What Loving You Cost Me

Chapter 18- What Happened Between Us Was A Mistake

Elizabeth

The shop had a good day.

I could feel it from the moment I unlocked the front door. Customers came in at a steady pace, no major problems, and Nina had already messaged me before I even had my apron on to say the online orders were moving well. Adam had the dispatch side handled without me needing to check in.

I stood behind the counter wiping surfaces I didn’t need to wipe, just to feel useful.

There was no Daniel. No texts. No calls asking where I was. He hadn’t spoken more than three sentences to me since Rachel’s party. But I still felt him watching me. At breakfast, when I walked through the living room, when I came home late from the shop. He never said anything. He just watched, and I had stopped trying to figure out what he was looking for.

My phone buzzed mid-afternoon. Marcus.

Marcus: You crushed it today. The salted caramel brownies are gone. Again.

Me: Nina’s a genius. I just stand here and look pretty.

Marcus: You do that well too.

I smiled before I could stop myself. I put the phone face down on the counter and went back to work.

Then my phone rang. Rachel.

“Hey,” I answered, stepping into the back room.

“You sound happy,” she said immediately.

“Sales are up 40% from last week. Nina’s threatening to hire someone else.”

“Good. You deserve that.” She paused. “How’s he been?”

“Quiet. Staring. The usual.”

“Keep your distance, Elizabeth. He’s dangerous when he’s quiet.”

I was about to respond when another call came through. Hayley.

“I’ll call you back,” I told Rachel. “Hayley’s on the other line.”

I switched over. “Hey, Hales?”

A pause. Then a shaky breath.

“Elizabeth?” Her voice was thick.

“Hales, what’s wrong?”

For a second all I heard was breathing. Then she sniffled.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

She let out a short, unsteady laugh. “Can I call you later?”

My stomach tightened. “Did something happen?”

“It’s stupid,” she whispered. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

She ended the call before I could say anything else.

I stared at my phone for a moment.

Rachel’s words were still sitting in my head. He’s dangerous when he’s quiet. I knew that tone Hayley had used. The forced calm, the quick reassurance, the way she rushed off the phone. I had used that same tone myself for four years whenever someone asked if I was okay.

The rest of the afternoon I was distracted. I kept checking my phone but nothing came through from her. Every time the shop door opened I half expected it to be Hayley walking in. I told myself not to jump to conclusions, but I knew Daniel. And what Rachel had told me about how he operated fit too well with everything I already knew from living it myself.

He gave just enough to keep you there and then he pulled back without explanation and waited to see if you’d chase him.

Most people did. I had.

By evening I was tired in a way that had nothing to do with the shop.

I got home just after six, changed, made myself something light to eat, and sat at my desk to go through the day’s numbers. Nina had already sent a full breakdown. I replied, flagged a few things for the morning, and closed my laptop.

The house was quiet. Daniel wasn’t home, or if he was, he was keeping to his side of it. That had become routine enough that I barely thought about it anymore. I got up to put the kettle on.

That was when I heard the car.

I looked out the window. Hayley’s car was parked crookedly at the front, one wheel sitting over the edge of the driveway. She got out slowly, heels in her hand, walking barefoot across the pavement.

I was at the door before she reached it.

She looked up at me. Her eyes were red and swollen, mascara finished, done, completely given up.

She nearly fell into me.

“Whoa,” I said, catching her by the shoulders.

“Hi,” she said, and burst into tears.

She wrapped both arms around me and pressed her face into my shoulder. I could smell the alcohol on her. I pulled her inside and closed the door.

I sat her down on the couch and got her a glass of water. She held it with both hands and stared at it like she had forgotten what it was for.

“What happened?” I asked.

She set the glass down. “What didn’t happen. He barely looked at me this morning. I said good morning and he just —” She moved her hand in the air like she was gesturing at nothing. “Nothing. Like I wasn’t even in the room.”

“Daniel?”

