1 At my own birthday party, my best friend confessed she was pregnant with my boyfriend’s child. In a fit of blind rage, I lunged at her, my nail accidentally grazing her skin. It was barely a scratch. But for that “sin,” Brooks destroyed me. He hired men to wreck my design studio and used his family’s influence to tear up every contract I had spent years signing. Fueled by a cold, white-hot hatred, I spent weeks gathering evidence of their affair. I called the tabloids. I was ready to burn their wedding to the ground in front of the whole world. But at the final moment, Brooks’ best friend, Everett, stopped me. “Sloane, stop! If you do this, you’re just destroying yourself along with them!” As my tears finally broke, he pulled me into his arms, whispering promises over and over. “Sloane, I’m not like him. I will protect you forever.” I didn’t believe him at first. But Everett became a shadow in my life, a constant, comforting presence. When I was sick, he flew back from a business trip overnight just to hold my hair back while I threw up. I have a laundry list of allergies; he kept a leather-bound notebook of every ingredient I couldn’t touch. A man who had never stepped foot in a kitchen started learning to cook five-star meals just to keep me safe. On my twenty-fifth birthday, he took me to Iceland. Under the ethereal glow of the Northern Lights, I finally accepted his hundredth confession. For the next three years, he showed me that love could actually make a person feel whole again. Until a week before our engagement. I was organizing the library when I found an old phone tucked into the lining of a drawer. I turned it on. In the outbox, there was a single text sent four years ago: [Milly, don’t worry about the wedding tomorrow. I’ll take care of Sloane.] My fingers went numb. I stared at the screen for a long time, my brain a static mess of white noise. I took a few deep breaths, waiting for the paralysis in my limbs to fade. Then, my eyes drifted to the Notes app. Everett had a habit. He recorded everything he deemed important. On his current phone, he has notes on my cycle, my allergies, and my favorite obscure coffee roasters. A sickening curiosity took hold of me. What did his old self find important enough to record? Just as I was about to tap the icon, the library door pushed open. “Sloane? Do you need a hand with those boxes?” He was leaning against the doorframe, his usual warm smile in place. But when his eyes fell on the phone in my hand, his expression flickered for a fraction of a second. Then, he straightened up, his tone casual. “What are you looking at, honey?” I pulled my finger away from the Notes app and turned the screen toward him. My voice was a jagged blade. “What is this?” “You didn’t stop me for my own good. You stopped me for Melanie?” “The ‘protection’ you promised me… was that all a lie, too?” I tried to keep my voice steady, but it betrayed me, trembling with the force of my heartbreak. He looked at the text, then at me. After a heavy silence, he lowered his head. “Sloane, I’m sorry.” My heart skipped a beat. My nails dug into my palms. Before I could scream at him, he stepped forward, gently taking the phone from my hand and pulling me into a half-embrace. He sounded genuinely pained. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to overthink things. I stopped you because I didn’t want you to get hurt.” “You have no idea how unstable Brooks was back then. If you had actually ruined that wedding and made Melanie cry, Brooks would have stopped at nothing to ruin your life. I sent that text to her just to keep her quiet so she wouldn’t run to Brooks and escalate things.” He sighed, his large hand gently stroking the back of my head. “Sloane, after everything we’ve been through, do you really trust me so little?” So, that was what he was apologizing for. Not the intent, but the secrecy. The hollow ache in my chest softened slightly. But that text remained like a splinter under my skin. He had called her Milly. Everett’s mother once told me that while Everett always had a smile on his face, he was colder than anyone she knew. Very few people earned a nickname from him. Even with me, he didn’t call me Sloane-y until we had been together for a year. “Come on. Our engagement party is in a week. Let’s not dig up ghosts. I’m taking you out for a massive dinner tonight,” he said, smoothing things over with his usual easy grace. I played the part. I went to dinner. I smiled. But in the dead of night, I crept back into the library. My hands shook as I opened the Notes app, my heart hammering against my ribs. It was empty. My stomach dropped. Everett had used that phone for three years. Knowing his personality, there was zero chance his notes were blank. He had deleted them. And you only delete things you can’t afford to have seen. I didn’t sleep for the next two nights. My mind was a battlefield. One voice told me I was being paranoid—maybe he deleted them because they contained sensitive corporate data. But another voice whispered that he was hiding a monstrous secret. By the third day, the lack of sleep triggered a blinding migraine. I had just swallowed a sedative when my phone