Five Years a Secret, Now I Deny We Ever Met Chapter 03

Five Years a Secret, Now I Deny We Ever Met Chapter 03

“Don’t be so emotional?”

Those words were like an icy key, flipping a switch deep inside me.

I looked at him. At that face, so used to controlling everything, so steeped in its own entitlement. In those deep eyes, I could clearly see my own reflection—disheveled and carrying a bag of trash.

Suddenly, I laughed. My shoulders shook with it.

Sebastian frowned, baffled. “What are you laughing at?”

I didn’t answer. I just wiped the smile from my face, erasing the last trace of emotion. I walked around him, headed straight for the distant dumpsters, and threw the heavy black bag inside. It landed with a dull thud, like a funeral that had come too late.

Then I walked back toward the dorm without a backward glance.

“Chloe!” he shouted behind me, his voice finally edged with undisguised anger.

I didn’t stop.

Our bigger picture? No. It was *his* bigger picture. I was just a pawn on his chessboard, one that could be sacrificed, appeased, and told to be “sensible” at any moment for the sake of that bigger picture.

And the pawn was done playing.

***

For the five years of our secret relationship, I had longed for the day we could finally go public.

I’d asked him about it more than once. He always fobbed me off with his old-money family logic.

“Chloe, you’re too impatient,” he once said, his arm around my shoulders, his voice a soft laugh in my ear. “That’s how new money behaves. Families like ours follow tradition. Graduation, a stable career, then marriage. Everything will fall into place.”

I believed him. I didn’t want to be the embarrassing, out-of-place scholarship girl who didn’t know the rules. I suppressed every longing and waited quietly for the “after graduation” he had promised.

And now, before graduation had even arrived, Isabella had stepped into the life I’d always dreamed of.

She held Sebastian’s arm openly as they moved through campus. In a perfectly tailored Chanel suit, she smiled gracefully at every trustee and professor who came forward to congratulate them, as if she were born for it. They looked so well-matched, like a duke and his duchess, the perfect couple from the first page of a family history.

I ran into my advisor, Professor Albright, on the library steps. She looked at the beautiful couple in the distance and let out a complicated sigh.

“I always thought Sebastian would end up with a partner like you—someone who was his intellectual and creative equal,” she said, adjusting her glasses and looking at me with regret. “I didn’t expect him to take the predictable path after all and choose someone with the right pedigree.”

She patted my hand, her tone tinged with relief. “Thank God I never publicly endorsed your ‘academic collaboration’ to the board. Otherwise, this would be terribly awkward for everyone.”

I clenched my teeth and said nothing.

My advisor went on, “Chloe, don’t let this distract you. Your talent is your most valuable asset. Speaking of which, that mysterious boyfriend of yours is really something. Your final Rhodes Scholarship interview was such an important occasion, and he couldn’t even be there for you?”

Bile rose in my throat.

On the day of the Rhodes interview, I had been so nervous I’d barely slept. I called Sebastian just to hear his voice.

But he’d been impatient. “Chloe, I’m in an emergency meeting with the family trust lawyers. It’s a multi-million dollar investment. I can’t get away. You’re the best. You don’t need me.”

I believed him. I never doubted his sense of duty to his family.

Until I was in the rare books room of the library and accidentally overheard two legacy students talking.

“What’s with Sebastian lately? He’s missed several meetings with the trust. My dad is furious.”

“You don’t know? He hasn’t been busy with investments. He’s been with Isabella the whole time, helping her family clean up their mess. Meeting lawyers, visiting trustees… he’s more invested than her own father.”

My blood ran cold. My strength seemed to drain away, and I had to grip a bookshelf to stay upright.

I heard my own voice, dry as sandpaper. “Are you saying… Sebastian has spent the past few months helping Isabella with the donation fund issue?”

The two students turned and saw me. Embarrassment flashed across their faces, but they nodded.

One of them, a blonde girl who clearly thought there was nothing to hide, shrugged. “Yeah. Everyone knows. Last month, on your birthday, right? After Isabella’s father was called in by the board, he had a heart attack. Sebastian flew back from New York overnight and stayed at the hospital for days. He really is the perfect fiancé.”

My birthday. Last month.

Sebastian had booked a table at the best restaurant in Boston. Halfway through dinner, he took a call, his face changed, and he hurriedly shoved a Tiffany-blue box into my hands.

“Chloe, I’m so sorry,” he’d said, his face a mask of apology. “The MD at Goldman needs an emergency transatlantic video conference. It might go all night. I’ll make it up to you. We’ll celebrate in Napa.”

That day, before he hung up, I couldn’t stop myself from asking one question.

“Which matters more? A meeting, or my birthday?”

His deep sigh came through the phone, followed by an impatient accusation. “Chloe, we’re adults. Don’t ask such childish questions.”

I had naively thought the only things competing for his attention were me and his family’s business.

I thought every time he was absent, it was for the sake of “our future.”

I never imagined reality would be such a brutal slap in the face.

Every rejection, every brush-off disguised as “family business,” had just been an excuse for him to play the tender savior in another woman’s world.

In his world, there was his family, there was me, and there was also Isabella, who would always have “urgent priority.”