fluid from a vial, sit straighter, nod like I’m fine.

I wasn’t.

I’m not.