My Cheating Boyfriend Thought I Was Obedient—So I Married Someone Else Chapter 04

My Cheating Boyfriend Thought I Was Obedient—So I Married Someone Else Chapter 04

Emotional wounds are the cleanest kind. They cut fast.

After I got back from the hotel, a fever hit me. I drifted through heavy sleep.

And I saw the nineteen-year-old version of myself. The one Kael forgot.

Kael Voss had looks that could ruin people. Even without money or power, he’d have a line of women waiting just to date him.

But he had both. The looks. The family name.

He liked women who burned hot and bright. Actresses. Models. Always, without exception.

No one thought he’d ever look at a girl like me. The good girl. Nothing to offer but obedience.

But then, when he’d had his fill of every flavor life could serve, when everything bored him—

He noticed me.

It was dusk. A secluded path on campus. The first time I saw him, a girl was wrapped around his arm.

Lila Moore. So beautiful that even after the school stopped doing those tacky campus beauty votes, everyone still called her the queen.

Kael spent money like it was nothing. His name was the only thing about him everyone knew, and it echoed across the whole university.

Every time Lila went out with him, she came back with gifts worth tens of thousands.

She wanted to try the celebrity dream. Kael flicked his wrist and suddenly Lila, who had zero portfolio, was shooting magazines and landing brand deals.

She was hanging off him, acting cute. I glanced up.

Kael’s face was blank. The cigarette between his fingers flared, then dimmed. Maybe he was getting bored.

He tilted his chin toward me to distract her. “Who’s that?”

Lila immediately got defensive. She reached up to block his view. “She’s the good type. Not our kind of crowd.”

I ducked my head and walked faster. Kael gave a careless laugh. Didn’t say a word.

My whole life, I’d been the daughter people praised for being easy.

My mom raised me alone. Her love came wrapped in layers and layers of rules.

My curfew was always 9:00 PM. My hair couldn’t grow past my shoulders. My bangs had to be cut above my eyebrows.

Inside her airtight protection, I grew into the most obedient shape.

Old-fashioned. Docile. Keeping every social rule ever written.

I borrowed a library book once and dragged myself out of a sickbed to return it. Terrified of overdue fines.

I thought my life would follow that path forever. Obedient. Predictable.

Until Kael Voss reached out his hand to me.

That hand. It was the apple Eve handed to Adam.

Temptation. Ruin. Beautiful poison.

Later, Lila found out. She was shocked. And she said the same words to me, just with the roles reversed. “Kael Voss isn’t our kind. Don’t fall in.”

I told her I wouldn’t.

But later, all that love that couldn’t land—it wrapped around my bones like thin wire. Coil by coil.

I used to think someone as rotten as Kael—

If I just tried it, if I suffered through it, I could walk away clean. Straight onto the right path.

But the worst thing about rotten people? When they’re not rotten all the way through. When they leave you a sliver of real.

That’s what kills you.

I don’t know if he was born knowing how to charm. Or if he just made an exception for me.

Cars. Properties. Endless designer gifts. All routine.

I told him I grew up under strict rules. So many things I’d never done. Never watched a sunrise. Never chased a sunset.

He lifted me out of bed at four in the morning and drove over an hour to stand on a mountaintop, waiting for dawn.

I was on a business trip once. Mentioned offhand I’d left my stuffed animal at home. Couldn’t sleep without it.

He was overseas at the time. He laughed around his cigarette on the phone. “Oh yeah? What are you gonna do?”

Two hours later, his private jet touched down on the hotel rooftop.

The crew had even tied a beautiful ribbon around my old stuffed animal. Wished me goodnight and sweet dreams.