Chapter 13

The air was filled with the soft cooing of pigeons, their wings fluttering against the bright blue sky. Children’s laughter rang through the square, pure and unburdened, a stark contrast to the silence stretching between us.

For a long time, I didn’t speak. Then, finally, I turned to Atlas.

“You don’t deserve to stay by my side, Atlas,” 1 said. “Nothing you have belongs to me. It belongs to Ivy. Wasn’t that what you intended all along?”

His face stiffened, but I didn’t stop.

“I’ve spent years living in the illusion you created, believing every lie you fed me,” I continued, my words as steady as my heartbeat. “Do you have any idea how much I hated myself when I finally saw the truth?”

His fingers twitched slightly, his entire body unmoving.

I let out a slow breath, my expression unreadable. “I hated myself for loving you.”

I let the words sink in, let them twist through the air like a blade cutting deep. “I hated myself for loving the man who destroyed everything I had.”

Atlas flinched, barely perceptible, but I caught it.

And just like that, the last remnants of anger drained from my body. I looked at the face I had known for twenty years. The man who had shared my bed for five.

And suddenly–there was no more hatred left in me.

was a person meant to wound you so deeply that you’d never be

him. A soft, detached smile curved my lips, but

almost

sun beat down on us, but

pitiful. “Celeste,” he whispered, “but I love

carried away by

from him, capturing the smiles of strangers–the joy of those who had never known the kind of pain I had endured.

there was only one figure hunched over on a bench, his face buried in his hands. The only one who didn’t

us?” A small, excited voice tugged at my sleeve.

22:33

Years of Love, Seven

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Chapter 13

five, clutching, a flower crown while his sister giggled beside him, reaching

lips for the

I said, raising

time. And just for a

ago.

grass bracelet and slipped it onto my wrist, his eyes full of childish devotion as he whispered:

Celeste. I

then, there had been no lies in his

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