Page 24 of Crushed Vow (Broken Vows #2)

I curled into myself in the backseat like a child, arms wrapped around my knees, sobbing so hard I could barely see the streetlights pass.

He watched me fall apart.

And didn’t even blink.

It wasn’t just the mockery that was shredding me from the inside—it was the fact that Cassian stood there.

He stood there and watched. Maybe if he hadn’t been there, the words wouldn’t have hit so deep.

Maybe the jokes about my chest would’ve stung, but not gutted me the way they did.

But he was. He heard it all. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t move.

I wiped at my tears furiously as the Uber driver pulled to a stop and said gently, “We’re here, ma’am.”

He didn’t ask why I was crying. Good. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want anyone to know. I just wanted to disappear.

I paid him, stepped out without another word, and dragged my body toward the estate gates. The security guards recognized me and, without a word, drove me in one of the estate cars back to the house he’d given me—my own gilded cage across the street from his.

I shouldn’t have come here. I should’ve gone anywhere else—miles away from him, from this world. But the truth was, anywhere far from him felt like a war zone. Unsafe. Empty. Incomplete.

He had made sure no part of me could breathe without him.

Inside, I locked the door behind me, tore off my shoes like they were suffocating me, and stripped as I stormed into the bedroom.

The towel, the dress, everything—ripped off my body and discarded like dead skin. Now bare, I walked up to the mirror and stared.

My reflection blinked back at me. My chest—flat, almost fully healed—looked foreign. Hollow. Like someone had stolen a part of me and left the shell behind.

I used to have curves.

I used to have breasts that filled out dresses, made men look twice, made me feel like a woman. I used to walk into rooms and own them. Now... now I couldn’t even look at myself without wincing.

No one wanted me anymore.

Not Cassian. Not Ethan. Not even that hot doctor who, for one fleeting second, I’d tried to flirt with to get away from this pain. But he’d looked at my chest too. He’d tried to hide it behind words, behind a business card, behind gentle doctorly sympathy—but I saw it. I felt it. I knew.

They all saw me now as something broken.

My hands trembled. I touched my chest, then jerked my hand away. I hated her—the woman in the mirror. I hated everything she reminded me of.

I let out a strangled scream and slammed my fist into the mirror. The glass cracked with a sharp snap, pain blooming in my knuckles. I didn’t stop. I hit it again, harder, then again, each strike a desperate plea to feel something—anything that wasn’t this shame.

Blood seeped from my hand, warm and sticky, trickling down my wrist, staining the floor in crimson droplets. I didn’t care. The pain was a lifeline, a tether to a reality I could control.

My breath came in ragged gasps, my hand trembling as I reached for a broken piece, the glass cool and sharp against my skin. It seemed to pulse, as if it knew the dark thoughts swirling in my mind, like it knew what I was thinking.

I could do it. End it here. No more humiliation. No more looks. No more standing in crowds while people laugh, while strangers take photos of the ‘flat-chested girl,’ while Cassian leans against a pillar and smokes like I’m invisible.

If I just press it against my throat...

At least then I’d be free. Maybe I’d be reborn as someone better. Someone whole. Maybe an angel in a new world, untouched by pain and poison and love that destroys you.

Then the knock came.

Loud. Demanding. Shaking the door like it was the only thing between me and the edge.

I didn’t move.

“Charlotte,” Cassian’s voice came through.

Of course it was him. The last person I wanted to see. The only person I still wanted to see.

I walked to the door. Every step felt like dragging chains across a floor already stained with old blood.

“Go away,” I snapped, voice hoarse from crying, from screaming, from surviving.

There was a pause—long enough that I thought maybe he’d listen. Maybe, for once, he’d take the hint.

But then his voice came. Quiet. Too calm.

“Charlotte,” he said, like my name was a prayer. Like it was a noose. “Open the door.”

I stood there, naked but for a pair of panties, broken and bleeding. I didn’t care. I wanted him to break the door down. I wanted him to find my body. To see what his silence did.

“Leave and never come back!” I screamed, chest heaving.

His voice was soft. Too soft. It cut through me. “Charlotte... I just need to see you,” he murmured. “For a second.”

I slammed my palm against the door.

“I said go,” I repeated, sharper this time. “Haven’t you done enough?”

There was silence for a beat. Then he spoke.

“I protected your friend. Ethan. I could’ve let him die. I wanted to. But I didn’t. He would’ve bled out in hours from that infected wound if I hadn’t ordered my men to get him proper care.”

He paused, breathing hard.

“I hated him,” he admitted, “but I saved him because he matters to you. That’s how much I still—” He cut off. “But you—”

His voice shifted, roughened.

“You walked away from me. You disrespected me by throwing yourself at a man who immediately looked at the one thing he knew would hurt you most. Do you know how hard it was to stand there and not gut him?”

“Why didn’t you?!” I cried. “Why didn’t you protect me?”

“Because I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

I choked on a sob.

“Have you ever caught me staring at your chest?” he asked, voice hoarse. “Not once. Not even when I hated you. Because I knew what it would do to you. Because even in hate, I respected you.”

He swallowed. I could hear it.

“I want you back, Charlotte. So badly it’s hard to breathe. But I won’t chase someone who humiliates me in front of strangers. I won’t fight for someone who doesn’t want to be fought for.”

“You think this is about you?” I screamed, pressing my forehead to the door, the broken glass still in my bloody hand.

“Do you know what it felt like, Cassian? When those men laughed and pointed and said I wasn’t a woman?

And you just stood there. You didn’t flinch.

You didn’t move. People were taking pictures like I was some freak show and you didn’t even try to stop them. ”

I broke, sobbing. “Do you know what that did to me?”

“I didn’t laugh,” he whispered. “I didn’t mock you.”

“No, you just watched.”

Silence.

“Cassian, I was trying to get away from you. From all of this. You’re in my head. My lungs. My veins. I can’t think straight. I can’t breathe. I thought maybe that doctor—maybe someone else—could distract me from you. I was desperate. And I hate myself for it.”

The air between us crackled with everything unsaid.

“I can’t look in the mirror without wanting to die,” I confessed quietly. “Sometimes I wish the cancer had taken me. At least then I wouldn’t have to live like this.”

The weight of my words lingered in the silence that followed. He didn’t speak again. And part of me was glad. Because there was nothing he could say to fix what was already breaking inside me.

I slid to the floor, bleeding and half-naked, with the mirror shard still in my hand—and for once, even his voice couldn’t pull me back.