I Died for My Ex, Then Fell for His Boss

Before Claire Bennett can even process what is happening, the blade is already in her. Her attacker's expression contorts into something caught between triumph and madness. "You wanted to steal a man from my goddess? This is what you get." Under her, blood pools dark on the concrete, still warmer than the air around it, losing its heat fast. Death doesn't come right away. Nobody ever warns you about that part—the stretch of time left over once the worst thing has already taken place. The man apparently concludes she's finished. Muttering under his breath, he paces near the exit. "No one's going to stand in my goddess's way now. She'll finally be happy." After that he lets the knife fall and staggers off. Her bag sits spilled where it dropped, everything inside flung wide across the concrete. The phone lies two meters off—near enough to see, far enough that it could be a mile away. Her fingers have already turned cold, yet some stubborn part of her keeps dragging forward, painting a long red streak behind her. Just a few more inches. A wave of nausea rolls through her and the room tilts sideways. Her body refuses to answer, but she pushes her arm out regardless, until her bloodied fingertips at last graze the case's cool glass. Call 911. Nothing else is left in her head. The phone gives a single buzz beneath her fingers, and that tiny vibration is enough to shove it sliding beyond reach again—at the precise moment she'd finally closed the distance. Her vision has always been keen. Keen enough that, in the half-second before the phone skitters off, she reads the words glowing on its screen. Only three words. Just clarify it. The sender is the boy from next door, the one she grew up beside. The boy she's spent seven years loving. Her fiancé. Ethan Voss. Next month they were meant to file for marriage—discreetly, the same way they'd handled everything, since his career would never survive the fans learning he had a girlfriend. The families on both sides had agreed this was the safer route. A faint, mirthless curve touches Claire's mouth. To shield his new girl from getting ripped to pieces online, he wants Claire to release a statement. Never dated Ethan Voss. We are just friends. Seven years compressed into two sentences and a lie. Were it only her own life at stake, losing it wouldn't frighten her. But there are her parents. Her friends. None of that is worth any less than his reputation. Her hand has grown too slick to close around the phone now, and each try only shoves it farther away. Why won't it work. She was so close. Deep inside, something worse than pain gives way. Her arm drops slack against the concrete. She is going to be the daughter who makes her parents bury a child, instead of the other way around. Her eyelids weigh so much. One lone tear slips free and vanishes into the blood beneath her. After that—nothing. Neither pain, nor cold, nor concrete under her palms. When the world returns, the garage is gone. Claire finds herself standing in a living room she knows all too well, and nobody in it can see her. "Ethan, has Ms. Bennett agreed to put out a statement?" "Give her time. I already texted her." Ethan's lips press into a thin line. He thinks I'll understand, Claire thinks bitterly. Ethan is unable to sit still, checking his phone again and again, jaw clenched, thumb drumming on the case. A restlessness keeps churning in his chest that he blames on the headlines. At the top is a photo of him and Chloe Hart exiting the same hotel, after dinner at a restaurant where they'd once filmed a scene together, two years back. Plenty for people to spin their own conclusions from. The next headline hauls his relationship with Claire out into the open—old photos, their shared school background, his arm draped over her shoulders as though it had every right to be there. The color has drained from Chloe Hart's face. Ever since her debut, her career had been one smooth ride, and never before has she tasted what the internet is capable of doing to a person. Seeing her huddled into the sofa's corner melts something in Ethan's expression. "This isn't your fault. I was already planning to end things with Claire. I just hadn't found the moment." Every last word reaches Claire. Nobody notices her standing there, and for good reason. She is dead already. All that remains of her is a shape composed of nothing at all. Ethan was the man she'd loved for years, the one she stood a single signature away from marrying. He had concealed it well enough that only today is she finding out, the man who'd sworn there was no one else had been looking elsewhere for a long time. Probably two years, ever since that film set. For two years he's been performing—on camera and off it—without once slipping out of character. That is the source of her hatred—not that it ended, but that he let her go on believing it hadn't. He could have simply told her. She would never have chased him down or turned it ugly. They might have parted clean. What he chose instead was two years of lying to her face and naming it love. Chloe is on the sofa with Ethan crouched before her, and to Claire the pair seem to gaze at each other as if nothing else in the room existed. Once, that tenderness on his face had belonged to her. Hers alone. "Disgusting," she mutters. Nobody hears it. Her eyes drift to the