Page 150 of Mystic's Sunrise

Chain gave a humorless smile. “No. She never was. She just knew the only way to keep him was to trap him.”

My chest tightened, breath catching like I’d been punched from the inside.

“By the time he found out she lied, it was already too late. He was overseas. They were married. And that woman? She never let up. Every letter, every phone call, she found new ways to manipulate him so he’d never leave her.”

I closed my eyes, trying to breathe past the sickness curling low in my gut.

“And that’s the thing with Chelsea,” Chain continued, his voice growing colder. “She didn’t break him all at once. She did it slow. Quiet. So by the time he realized he was bleedin’, he couldn’t remember where the cuts started.”

I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t speak, because I knew that feeling too well.

“She made him believe he was lucky she stayed. That her staying was some kind of mercy.” Chain’s eyes darkened. “Andwhen he came back from the war—scarred, wrecked, drowning in nightmares—she leaned in harder. Made him believethatwas all he’d ever deserve.”

I had never once thought of him as ruined. Never thought of him as broken or unwanted.

Buthehad.

Becauseshetold him that. Over and over, until he believed it. He hadn’t just been hiding his marriage. He’d been hiding the part of himself that thought I’d leave. That thought I’d look at his broken pieces and run.

And I had.

“I thought he lied because he didn’t care,” I whispered, more to myself than him. “But it wasn’t about me.”

Chain’s voice was quieter now. “It was about survival. The kind of survival where you expect everyone to leave, so you push them away before they get the chance—only he didn’t do that with you.”

I blinked back the sting behind my eyes.

And still, I said, “He should’ve told me.”

“Yeah. He should’ve.” Chain stood slowly, stretching his spine. “But maybe next time, instead of walkin’ away, you ask him why he didn’t. Mystic loves you more than his own life and if you keep this shit up it’ll end him.”

I didn’t move. Couldn’t.

Because something deep inside me had cracked wide open, and for the first time, I wasn’t sure it was just aboutmeanymore.

Maybe Mystic had spent years living in a lie someone else wrote for him, and maybe by running, I’d just helped prove that lie true.

***

I HAD SPENTso much time convincing myselfthat my anger was righteous, wearing it like my own heartbeat, telling myself the silence I wrapped around my heart was protection, not punishment. I told myself the distance was deserved, that it was the price he owed for the hurt he'd caused.

But now, I wasn’t sure.

Because the more I turned Chain’s words over in my mind—his calm, measured voice cutting through my mind like a scalpel—the more I realized I’d only ever seen one side of the pain.

Maybe I hadn’t wanted to see the rest.

Because once you admit someone else's hurt, you have to reckon with the ways you've added to it.

Pain doesn’t follow rules. It isn’t neat or clean. It doesn’t pick sides. And love—real love—doesn’t fall into simple categories of right or wrong. It bleeds across every line.

The hallway stretched ahead of me, narrow and quiet, but each step I took felt heavier than it should have. Like the weight of what I carried was pressing down through the soles of my feet, trying to hold me back.

No one stopped me.

No one needed to.

The quiet that followed me said enough. I could feel them—people I had barely spoken to in days—watching from doorways and corners, not judging, not questioning. Just… watching. Like they all knew where I was going.