Not Your Bride Anymore

Chapter 4: He Will Regret It

Avery turned before her mother could see too much. She went upstairs, past Ruby’s room, where familiar game sounds leaked through the door along with Ruby’s urgent voice.

“No, no, don’t chase him under tower. Why would you chase him under tower? Please tell me this is performance art.”

Avery knocked once.

No answer.

She opened the door.

Ruby was sprawled across a beanbag chair, headset crooked over her hair, phone clutched in both hands. On her screen, bright little characters darted through a battlefield.

Avery leaned against the doorframe. “Aren’t your senior finals next week?”

Ruby jolted. “I’m reviewing.”

“With monsters?”

“Strategy builds critical thinking.”

“Impressive.”

Ruby’s fingers flew. “One round. I swear.”

“You said that yesterday.”

“That was yesterday’s one round.”

Avery walked in and stood over her.

Ruby looked up, guilt battling desperation on her face. Then she thrust the phone at Avery. “Take over. I’m almost at a rank promotion. If I quit now, I’ll lose points. If I fail my exams, I can retake. If I lose this match, I lose my soul.”

Avery stared at her.

Ruby clasped her hands together. “Please.”

“You are ridiculous.”

“And yet you love me.”

Avery took the phone.

Ruby scrambled off the beanbag, grabbed her textbook, and pointed at the screen. “Do not lose. That account is one match away from top regional ranking.”

“Go study.”

“I am studying your technique.”

“Ruby.”

“Fine.”

Ruby dropped at her desk and opened a book with theatrical suffering.

Avery glanced at the screen. The team was behind, but not by much. Ruby had been playing support badly and loudly. Avery sold two items, changed positioning, and waited near the river.

Thirty seconds later, she caught the enemy mid-laner alone and killed him at full health.

Ruby slowly turned in her chair.

“What,” she whispered, “was that?”

“Studying.”

“You play like that?”

Avery didn’t look up. “Sometimes.”

“Since when?”

“Since before you knew what a login screen was.”

Ruby’s mouth fell open. “You let Jason make you play support.”

Avery’s thumb paused for one beat.

Then she moved again, clean and fast.

“I chose to.”

Ruby watched her quietly.

The match ended in a comeback victory six minutes later.

Ruby took the phone back as if receiving a sacred object. “You are wasted in real life.”

Avery smiled. “Study.”

Ruby squinted at her. “Did you dump him?”

Avery turned toward the door.

“Good,” Ruby said.

Avery didn’t answer, but her hand lingered on the doorknob.

Behind her, Ruby added, softer, “He never deserved you.”

Avery left before she had to respond.

That night, Jason Blake hosted a party.

He did not call it that at first. He called it drinks. Then a few friends became ten. Ten became an entire private room at one of Westbridge’s most expensive clubs. Bottles arrived. Music pounded through the walls. Women in glittering dresses leaned against men who liked being seen with them.

“To freedom,” someone shouted.

Jason lifted his glass.

“To freedom,” he echoed.

The whiskey burned down his throat.

Across from him, Finn Crowley, who had never missed a chance to enjoy someone else’s scandal, grinned over the rim of his glass.

“First time I’ve ever heard of Jason Blake getting dumped.”

Jason’s fingers tightened around the tumbler.

“Careful,” he said.

Finn laughed. “Relax. Everyone knows it won’t last. Miss Perfect will cool off.”

Jason leaned back, mouth curving. “Maybe I don’t want it to last.”

The men around him made appreciative sounds.

“Finally,” someone said. “You’re free.”

Jason let the words settle over him.

Free.

That was what he had wanted, wasn’t it?

No more soft questions when he came home late. No more wedding appointments. No more Avery standing quietly beside him at dinners, beautiful and composed, making everyone assume he was a better man than he was.

No more good girl watching him with those eyes that always seemed to expect the boy he used to be.

“She was boring,” Jason said.

The lie slid out smoothly.

“She wanted everything clean and proper. I never asked for a perfect little wife.”

Finn clinked his glass against Jason’s. “Congratulations, then.”

Jason drank.

Later, when the room had grown messier and louder, someone suggested a team match. Phones came out. Jackets were tossed aside. Women leaned against shoulders and laughed at things they didn’t understand.

Jason chose his usual marksman.

For years, Avery had played support beside him.

Not because she was bad at the game. Some part of him knew that. He had seen flashes of it when she forgot to pretend. She was better than half his friends.

But with him, she chose support.

She followed. Shielded. Healed. Waited.

Like she did in everything else.

Finn’s date picked support this time.

Jason’s jaw tightened. “Who told you to pick that?”