clock, the hour of her usual video call with her parents has already gone by. "They'll worry," she whispers, turning toward the door. It won't open. She hurls her full weight into it. There is no pain—but no give, either. The windows won't budge either, curtains pulled shut tight to keep out the paparazzi. "Ethan Voss, could you just—" The sentence dies on Claire's lips. Ethan is no longer crouched on the floor, he's on the sofa now, Chloe nestled into his lap as though that was where she belonged. She had already made peace with the fact that his feelings changed. Watching it unfold is another, uglier thing. Her heart is gone, yet something still cinches around her chest like a fist. Circling back to the window, she flattens both palms against the glass—hard enough that her pulse, if she still had one, would be hammering. Not a thing yields. Not the glass. Not the frame. Not the world waiting on the other side. Grief knots together with fury until she nearly believes she could turn into something dangerous. Claire still swings a hand at Ethan's face, fully aware the blow will never land. "Getting me killed wasn't enough for you? Now I'm stuck here watching this? Do you have any conscience left?" Mid-motion, still wiping Chloe's cheek, Ethan's hand freezes. His head snaps up and he sweeps the room with his gaze. Nothing there. He checks his phone, no calls, no messages—nothing at all from Claire. He puts it back down, far slower than he picked it up. Gathering Chloe into his arms, he says, "Get some sleep. I'll have this handled by morning." "Will I still be able to work after this?" Chloe asks in a small, frightened voice. "Nothing changes," he assures her, and her tears stop. Claire looks on, eyes flat and empty. So that's why they call her the industry's sweetheart. A single look like that and his whole chest caves in for her. To keep the story off her, he'd been perfectly ready to throw Claire to the wolves. She trails them only as far as the guest room next door, unable to stray far from Ethan. Her skincare bottles still stand in a row along the dresser. By the window sits the desk where she used to grade papers on nights she stayed over. He'd bought this house with his first real money and put in the roses that very year. That was five years back. Footsteps sound in the hallway. Without looking, she knows exactly whose they are. Ethan appears in the doorway, opens the closet, and takes out a set of pajamas—new, bought recently. A matching set, one for each of them. She already knows precisely who'll be wearing the other half tonight. In the hollow where her heart used to sit, something wrenches tight. She averts her face, waiting until the ache dulls enough to breathe through. She no longer has a body that feels cold, lungs that can scream, or hands able to touch a single door in this house—and morning is still hours off. A few hours later, once Chloe has finally settled, Ethan returns downstairs. He's changed into a clean set of pajamas, the twin of the one lying folded somewhere upstairs. He drops onto the sofa and stares at his phone without truly seeing it. The instant he leaves the hallway, Claire's soul is hauled out of the guest room after him. Proximity to him now turns her stomach, so she takes the couch farthest from his seat and pins her gaze on the television. A news broadcast is playing. Apparently, this day hadn't been a bad one for her alone. A jet bound for the far side of the Pacific has gone down, and among the missing is Roman Ashford, the wealthiest man in the country. Claire's mind goes to the dark garage floor where her body presumably still lies, wondering whether anyone has found her yet. As for the name, it means nothing to her—she never had cause to know it, and by the time the anchor moves to the next item, she's forgotten it as well. On the coffee table, Ethan's phone begins buzzing violently. For half a second something bright flashes in his eyes, vanishing the instant he sees the screen. Rubbing at his temple, he answers, "Hey, Jeff." Jeff is Ethan's manager, sharp—sharp enough that once he learned about Claire, he'd pulled her aside for a private word. For Ethan's career, she needed to step back and keep quiet through the kissing scenes, the manufactured rumors, all of it. "Mr. Ashford's plane went down. Please tell me you saw the news," Jeff says. "It's bigger than your Chloe Hart story, at least for now. I can't reach Claire Bennett. Tell her she doesn't need to tweet anymore." Ethan grunts a flat acknowledgment and ends the call. He rolls the phone over in his hands, thumb suspended above Claire's name in his contacts. Two hours gone, and still no statement from her. He doesn't tap call. Three feet away, Claire feels nothing at all anymore. Whatever version of him had once belonged to her died a long time before she ever did. Before giving up on the front door completely, she tries it one final time, then the back door off the kitchen, then a window that has stood open every summer for as long as she's known this house. Each one rejects her identically—an unseen wall closing around her, as if the air itself has turned solid. The house isn't what's keeping her here. He is. Tonight, wherever Ethan Voss goes, she goes as well, willing or not. Why him—why, out of every person in the world, he gets to be the reason she can't leave—she has no idea whatsoever.