Chapter 21 Sep 17, 2025 "You saw," I said evenly, forcing my voice to remain steady despite the hammering in my chest. "Now give me my phone." Alex angled away a fraction, his thumb shifting the device just out of reach. His eyes never left mine, that dangerous calm still coating his features like ice over deep water. "I've seen," he murmured, his voice razor-soft, each word precisely cut. "But maybe not enough." I reached again. He leaned back, a matador avoiding the bull. The preview window stayed open long enough for his gaze to clip to the contact name at the top of the message thread. Professor Aiden Green. The full title, the academic formality of it, somehow made everything worse. His jaw set with an audible click. When he spoke, the whisper carried more violence than any shout. "Are you out of your mind? With a professor? Your professor?" "We're going to talk," I said, keeping my tone deliberately low, aware of doors along the hallway, of neighbors who lived for gossip. "But not here." I didn't want the hallway with its potential audience. I didn't want my apartment either, where Emma was, where the walls held too many memories of Alex and me in better times. I needed neutral ground, somewhere the confrontation could detonate without casualties. "Your car," I said. "Now." The elevator ride down stretched like a medieval torture device, each floor counting off in digital red while we stood at opposite corners of the small space. An elderly woman entered on the third floor, took one look at us, and suddenly remembered she'd forgotten something, backing out before the doors could close. We crossed the lobby in lockstep, neither touching nor looking at each other. Alex's BMW waited in visitor parking, black and gleaming like a hearse. The moment the doors sealed us in, the shock broke open. Alex gripped the wheel, his breathing harsh in the confined space. His knuckles went white, then red, then white again as he squeezed. "I owned what I did," he said, each word bitten off and spit out. "Once. One time. I told you immediately. I apologized until my throat was raw. You-" He gestured at my phone still clutched in his hand. "This looks ongoing. This looks like you've been lying to my face for God knows how long. And you weren't going to tell me at all." "We're even," I said, the words tasting like copper in my mouth. "That's what I meant when I said I'd figure things out. We're even now." "Even?" His laugh cracked through the car like a whip. "You think this was math? A scoring system? I made a mistake, Ruby. One drunken, stupid mistake that I confessed to immediately. You've been conducting an entire relationship behind my back." "How long?" He turned to face me fully, his composure finally cracking. "How long have you been fucking your professor?" I stared at the dashboard, at the precise German engineering, at anything but his face. "It continued because something's missing between us," I said at last, the words tumbling out like stones. "You're kind, Alex. Gentle. Friendly. Safe. With me, you're... careful. Like I'm made of glass. Like I might shatter if you actually grab me like you mean it." "That's not-" "What happened in the lingerie store?" I pressed on, needing him to understand. "When you forgot about propriety and reputation? I liked who you were at that moment. Raw. Wanting. Real. But then you recoiled. You turned it into a lecture about family expectations before we even reached the car." "That wasn't disgusting," he snapped, his face flushing dark. "I was shocked at my own behavior. And I'm gentle because you're my woman. My future wife. I respect you." "I don't want less respect," I said, my voice rising despite my intentions. "I want passion. I want you to want me like you did behind that curtain without apologizing for it five minutes later. Without turning desire into a liability we need to manage." "So you went to him? To your professor?" His voice cracked on the title. "Because I didn't fuck you roughly enough? Because I treated you like someone I love instead of a-" "Don't." The warning in my voice surprised us both. "Don't you dare finish that sentence." Remembering my mother's advice about honesty, about talking without armor, I tried to steer us toward specifics instead of accusations. "We need to talk about what's actually broken," I said. "Not just throw blame around like grenades." "Fine. Let's be specific." His hands gestured wildly, finally released from the wheel. "Specifically, you've been letting another man-your professor-send you videos of his naked body. Specifically, you've been responding. Specifically, you've been lying to me every single day while I've been trying to rebuild trust." "And specifically, you haven't been treating me like a woman you desire," I shot back. "Every kiss calculated, every touch scheduled, every moment of intimacy followed by a risk assessment." "That's not fair-" "Your caution reads as distance, Alex. My secrecy came from hunger you weren't feeding. We got stuck in apology loops instead of actually changing. The heat between us didn't just die-you smothered it with good intentions and proper behavior." We sat in brutal silence for thirty seconds, both breathing hard, the windows starting to fog from our anger. "You want to know what I see when I look at you now?" Alex's voice had gone quiet, dangerous. "I see my fiancée who's been spreading her legs for her professor while wearing my ring. I see the woman I was going to marry turned into someone else's afternoon entertainment." The slap I wanted to deliver burned in my palm, but I kept my hands folded. "And I see a man so terrified of actually feeling something that he'd rather have a perfectly preserved corpse of a relationship than a messy, living thing," I said. His restraint finally split completely. He slammed his palms against the steering wheel, the horn blaring briefly into the garage. "You think this is a game?" His whole body shook with rage. "You think you can humiliate me, cucked me with your fucking professor, and I'll just accept it? I will end him. Do you hear me, Ruby? I'm a Whitmore. My family owns half the real estate in this city. We have judges who owe us favors, administrators who need our donations. One phone call to Columbia's board and your Professor Green is done. His career, his reputation, his entire future-I'll destroy it all." He turned to face me fully, and I saw something in his eyes I'd never seen before-not just anger but cruelty, the kind that comes from wounded pride. "I'll show you exactly the kind of future husband I am," he continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that felt more threatening than his shouts. "The kind who protects what's his. The kind who removes threats. Permanently. Is that passionate enough for you? Is that the heat you were missing?" Silence filled the car like water, thick and suffocating. I could only stare at him, this man I'd known for five years, who'd held my hand at charity galas and brought me soup when I was sick. The shape of his threat settled over me heavier than any lecture about reputation ever had. This wasn't the careful, predictable Alex I knew. This was someone else entirely-someone who would weaponize his family's power without hesitation, who saw destruction as a form of love.