Chapter 5

With that, I turned to walk away, leaving Sean standing there in shock.

He heard him come after me, but after only a couple of steps, Summer cried out behind him.

"Sean, my mom passed out again..."

His footsteps stopped immediately, then hurried back in the other direction.

Sean's irritated voice carried down the hall after me. "Liana Zane, you'd better be sure you mean what you said.

"Because even if you get down on your knees and beg me to take you back, I won't. Don't think I'm going to put up with this crap just because we're about to get married."

I ignored him and went straight back to the apartment Sean and I shared.

The first thing I saw when I walked in was a pink suitcase by the door.

I paused, then remembered something Sean had told me the day before.

Summer and her mother were living somewhere run-down, and Summer wanted to stay at our apartment before the wedding so she could leave from a more respectable place on the big day.

I'd already told him no.

Yet her suitcase was sitting in our entryway anyway.

I walked past it without a word, pulled out my own suitcase, and began packing my clothes and everything else that belonged to me.

When I reached the nightstand, a document slipped through a gap in the drawer and fell to the floor.

I picked it up without thinking, and when I saw the date on the deed, I laughed.

July 2021.

Sean had bought the apartment a month after we moved in together, yet he'd been charging me rent for five years.

I suddenly remembered the time my paycheck came in a day late, and Sean charged me a 5% late fee, saying the landlord demanded it.

After that, I never missed a rent payment. Even when I didn't have enough money, I borrowed it rather than pay late.

Five years.

He had lied to me for five years, and I hadn't found out until the day we broke up.

The tears came before I could stop them, splashing onto the deed in my hands.

In that moment, every bit of love I'd once had for him curdled into anger at how completely he'd made a fool of me.

I took pictures of the deed, uploaded them to my laptop, and put together a PowerPoint with the photos, five years of payment records, and our messages about the rent.

Then I posted the entire thing in the wedding group chat we'd created a few days earlier.

My hands were perfectly steady as I typed one final message.

"I'm sorry to bother everyone, but the 50/50 wedding Sean Chase and I had scheduled for next Sunday is canceled."

Then I left the group chat, picked up my suitcase, and walked out of the apartment that had been built on five years of lies.