共有

001: saving myself

作者: Chithority.
last update 公開日: 2025-07-24 04:26:10

Liana’s POV

(2 days earlier ……)

I wasn’t supposed to be here—and definitely not like this. Puffy eyes. Smudged makeup. An expired gym pass and a trail of broken pieces. Matteo should never find out

Matteo made sure the world saw a picture-perfect marriage. He didn’t care what happened behind locked doors—as long as no one ever questioned it.”

But here I was, sitting cross-legged on cold concrete beside the door of a gym I couldn’t legally enter, pretending like I wasn’t about to lose what little sanity I had left.

The early morning air stung my skin, damp with June’s indecision between spring and summer. I kept my head down, hoodie drawn, as if that Could hide the fact that I’d cried like a child in my car for fifteen whole minutes before dragging myself here.

Mornings like this, when reality felt like a nightmare, I ran.

A nightmare that once felt like a blessing. I would still remember that day I said those wedding vows. It felt like my best decision. But now I don’t even know what it feels like anymore.

Sometimes I miss the man he used to be. And I hate myself for that.

If I can just make it through today without breaking, maybe I can figure out how to leave for good tomorrow.

I heard Footsteps echoed down the pavement. Bringing me off my thought back to my reality

My head snapped up.

A man, tall, broad, confident in the kind of quiet way that made you think twice, Strode toward the door. I quickly sat up straighter. Panic stirred.

Don’t chicken out now.

He didn’t see me at first. His gaze was focused, steps sure, like someone who owned his world, or at least didn’t let it Own him. His eyes flicked toward me when he got close enough, surprised to see someone crouched in his path.

I stood, smoothing my leggings like that would erase the mess I clearly was.

“Hey,” I said, voice scratchy. “Do you mind if I come in after you?”

He stopped mid-stride, one brow arching. God, he had the most annoyingly sculpted face, clean-cut jawline, a faint scar near his brow, and sleepy eyes that definitely weren’t sleepy.

“Your pass not working?” he asked, voice low, skeptical.

“Technically,” I coughed, “it’s expired. I just, need a run. A quiet run. I swear I won’t implicate you or do anything noticeable. I’ll vanish in the background. Like a gym ghost.”

He stared at me like I’d just offered to rob the place with jazz hands.

“You’re asking me to sneak you into someone else’s gym. That’s like going against the rule of this place.”

“I’m not sneaking. I’m… slipping through a moral crack. There’s a difference,” I said with a small smile.

His lips twitched. There. A crack in the marble.

“No one will know. Not even the owner.”

Oh.

Crap.

My smile froze. “…Oh.”

He leaned a little closer. “So tell me why I should let a random woman with raccoon eyes and an expired pass card into my gym before sunrise?”

I bit my lip, flushed. “Because… you look like the kind of guy who understands quiet desperation.”

He blinked.

Okay, maybe too dramatic.

“…And because if I don’t run for at least twenty minutes, I might actually stab someone today.”

“Or maybe commit suicide.” I added with a Fake smile. Deep down, I knew I wasn’t joking. I might actually do that. Because my life is a total mess, and I really can’t wait to get out of it.

There was a beat of silence. Then he stepped aside and pushed open the door.

“Twenty minutes. I don’t plan on staying long in the gym today,” he said.

“Thank you. Seriously. You’re my morning miracle.”

I stepped past him, ignoring the way his cologne hit me, spice, woodsmoke, and something dangerously clean. Like sin in a suit. Or a gym tee.

Was I really begging a stranger to let me run like it was my last meal? What even was I anymore?

I could feel his eyes on me as I jogged to the treadmill like a fugitive who just got a free pass from the warden. But I didn’t look back. I couldn’t.

I wasn’t happy about it.Twenty minutes would never be enough. But I took it anyway.

As I stepped onto the treadmill, I told myself I wasn’t here to run. I was here to remember how to breathe—before going back to the place I used to call home.

この本を無料で読み続ける
コードをスキャンしてアプリをダウンロード

最新チャプター

  • One night with my brother inlaw    28

    CHAPTER 27 the gym is gone Liana’s POVThe USB drive had given me answers.But answers without context were just more questions wearing different clothes.I knew what Matteo had done. I knew the shape of it now the debt, the transfer, the correspondence that referred to me as the subject like I was a line item in a budget. I knew my marriage had been a transaction completing itself and that I had walked into it believing it was a choice.What I didn’t know was what Maxwell had intended to do with any of it.And that gap that specific gap between what I knew and what I didn’t was where everything lived. Where the anger lived. Where the something-that-wasn’t-quite-hope-but-wasn’t-quite-dead-yet lived.I needed more.I started small.Careful. Methodical. The way you move when you’re searching inside a house that watches you.I had a name the holding company that had purchased the gym. The attendant had been tight lipped but the sale of a business left records. Public records. The kind

  • One night with my brother inlaw     27 the gym is gone

    Liana’s POVThe USB drive had given me answers.But answers without context were just more questions wearing different clothes.I knew what Matteo had done. I knew the shape of it now the debt, the transfer, the correspondence that referred to me as the subject like I was a line item in a budget. I knew my marriage had been a transaction completing itself and that I had walked into it believing it was a choice.What I didn’t know was what Maxwell had intended to do with any of it.And that gap that specific gap between what I knew and what I didn’t was where everything lived. Where the anger lived. Where the something-that-wasn’t-quite-hope-but-wasn’t-quite-dead-yet lived.I needed more.I started small.Careful. Methodical. The way you move when you’re searching inside a house that watches you.I had a name the holding company that had purchased the gym. The attendant had been tight lipped but the sale of a business left records. Public records. The kind accessible to anyone who kn

