Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Because I didn't take the bait, Whitney and I fell into an awkward cold war.

Even Logan sensed something was off and approached me after dinner.

"Hailey, did you and your bestie... have a fight?"

"Yeah," I replied casually. "She told me to dump you, but I refused."

Logan froze.

Usually, I never mentioned things like that to him and always praised Whitney to smooth things over.

My blunt honesty caught him completely off guard, and he even forgot to act angry.

"No wonder she seemed down. You should go apologize to her and cheer her up. Whitney is a good girl, so just cut her some slack."

Did I hear that right?

The guy who supposedly hated her guts was telling me to cut her some slack?

I gave a cold smirk and locked eyes with him.

"That's funny. The way you two fight, I thought you'd pop champagne for three days straight if Whitney and I stopped being friends."

"Why the sudden change of heart? Since when do you care about her mood and tell me to apologize?"

Logan realized his slip-up and gave an awkward laugh, reaching out to pull me into a hug.

"I'm just... worried you'll be upset. Everyone knows how close you two are. If you stop talking, you'll end up crying, and I hate seeing my baby Hailey sad."

The pet name was the exact same one he had used with Whitney the night before.

Nausea hit me, and I instinctively ducked out of his embrace.

"You smell like cigarettes. Back off."

Logan sniffed his shirt.

"Is it that bad? Let me take a shower first. Then I'll go with you to apologize to Whitney, okay? Be a good girl."

Without waiting for an answer, he turned and headed into the bathroom.

I looked at the phone sticking out of his jacket pocket, took a breath, and pulled it out.

The passcode was still my birthday, and the lock screen was still a picture of the two of us.

Yet everything had changed.

His main messaging app was spotless, without even Whitney's contact saved.

I searched through his apps and found a hidden vault folder with a secondary account.

Opening it, I saw his burner profile, with recent chats from Whitney sitting right at the top.

They were already calling each other "hubby" and "wifey."

My hands shook as I scrolled through the messages, instantly recognizing the avatar.

Whitney had actually shown me these explicit texts before, bragging about a wild guy she was seeing.

She had told me that modern men loved adventurous girls, warning me not to be so conservative or my man would get stolen.

Back then, deeply trapped in Logan's illusion of a loyal boyfriend, I had proudly told her that Logan was the most faithful guy on earth.

Remembering that moment, I wanted to slap my past self for being so gullible.

I scrolled through their messages line by line.

Even though I told myself to be strong, tears spilled down my cheeks.

Three hundred and seventy-four days without missing a single day of communication.

They had hooked up just three months after Logan and I started dating.

On our hundred-day anniversary, when I couldn't make it back because of a family emergency, they were rolling around in a motel bed.

When Whitney and I went shopping together, who would have guessed we were texting the exact same man?

Even during my academic seminar trips, when Logan stayed on the phone with me until 2 a.m. saying "I love you" and "Goodnight," he was actually lying in bed with Whitney right after having sex.

All the puzzle pieces locked into place like parallel timelines merging into a nightmare.

Blinking through my tears, I snapped photos of their chat history with my phone, put everything back in place, and pretended nothing happened.

Nobody knew how much my heart was bleeding.