Chapter 2
254words
He'd written it the night he decided to propose to me.
【Chloe:】
[I proposed to Lena tonight. She's perfect, isn't she? Like a quiet castle—warm, safe, sheltering all my ambitions. I need a queen to guard my kingdom, not another battlefield that forces me to abandon everything to keep fighting.]
[But when I pulled out the ring, I thought of you. I remembered Berlin—that abandoned factory where we covered an entire wall with stolen paint. I remembered you dancing barefoot around the bonfire, saying you wanted to see the edge of the world.]
【I can't give you my world, Chloe. I can't watch your flame slowly die into embers in my cold, sterile world of numbers and rules.】
【So I chose her instead.】
【Perhaps this is my final, cruelest act of love for you.】
Reluctance? Final act of love?
These words from Alex seemed both ridiculous and unbearably cruel.
He treated me like a functional fortress while giving all his tenderness, all his "reluctance" to that battlefield named Chloe—the woman he dared not bring home.
He'd staged a perfectly calculated performance for his parents, his friends, even himself.
And I had willingly played my part.
But no matter how convincing, a performance remains just that—a performance.
I gently closed the laptop with a soft click.
The sound fell like a cold, irreversible final note on our absurd relationship.
