My Asexual Husband Slept with His Best Friend for 8 Years Chapter 07

My Asexual Husband Slept with His Best Friend for 8 Years Chapter 07 Three Months

Three years later. In Paris.

I sat by the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down at the lights glittering along the Sxine, a glass of whiskey in my hand and three years of silence behind me. Not bad for a woman who used to beg her husband to touch her.

Jack and I had turned our architecture firm into an empire. Top three in Eurxpe.

She was back. The woman who’d given up everything. And this time, she wasn’t giving anything up.

The door swung open. Jack walked in with a newspaper, his face doing that thing where he was trying really hard not to look worried.

“Chloe, there’s something in the news you should probably see.”

He set the paper down in front of me.

One glance at the headline and my stomach dropped.

“BREAKING: Westbrook Resident Accused of Killing Girlfriend, Surrenders to Police”

“Reports claim he endured months of forced confinement, psychological control, and abuse before snapping and fatally stabbing his girlfriend in the neck during the confrontation.”

The photo was shit quality-grainy surveillance footage-but I knew that face. Would know it anywhere.

It was Sebastian. After three years.

I’d thought I was over this.

But the moment I saw that picture, my hand tightened around the glass.

Confinement.

That word stuck in my throat like a shard of glass.

My mind flashed to all those marks I’d seen on his body back then. Bite marks carved into his chest. Bruises ringing his waist like handprints. His knees always scraped raw.

Back then, I’d thought it was passion. Consensual. Wild.

Serena had always called it love. And it was dark.

Turns out he wasn’t just destroying me all those years-he was getting destroyed right alongside me.

But he chose it, didn’t he?

I went back to the page and read on.
“Serena De La Cruz, 31, had a documented psychiatric history and allegedly subjected the victim to

stained physical and psychological abuse. On the night in question, witnesses report she strangled him during an alcohol-fueled altercation. He grabbed a knife from the table and stabbed her repeatedly in self- defense.”

I set the paper down and took a sip of whiskey.

Tasted nothing. Felt everything.

Jack hovered at the window, watching me. “You okay?”

I smiled.

“Yeah. I’m great, actually.”

And I meant it.

Three years ago, Sebastian smashed a bottle over my head, kicked me into that pool-the one with acid that ate through my skin-and walked away. Scooped up Serena and left me bleeding on the ground.

And now? The woman who ruined me had finally ruined him too.

Funny how karma works.

“How much time is he facing?” I asked. Like I was ordering coffee.

“The case is still ongoing,” he said. “But from what I’ve heard, he could be looking at ten years or more.”

I nodded. Said nothing.

My phone buzzed. Out of nowhere.

The number had a Westbrook country code. No name attached.

I stared at the number, and something in my gut went cold.

I picked up.

The line went quiet. Long enough that I could hear my own heartbeat through the speaker.

Then his voice. After everything.

It was hoarse. Exhausted. Like every last bit of life had been wrung out of him.

“Chloe.”

Phone in my hand. Three years between us. I said nothing.

“I killed her.” Three words. The line went quiet. Then the smallest sound-like a man breathing for the first time in these years.
She kept me in that basement for three months.” His voice cracked. “Three months, Chloe I thought I was

ing to lose my mind.”

I stayed silent.

“I’m not asking you to forgive me.”

A broken sound escaped him. He was crying now.

“I just needed to hear your voice. One last time… before I lost it completely.”

A pause. He swallowed hard.

“I hate her. I hate myself more. I hate every day I spent with her. I hate that I watched you get pushed into that pool. I hate that I walked away. I know I was wrong. I know I’ll never be able to pay it back.”

“Sebastian.”

I cut him off.

He stopped talking. His breath came fast as he waited for me to say something else.

I stared out at the darkening sky beyond the window, silent for a long time.

Long enough for him to lose his breath waiting.

“Chloe?”

“Does it hurt?” I heard myself ask.

I could hear him trying not to make a sound. The kind of silence that comes from a man who’s just been gutted.

And then-barely-a sound. Like something coming back from a place you can’t get to.

And in that crying, I heard it all-regret, bitterness, despair. And something else I couldn’t name.

I closed my eyes. Let the dark fill in the parts the crying wouldn’t.

Eight years of marriage. Eight years of him refusing me. And eight years of me believing him.

Turned out his resistance was real. Just not the kind I thought.

Not the kind that meant no. The kind that meant her.

But none of it was mine to carry anymore. Not the resistance. Not the three years between us.

“Don’t die in there,” I said. The way you say it when you mean: I won’t come either. “Do your time. Every day of it. And when you get out, live a new life.”

“Chloe…”

Stop calling me.” And I hung up.

The number glowed. The finger waited. Like the screen knew what was about to happen.

Three seconds of nothing. Then I pressed the block button.

Jack’d been watching the whole time beside me. His lips pressed together, like he wanted to say something and knew better.

I raised my glass toward him.

“To the past,” I said. “And to the future.”

He stood still. Then smiled. Raised his glass too.

“To the future,” he said. And for a second, the past went quiet between us.

The whiskey went down. First the burn. Then something almost sweet.

Outside, Pxris lit up. The lights flickered on, one by one.

Three years ago. Acid on my face. My hands on the ground. Him walking away with Serena. Like I was already dead. Like I’d already stopped mattering.

I thought I was dead then.

But I was still alive. Still standing. Still doing great, actually.

He finally got free. Just not the way anyone should have to. I found mine. In a glass of whiskey. In a city that doesn’t know my name.