“Yes, Daniel.” She wiped under her eye with the back of her hand. “He was fine last week. Not warm, but fine. And now it’s like I annoy him just by existing. I asked if everything was okay and he said he was busy. That was the whole conversation. I was busy.”

I watched her.

“And the worst part is I kept trying anyway,” she continued. “I asked if he wanted dinner. No. I asked if he wanted to talk. He was tired. I sat in the same room as him for two hours thinking maybe if I was just there, just present, he would come around.” She laughed, but it was a hollow sound. “He went to bed without saying a single word to me.”

She looked at me directly. “Why is your brother like this, Elizabeth? What is actually wrong with him?”

I kept my face steady. “He’s always been that way.”

“But why? What makes a person shut off like that?” She shook her head slowly. “You two barely speak to each other either. You move around each other like you’re both avoiding something. Maybe that’s just how he was raised. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want you leaving your husband — because he thinks a cold marriage is normal. Because for him it probably is.”

Something shifted in my chest when she said that. Not because she was wrong. Because she was sitting in front of me describing my husband, calling him her brother, with no idea that those were the same person.

Every single thing she said, I had already lived.

“Hayley,” I said. “You’ve spent weeks telling me to leave my husband. You’ve sat right here and told me that no woman should stay somewhere she isn’t valued.”

“I know.”

“So why are you still there?”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. She looked down at her hands in her lap.

“It’s different,” she said quietly.

“How?”

She was quiet for a long moment. When she looked up her voice was lower, like she was saying something she hadn’t fully admitted to herself yet.

“Because Daniel is everything I need, Elizabeth. I know how that sounds. But he’s attractive, he’s established, he has a name that actually means something. I’ve spent years building my image and he fits into it in a way that most people don’t. When we’re in a room together, it works. People look at us and it just works.”

“So it’s about the image.”

“It’s not only that.” She pressed her lips together. “I think I actually have feelings for him. Real ones. And that terrifies me because I didn’t plan for it.” She exhaled. “A few nights ago he had been drinking, not a lot, just enough, and he started talking. He told me he doesn’t believe in love.”

I didn’t move.

“He said love is just something people convince themselves of because they’re afraid of being alone.” She looked at me. “And I just sat there. I didn’t know what to say to that. What do you even say?”

“Nothing,” I said. “There’s nothing to say to that.”

She nodded slowly. “I keep telling myself I can change his mind. That if I’m patient enough, if I’m just the right person, eventually something will shift.” She looked at me with tired eyes. “That’s stupid, isn’t it.”

It wasn’t really a question. But I answered it anyway.

“It’s not stupid,” I said. “It’s just very hard to stop believing in someone once you’ve already started.”

She stared at me for a moment, then looked away.

Then she leaned sideways until her head was resting on my lap. She looked up at the ceiling.

“You give really good advice,” she mumbled. “Tell me what to do.”

I looked down at her.

A few months ago I would have resented her for being here. For being in my house, in my space, crying over my husband without knowing he was mine. Now I just felt tired. Tired and something close to sorry for her.

“I think,” I said quietly, “you should stop trying so hard to make someone love you properly.”

Hayley blinked up at me slowly.

“That sounded personal.”

“It probably was.”

She smiled faintly at that. Within a few minutes her breathing slowed and evened out. She was asleep.

I reached over and pulled the blanket from the edge of the couch and covered her with it. I sat back and let the quiet settle around me.

That was when her phone buzzed on the cushion beside her.

The screen lit up. Marcus.

I went still.

It buzzed again. The phone unlocked with her face before the screen could dim, and before I could look away my eyes dropped to the message preview.

Marcus: You need to understand and let it go. What happened between us was a mistake. I’m building something with Elizabeth now.

I read it once. Then I read it again.

Hayley shifted slightly in her sleep, completely unaware.

I set the phone face down on the cushion, carefully, quietly, like it hadn’t just changed everything.