He Cheated, So I Drank the Love Potion Myself Chapter 04

He Cheated, So I Drank the Love Potion Myself Chapter 04

I held the phone, my fingers slowly going cold.

News of my recent… activities… must have reached them.

But I really didn’t think I had gone that far.

Not compared to what Reed had done to me, at least.

The day I discovered he was cheating, all I did was smash the Porsche he’d bought his mistress with a golf club.

All I did was storm into his company and wreck his office in front of his employees.

And one time, when he took a lover to a charity gala, I showed up in a siren-red dress and slapped them both, one after the other, in front of everyone.

I thought that if I embarrassed him, if I just made him lose a little control, he would understand that betrayal came with a price.

I was wrong.

In his circle, infidelity was practically an unspoken rule.

No one truly blamed him.

They just looked at me like I was a lunatic, then clapped Reed on the shoulder and said, “Divorce her. Why are you still wasting your time with her?”

I didn’t want a divorce.

So my outbursts became his excuse to stray even further.

He started staying away from home on purpose.

He even came back with marks from other women, just to provoke me.

He knew he couldn’t handle me on his own, so he ran to my parents with a twisted version of the story.

He knew exactly whose side they would take.

He used them to pressure me, to make me shut up and accept my fate.

So when those words crashed over me again, the rage I’d held in check for so long finally erupted.

I snapped into the phone.

“What are you talking about, ‘it’s normal’? He cheated on me. He betrayed our marriage. And somehow *I’m* the one at fault?”

The voice on the other end rose instantly.

“What do you know, you stupid girl? Marrying a man like Reed was the luckiest thing that ever happened to you! Don’t you dare be ungrateful!”

“I’m telling you, if you make trouble for him again, if you so much as mention divorce again, we’ll act like we never had a daughter!”

“You have a perfectly good life and you’re determined to ruin it!”

Then, she hung up.

I slowly set my phone on the table.

My whole body was shaking.

My chest felt tight, as if a great weight were pressing down on it.

Two lifetimes.

In my last life, I had listened to those words. I had endured.

In this life, I thought starting over would make things different.

But the deepest cuts still came from the people who were supposed to be closest to me.

That feeling of being utterly misunderstood, of being trampled by their ugly words, came rushing back.

Every raw emotion clogged my throat.

Everyone said Reed was young, brilliant, and successful.

So many people said that it was nothing for rich men to have a few women on the side.

But who remembered?

In the first few years of his startup, when he was hitting wall after wall and his bank account was nearly empty, I took out every dollar I had saved from years of work and placed it in front of him.

I told him, “It’s okay if you lose it all. I can always earn more.”

Back then, we were squeezed into a tiny Brooklyn apartment, eating cheap pizza on the floor.

He held my hand, his eyes shining.

He swore he would never betray me as long as he lived.

Holding my wineglass, I walked barefoot to the floor-to-ceiling window.

Outside, the lights of Manhattan glittered against the dark sky.

That provocative Instagram Story hadn’t really hurt me.

But my parents’ phone call was a knife, twisting in an old wound.

My eyes suddenly burned.

I tilted my head back, blinking hard, trying to force the tears away.

I drained the wine in my glass in one gulp.

The only thing left in my mouth was bitterness.

So I’d misjudged someone. Fine.

Admitting I had chosen the wrong person wasn’t that hard.

It was okay.

In my last life, I had tied my entire self-worth to one man.

In the end, I lost myself completely.

In this life, all I had to do was not make the same mistake.

I looked out at the city lights and said quietly to myself:

“It’s okay, Ophelia. You’re hurting.”

“You chose the wrong person.”

“And your parents didn’t have your back.”

“It’s normal to feel awful right now.”

“If you want to cry, then cry.”

After I said that, I curled into a ball, hugging my knees, and finally let myself sob.

No one was watching.

No one came to comfort me.

There was only the sound of my own crying in the vast living room.

It was a terrible, ugly sound, but it was real.

I cried for a long time.

Until I had no strength left, only small, broken gasps.

I lifted my head. My face was streaked with tears, my voice thick and raw.

“It’s okay to cry.”

“I won’t judge you for it.”

“Right, Ophelia?”

Just then, my phone rang.

My body jolted, as if I’d been shocked awake.

I walked over and grabbed the phone.

The screen’s glow hurt my eyes.

Not wanting anyone to hear that I’d been crying, I sniffled hard, wiped my face on my sleeve, drank half a glass of water, and cleared my throat.

Then I answered.

“Hello?”

“Ophelia!” It was my best friend. “Did you hear? There might be an aurora in Alaska soon. A rare one. Do you want to go? If we can get a good set of shots, it’ll be so worth it!”

Aurora.

I was a photographer.

As a photographer, an opportunity like that was almost impossible to turn down.

In my last life, I had stayed behind to stand guard over my rotting marriage to Reed. I hadn’t gone.

Later, I missed out on so many other places, too.

At that thought, my heart clenched.

“Sure,” I answered, almost before she finished speaking. “I’ll go. I’m booking my flight right now.”