Chapter 7

Elle POV

The café occupied the library's ground floor, with its large windows overlooking the quad, and Dominic had positioned himself at a corner table.

He looked good as he'd dressed in expensive casual—a cashmere sweater in charcoal gray, dark jeans—and his hair had that artfully tousled look that required more product and effort than most people realized.

When he saw me, his expression wasn't a warm one, but something harder, colder, and I felt my stomach tighten with the recognition that this conversation was going to be even worse than I'd anticipated.

"Sit down," he said coldly. A latte sat on the table in front of the empty chair—oat milk with an extra shot, my usual order.

I sat, but only because standing would have drawn more attention from the students scattered throughout the café.

"You want to explain to me what the hell happened last night?" Dominic's voice was low but sharp, each word precisely enunciated in a way that made it clear he was barely containing his fury. "You disappeared from the dinner without a word, embarrassed me in front of my families. Is that what you want?"

The accusation hit me like a slap, the sheer audacity of it momentarily robbing me of speech. He was angry at me? After what I'd discovered, he had the nerve to sit here and lecture me about respect and embarrassment?

"I don't have to explain myself to you," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt, cold and flat in a way that made Dominic's eyes narrow. "But since you're so concerned about respect, let's talk about what I saw last night in that little archive room."

Something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe, or the brief panic of being caught—before his expression hardened into defensive anger. "You were spying on me?"

"I was looking for a bathroom," I shot back, feeling my control starting to crack, two years of swallowed grievances and ignored instincts rising up in my throat like bile. "And I found you were with another woman in that room. So don't you dare sit here and lecture me about respect when you couldn't afford it either."

Dominic's jaw clenched, and for a moment I thought he might actually lose his composure entirely, but he leaned forward instead, dropping his voice to something that probably sounded reasonable to anyone who couldn't see the fury in his eyes.

"Lower your voice," he hissed. "You're making a scene."

"I don't care." And the truth of it surprised me, the realization that I genuinely didn't care anymore what these people thought, what kind of spectacle I was making, because the humiliation of being cheated on paled in comparison to the humiliation of pretending everything was fine. "We're done, Dominic. I'm not marrying you."

His laugh was sharp and humorless, more of a bark than actual amusement. "You're not marrying me? Elle, you don't seem to understand how this works. You don't get to make that decision. You think you can just walk away because you got your feelings hurt?"

"My feelings hurt?" I could hear my voice rising again and didn't care. "You cheated on me. You disrespected our relationship, disrespected me, and now you're sitting here acting like I'm the one being unreasonable?"

"Let's be honest about what this relationship actually is," Dominic said, and his voice took on a cruel edge that I'd never heard before, or maybe had heard but had trained myself not to notice. "You're a charity case, Elle. A pretty face attached to a sob story about debt and a struggling family. Let's not pretend this was ever a real relationship. You won't even sleep with me. You're uptight about everything, rigid with your boundaries and your middle-class morality. What exactly do you think you bring to this arrangement besides your mother's debt and a pair of decent legs?"

The words landed like physical blows, each one carefully aimed at the insecurities I'd tried so hard to hide, and I felt something inside me crack and splinter.

I pulled the engagement ring off my finger—two carats in a platinum setting, beautiful and cold as the man who'd given it to me—and set it on the table between us with a soft click.

"Whatever you say, I've decided. Take it," I said, and my voice was steady now, empty of everything except exhaustion. "We're done."

Dominic stared at the ring, then at me, his expression cycling through disbelief and rage before landing on something that looked almost like panic. "You're being ridiculous. You can't afford to break this off, Elle. What about your mother? What about the money my family has already invested in your education, your wardrobe, your entire life for the past two years? You think you can just walk away from that?"

"I'll figure it out." I stood, and the chair scraped against the floor with a muffled sound . "But I'm not going to stay with someone who treats me like property, who thinks my gratitude for his family's money means I should accept being cheated on and insulted."

"You'll regret this," Dominic said, loud enough that there was no question everyone in the café could hear, his composure finally cracking to reveal the entitled fury beneath. "You'll come crawling back when you realize what you've given up, when reality hits and you remember that you're nobody without my family's support. And I won't be there to catch you. Nobody will."

I wanted to say something cutting, wanted to have the last word that would somehow salvage my dignity from this wreckage, but my throat had closed up and my eyes were burning with tears I refused to let fall in front of him.

So I just turned and walked out, leaving the ring and the untouched latte sitting on that table like artifacts from someone else's story.

The rain had intensified while I'd been inside, coming down in sheets that soaked through my shirt within seconds. I didn't care. I walked without direction, letting my feet carry me away from Butler Library and deeper into campus, past buildings whose names I barely registered through the blur of rain and unshed tears.

Students hurried past with umbrellas and raincoats, giving me strange looks that I ignored, too focused on putting distance between myself and that café, between myself and the humiliation that still burned hot and sick in my chest.

Eventually I found myself at the far edge of campus, in a little-used quad surrounded by administrative buildings that were dark and empty on a Saturday. There was a bench under a tree that provided minimal shelter from the downpour, and I collapsed onto it, finally letting the tears come. They mixed with the rain on my face, hot and cold at once, and I cried silently with my shoulders shaking, for everything I'd lost and everything I'd never really had in the first place, for the version of myself that had tried so hard to be worthy of a love that was never really on offer.

I found myself opening my contacts, scrolling past my mother's name and Dominic's and landing on the one Adrian had insisted I save last night when he'd driven me home from the estate.

My thumbs moved before my brain could talk me out of it, before I could overthink or second-guess or remind myself that I had no right to make my mess his problem: "Thank you for last night. And this morning. I just wanted you to know that I ended things with Dominic. I'm okay now. I think."

I hit send and immediately regretted it, mortified that I'd reached out to him like this, that I was dumping my emotional wreckage on someone who'd already done more than enough by simply treating me with basic human kindness.

But before I could spiral too far into self-recrimination, three dots appeared indicating he was typing, and then his response came through, simple and steady and somehow exactly what I needed: "You did the right thing. If you need anything, I'm here."

I stared at those words until they blurred, feeling something crack open in my chest that wasn't the dramatic rupture of heartbreak but something gentler and more terrifying—the slow thaw of ice that had been building around my heart for longer than I'd realized, the first tentative recognition that maybe not everyone would use my vulnerabilities as weapons.

Adrian wasn't asking for explanations or judging my decisions or making this about him. He was just... there. Present. Supportive. Everything Dominic had never been and probably never could have been, because the capacity for that kind of uncomplicated kindness required a fundamental respect for other people that Dominic simply didn't possess.

The rain continued to fall, cold and cleansing, washing away the careful makeup I'd applied this morning and the last remnants of the girl who'd thought she could make herself small enough and perfect enough to earn love from someone incapable of giving it. I sat under that inadequate tree with my phone clutched in both hands, letting myself feel the full weight of what I'd done.

But for the first time in two years, sitting alone in the rain with my engagement ring abandoned and my relationship in ruins, I could breathe.