buzzed. A text from Everett: [Sloane, I’ll be home late tonight.] Then a second one: [Brooks and Melanie are back in New York. The group is getting together for dinner.] I froze. Brooks and Melanie had moved to London shortly after their wedding. Part of it was business, but the other part was obvious: Brooks wanted to get Melanie away from me, especially since she was pregnant at the time. Four years later, and the “Happy Couple” had returned. I typed back: [Send me the address. I’m coming too.] He called me immediately, sounding worried. Only after I promised him multiple times that I wouldn’t cause a scene did he finally agree. I arrived at the restaurant first. When I pushed open the door to the private room, I found myself face-to-face with Melanie. She had put on a little weight, draped in diamonds and Cartier. Next to her sat a little boy, about three years old, playing quietly with a toy car. She smiled at me. It was that same wide-eyed, “innocent” look she had used to play me for years. “Sloane. It’s been a long time.” I didn’t answer. Suddenly, a familiar scent—expensive cologne and cold air—pressed against my back. “Sloane.” I jerked away, coming face-to-face with Brooks’ icy expression. He was as stoic as ever, but for a second, I thought his gaze lingered on my face a bit too long. When I looked back at Melanie, her smile had faltered. The tension only eased when Everett arrived. He was a natural socialite, the life of every party. He kept the conversation flowing while Brooks offered the occasional monosyllabic response. As he talked, Everett’s hands were busy. He spent the entire meal peeling shrimp and placing them in my bowl. Brooks, on the other hand, ate in silence, only occasionally dropping a piece of broccoli onto his son’s plate. I remembered how it used to be. Brooks used to wait on Melanie hand and foot while we were all “friends.” Back then, as his actual girlfriend, I had never received that level of devotion. A server brought out a new dish. Everett immediately stopped him. “Excuse me, this is the wrong order.” The server looked confused. “The ticket says the Roast Beef Salad, sir.” “This has sesame seeds on it,” Everett said, his voice firm. “I specifically told the host that none of the dishes could have sesame. The boy is highly allergic.” My fork stopped halfway to my mouth. The server apologized profusely and took the plate away. Brooks glanced at Everett, his expression unreadable. Melanie looked up, curious. “How did you know Toby was allergic to sesame?” Everett smiled easily. “You posted about it on Instagram a while back.” He went back to putting food in my bowl, but I couldn’t swallow a single bite. For the last two years, Everett has been working himself to the bone. He barely had time to sleep. I used to tease him about never liking my posts, and he’d give me a tired smile and say he hadn’t even opened the app in days. But he had time to read Melanie’s posts carefully enough to memorize her son’s allergies. That terrifying suspicion from the library flared up again, and this time, I couldn’t shove it down. On the drive home, I was a ghost. Sensing my mood, Everett pulled the car over on a quiet stretch of road. He reached out to touch my hair, but I flinched. He looked genuinely hurt. “What’s wrong? Was seeing them too much? I told you it was a bad idea…” “How do you remember her Instagram posts from months ago?” I interrupted, my voice raw. “Everett, why did you really stop me four years ago? Was it for me, or was it because you’ve always been in love with Melanie?” He let out a long, heavy sigh. “Sloane.” I stiffened. He rarely used my full name like that. “I know what Brooks did to you was traumatic. But I am not him. I am nothing like him.” Seeing me quiet down, he leaned over and pulled me into his chest. “Please, just trust me. I happened to see that post while I was waiting for a meeting. That’s all.” His arms were thick and strong. These were the arms that had dragged me out of the abyss four years ago. He was the one who held me through every nightmare. I wanted to believe him. I gripped the fabric of his shirt, ready to apologize for being crazy, when a sharp, piercing ringtone shattered the silence of the car. He looked at the caller ID and immediately let go of me. “Hello?” “What?!” I had never seen Everett look so panicked. “Stay exactly where you are. I’m coming to get you!” He slammed the car into gear, the tires screeching as we tore down the road. I grabbed the handle, terrified. “What’s happening?” His jaw was set so tight the muscles were bulging. “Brooks and Melanie got into a massive fight. That idiot kicked her out of the car and left her on the side of the highway. She’s surrounded by a group of drunks.” The words died in my throat. I watched his face—the raw anxiety, the sheer terror. Everett was always the calm one. A year ago, I was eating at a late-night diner with friends when a group of guys started harassing us. It got physical. When Everett arrived, he didn’t swing a single punch. He calmly called the police and took us to the ER. When I asked him why he wasn’t angry, he just kissed my forehead and said, “Anger solves nothing. Logic does.” But