The woman blinked. “I only know this role.”

Finn kissed her cheek. “Ignore him. Stay with me.”

The game began.

Jason went bottom lane alone.

His character moved across the screen, sleek and familiar. He farmed well. Dodged well. Killed twice in the first five minutes. His score climbed. Everyone shouted praise.

He felt nothing.

At the first major fight, he saw an opening and lunged forward.

“Come with me,” he snapped out of habit. “Shield me.”

The support attached to someone else.

Jason stared.

For half a second, his mind refused to understand.

Then the enemy mage caught him in a stun. Damage exploded across his screen. His health vanished.

Gray.

Defeat music began somewhere near his left. Someone cursed. Someone laughed too loudly and then stopped.

Jason looked at the dead character on his phone.

Not his support.

Not his Avery.

She was not hovering beside him anymore.

She was not waiting for his call. Not smoothing over his mistakes. Not taking his side by default because once, when they were children, he had stood between her and a group of bullies and declared her his to protect.

His chest tightened so sharply that it felt like anger.

He threw the phone onto the sofa and stood.

“Jason?” Finn called.

Jason walked out without answering.

Behind him, the room stayed quiet for a beat.

Then someone muttered, “I thought he was celebrating.”

Finn swirled his drink, watching the closed door.

“People celebrate funerals too,” he said. “Doesn’t mean nobody died.”

Avery did not know any of that.

For her, life became ordinary in the cruelest way.

She woke up. Went to work. Answered emails. Sat in sessions. Reviewed notes. Ate lunch at her desk. Smiled when colleagues asked if she was all right, because all right was vague enough to be true.

At Dawnlight Counseling Center, no one made a scene. That was one of the reasons Avery liked the place. Pain came through their doors every day. People there knew better than to grab at someone else’s wound just because they noticed blood.

By evening, most of the office had emptied.

“Avery, don’t stay too late,” one of the other counselors called from the doorway.

“I won’t.”

Which was a lie.

She stayed.

There was a case file open on her desk, one she had agreed to take despite everyone warning her it would be difficult. A teenage girl. Severe trauma. Withdrawal. Refusing to speak to her parents. Panic responses, appetite changes, long periods of dissociation.

Avery read every line twice.

Then she wrote questions in the margins.

What made her feel safe?

What did she still respond to?

What had been taken from her besides speech?

The office lights had been turned off except for the lamp on Avery’s desk. Beyond the window, Westbridge blurred into black glass and scattered lights.

At some point, her eyes drifted away from the file.

To the pink snow globe sitting at the corner of her desk.

It was ugly.

There was no kinder word for it.

A cheap little thing with a plastic base, glitter suspended in cloudy water, and two tiny figures inside that did not look like lovers so much as badly painted strangers trapped in a storm.

Jason had given it to her on Valentine’s Day three years ago.

Or rather, his assistant had bought it, wrapped it, and delivered it with a card Jason probably signed in the car.

Avery had loved it anyway.

She had placed it on her desk like treasure.

At the time, she had told herself the gift mattered because it came from him.

Now she looked at it and felt something inside her bend.

Not for the snow globe.

Not even for Jason.

For the girl she had been, so hungry for proof that she would turn neglect into romance with her own hands.

Avery reached out and touched the glass.

The glitter shifted.

A memory rose with it.

She was seven years old, standing in a schoolyard with her hands clenched in her skirt. She had not been speaking much then. After her father died, words had become heavy things, too big for her throat.

Children were very good at finding weakness.

They had surrounded her near the fence, laughing at the girl who would not talk.

Then Jason had shoved his way through them.

Small, furious, beautiful in the fearless way only children could be.

“She’s mine to protect,” he had shouted. “Say one more word to her and I’ll hit you.”

He had been ridiculous.

He had also been the first person to stand in front of her.

Avery lowered her head.

The first tear fell onto the snow globe with a soft tap.

Then another.

She pressed her fingers over her mouth, but the sound came anyway, small and broken.

She had not cried when she found the woman in his hotel robe.

She had not cried when he admitted he gambled away the ring.

She had not cried when she told him they were done.

Now, in an empty office, in front of a cheap pink snow globe, she cried for the boy who had once protected her and the man who had made that memory impossible to keep.

Her phone rang.

Avery inhaled sharply and wiped her face with both hands.

Unknown number.

The last four digits were all eights.

For some reason, before she answered, she already knew.

She pressed the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

There was a pause on the other end.

Then a low male voice said, “Avery?”

Her throat tightened.

She managed a quiet, uneven, “Yes.”

The man’s voice remained calm, but something in it seemed to slow.

“It’s Callum Rhodes.”