Chapter 6
Eliana spent over a week in the hospital, and Milo never came back.
He texted saying he’d be out of town on business for a while, occasionally having his assistant drop off gifts and supplements.
Looking at the jewelry and health products piling up in her room, Eliana felt absolutely nothing
She opened her phone to find photos Harper had been sending of her and Milo together over the past few days.
In the pictures, they sat on the cliffs at Big Sur watching the sunrise over the Pacific. They stood side by side at Glacier Point in Yosemite, dwarfed by the magnificent granite peaks. In the stunning Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, they lit candles together and made wishes before the beautiful stained glass windows…
After the photos came a long message from Harper:
“Every place in these photos is somewhere Milo took me when we were dating. We made the most beautiful memories in these places and promised each other forever. Now he says he’s taking me away to help me heal, but every single stop has been revisiting our old haunts. Don’t you think that means he’s hoping to go back to the way things were, just like I am?”
Eliana read through the messages silently without responding.
After her injuries healed, she went home alone, but at the front door she heard familiar voices–Jake and Ryan were
inside.
“Dude, you already bankrupted Harper’s ex, right? The guy’s completely screwed and will never recover, and Harper’s doing better. So why are you getting hammered the second you get back?”
Through the slightly open door, Eliana saw empty bottles scattered around Milo.
He looked wasted, his usually sharp features flushed, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
“I just hate myself for being such a coward back then. Why couldn’t I swallow my damn pride? Why didn’t I fight for us? Why did I waste five whole years torturing myself while letting Harper get destroyed by some piece of shit?”
Jake and Ryan exchanged looks, clearly fed up.
“Are you serious right now?” Jake said, his voice getting heated. “Harper left you, man. She chose to walk away, chose to marry that loser, chose to cut everyone off when we all warned her he was bad news. That’s on her, not
you.”
Ryan was even more blunt. “And what about Eliana? Your actual wife? The woman who’s been nothing but amazing to you for three years while you’ve been obsessing over someone who dumped you?”
“Ryan’s right,” Jake continued, clearly pissed off. “Eliana deserves so much better than this. She gave up her entire career for you, takes care of your parents like they’re her own, puts up with you being gone half the time without a
I in a Coffin
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Chapter 6
single complaint. And this is how you repay her? Getting drunk over your ex?”
“She literally almost died last week and you weren’t even there!” Ryan’s voice cracked with anger. “We had to hear about it from the hospital because you were too busy playing knight in shining armor for Harper. That’s messed up,
Milo.”
Jake leaned forward, his tone getting serious. “Look, we’ve been friends since college, but I’m gonna be real with you–if you keep treating Eliana like garbage, you’re gonna lose the best thing that ever happened to you. Harper had her chance and she blew it. Eliana’s been here the whole time, loving you unconditionally, and you’re throwing it away for what? Nostalgia?”
The room went dead quiet. Milo finished his drink and whispered, “She could be perfect, but she’s still not her.”
Those words hit Eliana like a physical blow, shattering what was left of her heart into irreparable pieces.
Her hands shook uncontrollably. She pressed her back against the door, eyes squeezed shut, remembering when Milo had agreed to marry her.
Back then he’d said they made sense together.
Now he was saying she wasn’t the one.
If he saw their entire marriage as settling for second best, then what had her three years of complete devotion been worth?
Nothing. Less than nothing.
She’d been a placeholder. A warm body filling space while he pined for someone else. A consolation prize he’d accepted out of obligation to her dying father.
Standing there in the hallway of what she’d thought was their home, listening to the man she’d loved with everything in her dismiss her as fundamentally inadequate, Eliana felt something inside her die completely.
Not just her hope–her entire capacity to keep pretending this could work.
She was done. Not just with the marriage, but with the version of herself who’d believed she could earn his love through sheer force of will.
It was time to stop being the wrong woman desperately trying to become the right one.
It was time to remember who she’d been before she’d lost herself trying to be enough for someone who would never choose her.
