You were so deep asleep when I left, you looked so beautiful. Do you miss me?" "I do," I said. "I miss you more." He laughed softly. "I'll call you before bed, okay? Don't stay up too late." Then the call ended. Across the garden, Julian slipped his phone back into his pocket and turned back to Sera. She reached up and pulled his face down to hers and he kissed her. He kissed her the way he used to kiss me. The sky broke open. Rain came down hard and fast, soaking through my clothes in seconds. I just stood there and let it.

I stood in the rain and watched them in each other's arms while tears ran down my face and mixed with the rainwater, and I couldn't even tell the difference anymore. Then Sera laughed at something he said and turned, leaning back against a tree. And Julian didn't hesitate. His hands found her like they knew exactly where to go. Like they had done this a hundred times before. Because they had. My breath left my body. He lifted her thigh like she weighed nothing. Like I had never existed. What happened next broke something in me that I already knew would never heal.

I watched my husband take my best friend in the rain and I couldn't look away. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't do anything except stand there completely hollow and feel my entire world burn down around me. Suddenly, Dominic's hand closed around my arm. "Come on," he said quietly. "You've seen enough." I let him pull me away from the rain, away from Julian and Sera and the ruins of everything I thought was mine. He was right. I had seen enough. Enough to know that every flower he ever sent me meant nothing.

Every phone call, every whispered I love you, every morning kiss and every promise of forever meant absolutely nothing. Two years of my life. Gone. I didn't scream or fall to my knees, the way they do in movies, I just walked through the rain beside a man I barely knew, soaking wet, completely hollow, with one question running over and over through my mind like a broken record. What was wrong with me? What did I do wrong?

CELESTE Dominic didn't take me home. I didn't argue. I couldn't. The rain was coming down so hard it was impossible to see three feet in front of you, and I was soaking wet and shaking so badly I could barely hold myself upright. He spoke quietly to one of the resort staff, handed over a card, and within minutes we were being led to a suite in the West Wing. The suite was warm and expensive and too beautiful for the kind of night I was having. I walked straight to the couch, sat down, and stayed there.

I didn't take off my wet clothes. I didn't move. I just sat there and stared at the wall while the rain hammered the windows and something inside me kept breaking over and over in the same place. Dominic moved around quietly. I heard him adjusting the heater. Heard the clink of mugs in the kitchenette. He didn't talk and I was grateful for that because I had nothing to say. He set a mug of coffee on the table in front of me. I stared at it. "Drink it," he said. Not unkindly. I picked it up with both hands because one hand wasn't steady enough.

The warmth seeped into my palms and I held onto it like it was the only solid thing left in the world. I cried quietly for a long time. Not the loud, dramatic kind. Just tears that kept coming no matter how many times I wiped them away. The kind of crying that doesn't ask permission and doesn't stop when you want it to. Dominic sat beside me. Not too close. Just present. At some point I started shivering again, even with the heater on. My clothes were still damp and the cold had settled into my bones somewhere between the garden and this suite and refused to leave. "Come here," Dominic said.

It wasn't a question. But it wasn't forceful either. Just calm and certain the way everything he said seemed to be. I leaned into him without thinking about it and his arm came around me and pulled me close. He was warm, solid, and smelled like rain and something clean underneath it. I cried a little more. He didn't tell me to stop. He didn't tell me it was going to be okay. He just held me and let me fall apart and somehow that was exactly what I needed. I don't remember falling asleep. - Morning came grey and quiet.