  • One night with my brother inlaw    26 words unsaid

    Liana’s POVThe USB drive sat on my nightstand for two days before I touched it again.Not because I forgot it was there.Because I was afraid of what it contained.Or worse, afraid of what it didn’t.On the third morning I woke up before five, lay in the grey dark staring at it, and decided that fear was a luxury I was done affording.I took my laptop to the bathroom. Locked the door. Sat on the cold tile floor with my back against the tub the same position I had found myself in more times than I could count in this house, the floor being the only place that ever felt honest and pushed the drive in.One folder.Titled with a date from eight months ago.I opened it.It took me a long time to understand what I was reading.Not because the language was complicated, it wasn't. Whoever had compiled this had been thorough and precise. Dates. Names. Transaction records. Correspondence. A paper trail laid out with the patience of someone who had been building toward something specific.I r

  • One night with my brother inlaw    25: staying strong

    Liana’s POVThree days passed.Then four.Then a week.And somewhere in that week I made a decision — not dramatic, not announced, just a quiet internal shift — that I was not going to fall apart over a man who had packed his bags before I woke up.I was not going to be that woman.I had already been too many versions of broken in this house. I was not adding Maxwell Reyes to the list of men who had reduced me.So I got up every morning.I ate.I moved through the house with the practiced composure of someone who had been performing fine for years and could do it for a few more weeks without breaking.I was fine.I was absolutely fine.The visitor arrived on a Tuesday.I heard him before I saw him — a heavy voice in the hallway below, the particular boom of a man who assumed every room wanted to hear him. Matteo’s response was warmer than usual which meant this was someone who mattered in whatever world Matteo actually inhabited.I came downstairs composed. Dressed appropriately. The

  • One night with my brother inlaw    24 His baby 2

    Liana povA baby?A woman in London?Pregnant.I looked at the book in my lap.The words on the page had stopped meaning anything several seconds ago. They were just shapes now. Just marks on paper.Some woman he’s been with.I thought about the night. About his hands and his voice and the way he had looked at me afterward, are you okay, like it mattered. Like I mattered.I thought about something came up on a folded piece of paper.Something came up.A baby came up.A whole woman in London came up.A whole life I knew nothing about came up.I pressed my fingers flat against the page of the book.“Liana.” I looked up.Matteo was watching me with mild irritation. “I said, did he eat before he left? Maria mentioned the kitchen was used late.”I held his gaze.“I don’t know,” I said evenly. “I was asleep.” I knew he was asking silly questions to understand my mood He studied me for a second longer than felt comfortable.Then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.” Back to his phone.I looked back a

  • One night with my brother inlaw    24: his baby

    Liana’s POVI had forgotten what this felt like.Not the heartbreak, I knew heartbreak. Matteo had introduced me to that in the first year of our marriage and refined it steadily ever since. I knew heartbreak the way you know a recurring illness, its patterns, its duration, how long before it became manageable again.This was different.This was the specific pain of someone who had been starving for a long time, who had finally been handed something real and warm and nourishing, and then had it taken back before they had finished.That kind of hunger doesn’t return to where it was before.It returns worse.Because now it knows what it’s missing.I moved through the morning like a woman underwater. Slow. Muffled. The edges of everything are slightly blurred. Maria brought breakfast and I sat in front of it and ate some of it because my body required it, not because I tasted anything.I kept thinking about small things.Not the night, I couldn’t think about the night yet. That was st

  • One night with my brother inlaw    004: Let me breathe

    Chapter 4 Liana’s POV ( present day…..) Last night was the longest, I couldn’t find sleep. Matteo word about my father kept ringing in my head. And this morning I knew I had to run. It was my only escape. Today’s gym wasn’t about my new fantasy, it was more about pain. But I was scared he

  • One night with my brother inlaw    003: Fire Beneath silence

    “Good evening ma” Maria voice came in, I quickly stopped like a child cut stealing meat from the pot “Hhhey, ammm how…. Sorry I mean good evening” I managed to find my words “ is my husband home” “ yes ma, I think his in the other building?” She replied “ Oh, the other building. Hmmm right, I

  • One night with my brother inlaw    002: A new pulse

    Liana’s POV Seems like you want to take an extra time” a voice came in from behind. I turn towards that direction and it was the stranger. My newest miracle “Ohh no thank you already” I said pretending I was ok “ you don’t seem to mean what you say, anyways I think I would still spend an extra t

  • One night with my brother inlaw    Prologue

    (Present day). Liana pov… “Liana.” Before I could fully open my eyes, he was already in the room. No greeting. No explanation. Just… that box. Sitting on the dresser. The one he kept locked, except for nights like this. My stomach twisted. “No,” I whispered, sitting up. Dread pooled fast in

続きを読む
無料で面白い小説を探して読んでみましょう
GoodNovel アプリで人気小説に無料で!お好きな本をダウンロードして、いつでもどこでも読みましょう!
アプリで無料で本を読む
コードをスキャンしてアプリで読む
DMCA.com Protection Status