Page 24 of Psychotic Obsession

The blaring of my phone has me sighing as I note the caller ID.

I answer after staring for too long. He hasn’t tried to call in a while, and it could be something serious.

“Hello?”

“Don’t hang up,” Ewan says, a pleading tone in his voice. “I just need five minutes, and then I’ll leave you alone.”

“What’s wrong?”

“When do you fly back home?” he asks, machinery clanking in the background. He’s on the site he has been stuck working for over a year. “Can we talk when you do?”

The door opens, and Tobias walks in with two coffee cups just as I sigh and say, “Ewan, please don’t do this right now.”

“Just…just talk to me, Aria. You’ve completely cut me off instead of talking about this.”

My eyes close. “I don’t know what’s left to talk about. You cheated, and then you lied about it. You called me a paranoid psychopath, only to be proved wrong.”

“I cheated years ago.Yearsago. I’m not that guy anymore. I only lied because I was scared you’d leave me.”

I let out a snort. “Right. It hardly matters now.”

“Can we at least talk when you get home? What are we doing about Jason?”

A knife lodges in my chest at the thought of the little boy I’ve raised since he was a few months old. “I don’t know.”

Cutting Ewan out of my life also means cutting Jason out of it. I love them both. They were my family. But his dad did me wrong, and now I’m stuck on where to stand.

Will it mess with Jason’s head if a woman who has nothing to do with him is in his life? His bio mom is absent, and he always had me. But now…now, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what is right for him.

“It might confuse him if we aren’t together anymore and I’m still in his life.”

Ewan sighs deeply. “Please, Aria. I haven’t cheated since. I haven’t done a single thing to step out of line.”

“You lied three times. I gave youthreechances to own up.”

Gulping, I can tell he’s running his hand through his hair. “What about the house? The car? The caravan? Our entire lives?”

“I’ll deal with it all when I’m home.” I open an email, scanning the words. “I need to go. I’m far too busy to have this conversation.”

“You’ve been living with Gabriella since way before we split up. I know I fucked it all, but were you unhappy before? Is that why we weren't getting along? Tell me so I can fix this.”

“I’m unhappy because my boyfriend since I was a teenager cheated, lied about it, and then tried to gaslight me. There’s nothing else to discuss. We’ll figure out how to move forward without hurting Jason in the process.”

“I was eighteen, Aria.”

“I’m going now.”

“Aria,” he pleads. “Let me fix this.”

“Goodbye, Ewan.”

Once I hang up, I let out a heavy breath. I’m trying not to be heartless. I get it was years ago, and we’re totally different people now, but he lied when I asked. That hurt me the most.

A huge part of me is yelling at myself to grow up and get over it, but I need to breathe and think.

I reach for my laptop, but a voice has me pausing.

“Who is Ewan?” Tobias asks, setting coffee on my desk and standing across from me. “You look pissed.”