He Favored Her, I Left for Good

Chapter 2

Learning about Sienna was purely by accident.

Caleb's school and mine weren't far apart. A 10-minute drive, tops.

He was in med school while I was in law school. Grad school had been grinding us both down, barely leaving us room to breathe.

Hell, seeing each other even once a week was asking too much.

Our parents knew about us, more or less. Mine were so cool with it. They actually bought me a small apartment near campus.

That night, I'd finally wrapped up my thesis. It was past midnight.

Caleb was in the shower. His phone was sitting on the nightstand, and his Discord kept buzzing with messages.

'Discord. Who even uses that anymore?' Curious, I picked it up.

It was a girl in his lab. In that whiny, bratty tone, she said, "Caleb, can you please help me out? This data set is killing me."

He'd sent a voice message back, his voice all warm and indulgent. Followed by a few of those cheesy heart emojis.

I scrolled up. A whole year's worth of daily chats. Even during those weeks when he claimed he was swamped, they never missed a day.

And his nickname for her had gone from the formal "Sienna" to "Si."

Then his w******p pinged with a new notification.

Sienna: Why are you ignoring me?

What made it worse? I couldn't even open the app. He'd put a separate password on it.

When he got out of the bathroom, I handed him the phone.

I could see it in his eyes. That calm, collected front he was putting up, the panic he was trying to hide.

He shrugged it off, all casual. "Don't worry about her. She's annoying, honestly. But we're in the same lab, and she's just a kid. Can't exactly tell her off."

"Oh, and about the password—I lost some experiment data on w******p the other day. Just being careful."

'Such a lame excuse,' I almost laughed.

He tossed the phone aside and pulled me into his arms.