Episode 4
1319 Words
SECRETS DON'T STAY BURIED ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY'RE THIS
Ava never thought healing would come with a side of paranoia.
But ever since that anonymous message, she’d been replaying her relationship with Cole like it was a crime documentary—pausing, rewinding, connecting dots she hadn’t seen before.
“You think you won. But you don’t know everything.”
It looped in her head like a warning, not a threat. And that terrified her more. Because what if it wasn’t about him trying to hurt her—but someone else he had hurt, too?
She didn’t mention it to Karina at first. Ava wasn’t ready to voice what she didn’t understand yet. But in their next therapy session, she let it slip.
“There’s something about it that felt… off,” Ava said, tracing her nail across the coffee cup in her lap. “Like it wasn’t about me.”
Karina raised an eyebrow. “Do you think this message was a warning?”
“Yeah,” Ava said softly. “And I think whoever sent it—they weren’t trying to threaten me. They were trying to tell me something.”
Later that night, curiosity won. Ava did the thing she swore she wouldn’t: she stalked Cole’s social media.
He hadn’t posted since the breakup, which wasn’t surprising. He’d always been more of a watcher than a sharer—more interested in lurking in comment sections than living out loud.
But there was one thing that stood out.
A tagged photo.
A woman. Late twenties. Sharp cheekbones. Empty eyes.
The caption read:
“Sometimes monsters wear your favorite scent.”
Tagged: @cole_wyatt
The photo was taken a week ago.
Ava’s stomach dropped.
She clicked the woman’s profile—mostly quotes, art, a few blurry selfies. But nothing personal. Just the way Ava’s page looked now.
Something about that hit deep.
She sent a message before she could second-guess herself.
> Hey. You don’t know me. But I saw your post about Cole. If you’re willing to talk… I think we might have some things in common.
She stared at the screen for a full minute before pressing send.
And when she finally did—her palms were sweating.
---
The reply came four hours later.
> His name’s still poison in my mouth. Let’s talk.
---
They met in a cafe Ava used to avoid—because she and Cole had once argued there so loudly, a stranger had offered her a napkin and a way out.
Now, it was where Ava sat across from the woman—name: Ember Lane.
Ember didn’t smile. She didn’t do small talk. She looked Ava in the eye and said, “He’s worse than you think.”
Ava braced herself.
“He didn’t just lie,” Ember began. “He played people like chess. Got in deep, then flipped the board and blamed everyone but himself.”
She listed things—phrases he used, tactics that mirrored Ava’s own trauma.
The gaslighting. The emotional neglect. The isolation masked as intimacy.
“He said I made him angry,” Ember whispered, eyes hard. “That I made him cheat. Like I should’ve been grateful he stayed at all.”
Ava swallowed hard.
“I told him I was pregnant once,” Ember said. “I wasn’t. I just wanted to see if he’d care. You know what he did?”
Ava shook her head.
“He sent me an abortion clinic’s number. Said it was a test. And I failed.”
Ava’s heart broke. Not just for Ember. But for all the versions of herself she’d buried to stay in Cole’s orbit.
“I stayed for another year after that,” Ember said, like a confession.
“I stayed for three,” Ava said. “So did I.”
The silence between them wasn’t awkward—it was sacred. The bond of survivors.
They weren’t just exes.
They were evidence.
---
Later that night, Ava lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.
Ember’s story haunted her. Not because it was so different—but because it was exactly the same.
And then it hit her.
There were probably others.
Cole didn’t stop with them. Men like him rarely did.
So Ava did what she hadn’t allowed herself to consider before—she started digging. Not through gossip. Through instinct.
Old followers. Comments on photos. Women who once liked every post, then disappeared. She found three more. Reached out carefully. Respectfully.
Two ghosted her.
But one replied.
> I thought I was the only one. Tell me everything.
Over the next two weeks, Ava built something unexpected: a quiet group chat full of women who’d once loved the same man and survived him.
It wasn’t a support group. It was a reclamation.
They shared red flags they’d ignored. Apologies they never got. Pieces of themselves they were still stitching back together.
And slowly, they all realized something chilling.
Cole wasn’t sloppy.
He was calculated.
Every relationship followed a pattern—sweet beginnings, subtle control, then chaos. Emotional sabotage masked as “miscommunication.” Affairs spun as “emotional confusion.” When one woman started asking too many questions—he’d retreat to the next.
And none of them had ever met each other—until now.
“He counts on silence,” Ember said one night. “On shame. That we’ll all stay quiet, thinking we’re crazy.”
Ava looked at the messages—years of hurt, now turned into digital testimony.
“No more silence,” she typed.
Luca noticed the change in her.
“You look like you’re planning a heist,” he teased, handing her a drink on a rainy Thursday night.
“I’m planning a reckoning,” Ava said without flinching.
He blinked. “Okay, that’s the hottest sentence I’ve heard all day.”
She laughed, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“You okay?” he asked, softer now.
Ava nodded. “I will be. I just need to finish something.”
He reached across the bar and tapped her fingers. “You’re allowed to live, too, you know. Not just survive.”
That made her pause.
She was healing—but she hadn’t allowed herself joy yet. Not really. Not without guilt.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Always.”
“If you knew something could blow up someone’s life… but they deserved it—would you still light the match?”
Luca leaned in.
“I’d hand you the lighter.”
Ava didn’t post the blog to go viral.
She wrote it because her truth didn’t fit in private messages anymore.
“What Loving A Manipulator Taught Me About Myself”
—by Ava Sinclair
She detailed the gaslighting. The betrayal. The version of herself she lost—and the one she fought to find again. She didn’t name names. She didn’t need to.
The women in the comments section knew.
So did Cole.
Because the next day—he texted.
> You’ve made your point. Take it down. Or I will.
Ava stared at the message.
Then screenshotted it.
Then posted that too.
That week, her story caught fire.
Not just on the blog—but in podcasts, group threads, reposts from influencers who said, “This. This is what survival looks like.”
She wasn’t trying to cancel him.
She was unmasking him.
And maybe—just maybe giving other women permission to unmask their own monsters, too.
The night after the post went viral, Ava sat outside the studio with Luca, sharing a bottle of cheap wine and silence.
“You know,” she said, “I thought revenge would feel like fire. Like rage.”
Luca glanced over. “And?”
“It feels like freedom.”
He clinked his glass against hers.
“To freedom, then.”
“To me,” she said. “Finally.”
- Writer
