He Chose My Best Friend, Now He Wants Me Back Chapter 06

He Chose My Best Friend, Now He Wants Me Back Chapter 06

When Ben walked in, he found Sloane curled up by the door, trembling like a leaf.

“She’s not answering?” he asked, his voice raw.

Sloane looked up, grabbing his pant leg like a drowning woman. “It’s not just that… her number is out of service!”

She held up the phone, the cold system message glowing on the screen.

“She’s gone, Ben! She really left! She deleted us!” Sloane’s voice rose in terror, breaking into sobs.

A chill crept down Ben’s spine.

He wasn’t thinking about Mara’s pained expression anymore. He was seeing her eyes at the boutique after he’d pushed her.

There were no tears. No anger. Just a dead, hollow silence.

A coldness he had never seen.

“I’m going to find her.”

Without another word, he turned, grabbed his car keys, and bolted out the door.

For the first time, he was truly afraid.

Afraid that he was already too late.

Chicago’s nightscape blurred past his car, streetlights smearing into long, hazy streaks. He floored the gas, the engine’s roar a match for his frantic heartbeat. He had to find her. He had to explain. He could fix this.

As long as she was still there.

The car screeched to a halt in front of the apartment building they had shared for three years. He jumped out but then froze.

He didn’t dare go up.

He was terrified of finding a farewell letter.

Or worse.

But when he finally opened the door, his hands shaking, he was wrong.

There was nothing.

No letter. No blood. Not even a stick of furniture.

The living room, the dining room, the kitchen… every sofa, table, and chair they had picked out together was gone. The walls were bare, marked only by the faint nail holes where their pictures used to hang. Even the curtains were gone, leaving the floor-to-ceiling windows like vacant eyes staring into the night.

The apartment had been scrubbed clean.

Like a crime scene.

In the center of the floor lay two documents. One was a letter from a lawyer regarding the liquidation of their joint assets. The other was a confirmation of unilateral lease termination from the building’s management office.

Ben walked slowly into the bedroom.

They had planned their whole future in this room.

Now, all that remained were four empty walls and the sharp, chemical smell of cleaning products.

“Mara?”

He called her name, his voice a raw scrape.

Only the echo answered him.

That echo was a verdict.

It declared that he had been completely and utterly erased from her life.

Ben’s legs gave out. He leaned against the cold wall and slid to the floor.