STOLEN BY MY LOVER’S ENEMY

Chapter 4

Chloe's name kept flashing on Damon's phone.

Tiana stood by the door with her handbag on her shoulder, staring at the screen. Damon looked from the phone to her, and for the first time since she had known him, he didn't seem to know what to do with his hands.

"Don't answer it," he said quietly.

"I wasn't going to."

The phone stopped ringing. The silence that followed felt heavier than the noise.

"My love," Damon said, taking a careful step toward her. "Please sit down. Just for a few minutes."

Tiana almost laughed. "Now you want me to sit?"

"Princess, I'm begging you."

She hated that the name still softened something inside her. It was the name he used when she was sick, when she was crying, when she fell asleep on his shoulder during movies. He had carried it straight from the best moments of their life into the worst one.

"Say what you have to say," she said. "Standing."

He reached for her hand. She pulled it away before he could touch her, and the small movement hurt him. She saw it in his face, and she hated that she noticed.

"The night I left after that phone call," he began. "I didn't go to the office, sweetheart. I went to Chloe's apartment."

The room seemed to tilt.

"One drink turned into another, and then—"

"Stop."

"Tiana—"

"Don't say it."

She pressed her palm against her chest. Then a thought struck her, so cruel that it stole the air from her lungs.

"I called her that night," she whispered. "I cried on the phone for hours. She kept saying, 'Don't worry, babe, he loves you. He'll come home.'" Her eyes lifted to his. "Where were you while she was saying that?"

His silence answered her.

"Damon."

"I was there," he said, barely audible.

Tiana staggered until her shoulders touched the wall. She remembered whispering, Thank you, Chloe. I don't know what I'd do without you. And Chloe had answered, You'll never have to find out.

"You listened to me cry," she said, tears sliding down her cheeks. "And then you came home and held me in our bed."

"I was a coward. Every time I tried to end it, I looked at you and couldn't find the words."

"So you kept lying."

"Yes."

He didn't blame her. He didn't blame Chloe. He just stood there, stripped of every excuse.

"I loved you," Tiana said.

"You still do."

"Don't tell me what I feel." She lifted her chin. "Maybe I do. Love doesn't disappear because I want it to. But I won't stay in a home where I'm the only one who believed in it."

"Please don't leave me, baby. Tell me what to do, and I'll do it."

She looked at his outstretched hand, the same hand that had held hers across restaurant tables and pulled her close on rainy nights. Then she stepped around him and opened the door.

"Tiana, sweetheart, at least tell me you'll come back tonight."

She didn't turn around. "I don't know."

The door closed behind her. She leaned against the corridor wall and let the tears fall where no one could see them.

Then she heard footsteps.

Chloe stood beside the elevator, still in the dress she had worn the night before, her eyes swollen from crying. In one hand she held Tiana's favorite scarf, the one Tiana had thought she'd lost months ago.

In the other, she held a small black velvet box.

"Don't," Tiana said. "Whatever you came to say, I don't want it."

"You will." Chloe's voice shook. "Because I'm done being the only one who looks like the villain."

She held out the box.

Tiana didn't take it. Chloe opened it herself.

Inside, a diamond ring caught the light from the corridor window. It was delicate and elegant, exactly the style Tiana had pointed out months ago while scrolling through her phone, saying, One day, babe.

Her heart stopped.

"Damon asked me to hold it," Chloe whispered. "I helped him pick it. He said I knew your taste better than anyone."

Tiana stared at her.

"Last month, he told me he was going to propose. I thought I could stop seeing him once he did. I told myself the ring meant he'd finally choose you and I'd be forced to let go." Chloe laughed through her tears. "But last night I asked him when he'd end things with me first. Do you know what he said?"

Tiana couldn't speak.

"He said, 'After the proposal. Let me have one more month.'"

The words landed like a slap.

"He was going to kneel in front of you," Chloe said, "and slide that ring on your finger, and then walk into a hotel room with me. That's the 'whole day together' he promised you. He planned to propose tonight."

The corridor blurred.

Tiana remembered Damon's hand holding hers last night, his voice saying, I promise. She remembered his mouth against her forehead. She had gone to sleep believing he was only tired.

All the while, a ring had been waiting in someone else's handbag.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked hoarsely.

"Because I finally understood something." Chloe's tears fell freely. "He doesn't love either of us enough to be honest. He loves being loved by both."

Tiana took the box with trembling fingers. As she lifted the ring, her thumb brushed something engraved inside the band.

She turned it toward the light.

It wasn't her name. It wasn't a date.

It was a single line, in Damon's handwriting:

For the woman who will never find out.

Behind her, the apartment door swung open.

"Tiana, wait," Damon called, his voice cracking. "Whatever Chloe told you, that ring isn't—"

Then he saw it in her hand, and every drop of color drained from his face.