now, as he blew through three red lights, there wasn’t a shred of logic left in him. Melanie was fine. Some Good Samaritans had chased the drunks away before we arrived. She was sitting on a park bench, looking lost. Everett threw the car door open and ran to her, completely forgetting I was even in the car. I didn’t move. I watched through the windshield as Everett hovered over her. Melanie started sobbing, and after a moment of hesitation, Everett’s hand landed on her shoulder, rubbing gently. He brought her back to the car. She sat in the backseat, crying softly. Everett explained to me that Brooks wanted a divorce—that they had been fighting for months. It was almost funny. They had betrayed everyone to be together, and it hadn’t even lasted five years. The great Brooks Reed was dumping the woman he “loved” more than his own soul. But the real joke was on me. Because looking at Everett’s face in the rearview mirror, I realized the truth. Everett didn’t just care about Melanie. He was head over heels for her. Melanie ended up staying in our guest room. I asked Everett why he didn’t just take her to a hotel. “She’s a woman alone, Sloane. It’s not safe.” I almost laughed. I travel for work all the time. I stay in hotels across the country by myself, and he has never once suggested it wasn’t safe. In the middle of the night, I heard Everett on the balcony. He was on the phone with Brooks, his voice low and furious. They were fighting over her. Everyone said Everett had a heart of gold, but apparently, he only grew claws when it came to Melanie. A dull, familiar ache throbbed in my chest. I rolled over, tears soaking my pillow. I pulled out my phone. There was a message from a data recovery shop I had visited a day ago. [The phone you sent in has been processed. We’ve recovered the deleted files. Sending the backup now.] The next morning, I was woken up by the sound of laughter. I walked into the kitchen to find Everett and Melanie cooking together. The “devastated” woman from last night was gone, replaced by a glowing, domestic goddess. She waved at me. “Sloane! E and I made breakfast. Come try it.” E. The nickname hit me like a physical blow. I stared at her, my nails drawing blood from my palms. Everett, who was usually so sensitive to my every mood, didn’t even notice I was upset. I sat down. Melanie handed me a cup of hot tea, but before I could take it, she let go. The cup shattered on the floor, scalding water splashing everywhere. “Oh!” she cried out, collapsing into a chair and clutching her leg. Everett was on her in a second, grabbing the first-aid kit. “It’s just a minor burn. This ointment will fix it.” Then he turned to me, his eyes cold with reproach. “Sloane, how could you be so careless?” I was stunned. The injustice of it made my voice come out in a raspy whisper. “She let go on purpose.” Melanie looked down, her voice trembling. “It’s okay, Everett. I deserve it. I did a terrible thing to her years ago. I should accept whatever she does to me.” The “innocent victim” act. I had seen it a thousand times. Something inside me finally snapped. “Melanie, stop the act! You used these pathetic tricks to steal Brooks, and now that he’s done with you, you’re moving on to Everett? Is that the plan?” Melanie’s eyes welled with tears. “Enough!” Everett roared. I flinched. In three years, he had never raised his voice at me. Not once. But for Melanie, he was ready to go to war. “Brooks’ betrayal was his fault! Why are you taking it out on her?” Everett stood up, glaring at me. “Sloane, you need to calm down. In this state, how can we even have an engagement party?” I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. He was so worked up he didn’t even realize he had called her Milly again. Or maybe, in the heat of the moment, his mask had just slipped. I watched him walk away. “I’m taking her to the clinic to get this checked properly,” he snapped, not even looking back. Melanie picked up her purse. As she passed me, the tears vanished. She leaned in, a triumphant smirk on her face. “Sloane, there’s one thing you don’t know. Everett tried to date me first. Long before Brooks.” It was the same look she gave me four years ago at my birthday party, right after she whispered, “I’m pregnant, and it’s Brooks’.” The door slammed shut. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out. The recovered files were open. One note stood out. The title was: Everything About Milly. It was a meticulous list. Her favorite brands, how many sugars she liked in her coffee, the places she dreamed of visiting… it was ten times more detailed than anything he had ever written about me. And at the very bottom, there was a single sentence: [If Sloane falls for me, she’ll be too distracted to seek revenge on them. Then, Milly can finally be happy.] I stared at the words until they blurred. I started laughing, hot tears streaming down my face. I finally had my answer. I forwarded the file to Everett’s phone. I didn’t say much. Just a few words: [Everett, you and Brooks are exactly the same.] [We’re done.] I packed a suitcase and walked out the door without looking back.
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