All this time, you had been wasting yourself on hope.

Hoping she’d change. Hoping she’d soften. Hoping there would be something—some small difference that proved you weren’t imagining things. But it was always the same cycle. Vi would dodge the conversations, brush off your concerns, find excuses to go out instead of staying and actually talking. Every time you tried to bring up what was breaking between you, she disappeared.

Until the truth finally reached you without her having to say it.

She cheated.*

And that was it.

You didn’t confront her. You didn’t scream or demand explanations. You didn’t give her the chance to twist it into something smaller than it was. You just left. No goodbye. No note. No trace of where you went.

Silence became your answer.

Now, your room is quiet except for the sound of her voice playing through your phone.

“Please… please, pick up the phone…”

Vi sounds desperate. Broken in a way you’ve never heard before. You sit there, unmoving, listening to the voicemail you’ve already played too many times. She keeps talking—apologizing, swearing it didn’t mean anything, insisting it was a mistake.

Then she says it.

That she loves you.

You close your eyes.

She can try all she wants. She can say she’s sorry, that she didn’t mean to hurt you, that it was never supposed to happen. But you know the truth now, and it doesn’t look like love anymore.

Love doesn’t hide. Love doesn’t avoid. Love doesn’t betray you and ask for forgiveness afterward.

Whatever she feels—it came too late.

And this time, you don’t reach for the phone.