Ch. 54 – No More

Rhys didn’t get the luxury to wallow in the murky, toxic swamp of his own emotions for long.

He had barely taken three steps off the porch and onto the front walkway when the front door clicked open behind him. Dione came running out, her eyes wide, breathless and trembling with a terrified anticipation, expecting the absolute worst. She caught up to him at the edge of the lawn, her hands clasped together in a desperate plea.

“Rhys! How... how did it go?” she whispered frantically, her voice shaking. “What did he say?”

Rhys stopped, looking down at her with a face carved from ice. “Well, there’s good news and bad news,” he said, his voice flat. “The good news is that Arthur completely bought the lie. He thinks the dog just tore up my uniform.”

Dione let out a long, shuddering gasp of relief, her hands dropping to her sides. “Oh, thank God...”

“The bad news,” Rhys continued, narrowing his eyes, “is that to make the lie hold water, we now have to plan, staff, and execute a massive, high-profile launch event for my new catering business in exactly two weeks.”

Dione blinked, clearly failing to grasp the sheer, nightmarish scope of what he had just committed himself to. In her mind, the logistical nightmare of setting up an entire enterprise in fourteen days was completely irrelevant. All that mattered—all her heart registered—was that their secret wasn’t exposed. Their budding “love” was no longer in jeopardy.

Rhys watched the subtle shift in her eyes with a cold, sinking dread. She was on a completely different page, reading a completely different story. Her face transformed; a radiant, tearful beam broke through her anxiety.

Without a single word of warning, Dione threw her arms around his neck, jumping up to press her lips to his in a desperate, deeply passionate kiss right there under the open sun.

Rhys couldn’t even react quick enough. The sudden warmth of her mouth took him completely off guard, her body pressing flush against his on the manicured lawn.

“What the hell are you thinking?!” Rhys growled, violently tearing himself away and taking two sharp steps back, his pulse spiking with pure, adrenaline-fueled panic. He cast a frantic look over his shoulder toward Arthur’s house and the surrounding suburban street. “We are literally standing right in your husband’s front yard!”

Dione offered a bashful, breathless smile, a light flush rising on her cheeks as she touched her own lips. “I... I’m sorry, Rhys. I just couldn’t hold myself back. I thought we were done for.” She took a step closer to him, her eyes shining with an intense, devotion-filled fire. “Don’t worry about the event. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen. I’ll help you organize it, I’ll work the hours—I will do anything to keep our love going.”

A sharp, violent knot wrenched in the pit of Rhys’s stomach. Hearing the word love spill so effortlessly from her lips made his skin crawl. He had zero intention of keeping their “love” alive. He had no desire to build a future with her, and he certainly didn’t want her playing domestic business partner in his life.

He forced down the boiling lid of rage rising within his chest, suppressing the urge to scream at her. He locked his jaw, fixing her with a stern, icy stare that cut right through her excitement.

“Listen to me very carefully, Dione,” Rhys said, his tone low, harsh, and entirely stripped of warmth. “I don’t want your help. We are only sitting in this deep, dangerous hole right now because you stole my shirt in the first place.”

The words hit her like a physical blow.

It felt as though a delicate sheet of glass shattered silently between them. Dione froze in place, the vibrant life and radiant joy instantly draining from her face, leaving her looking hollow and pale. She let out a dry, incredulous laugh that sounded completely empty—a sound of sheer disbelief as her mind struggled to process his harsh rejection.

“You... you don’t mean that, Rhys,” Dione stammered, stepping forward, her voice rising in a desperate plea for reason. “How can you say that? The times we spent together... in secret... those were the best moments of my entire life! You brought me back to life!”

She swallowed hard, tears spilling over her lashes as she laid her raw, vulnerable truth out on the pavement between them.

“At first... I’ll admit it! At first, I only wanted you because you were with Lira,” Dione confessed, her voice cracking. “She was Astraea! The woman I looked up to most in this world, the hero I watched on the news every single night wishing I could be half as amazing as her! I wanted a piece of the life she had.” She took a ragged breath, looking up at him with an intense, heartbreaking expectation that Rhys desperately wished he didn’t have to face. “But then... after we were together... after our bodies collided... it stopped being about her, Rhys. I started feeling something real for you. I fell in love with you.”

Standing on the sunlit sidewalk, Rhys felt a sudden, unexpected emotion surge up from the deepest, quietest corner of his heart.

Pity.

He didn’t want to feel it, but looking at her—shattered, desperate, and weeping over a illusion she had constructed in her own lonely head—he couldn’t help but feel a profound, heavy sorrow for her. He didn’t know the right way to let her down easily. Hell, given how recklessly and selfishly he had acted over the past few weeks, he didn’t even know if he had the moral standing to justify lecturing her about boundaries.

And then, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, a soft, quiet light seemed to break through the dark clouds in his mind. The long-absent angel on his shoulder finally descended, whispering a gentle, comforting truth into his ear: You didn’t start this out of malice, Rhys. You were manipulated, coerced, and backed into a corner by Vespera’s dangerous web.

A thick, painful lump formed in Rhys’s throat. Looking down at Dione’s tear-stained face, a quiet, tragic sentiment crossed his mind—he couldn’t deny that perhaps, in another life, under completely different circumstances, where he wasn’t married to the love of his life and she wasn’t trapped in a stagnant marriage next door, they might have actually had a chance at something genuine.

Plucking that dangerous, nostalgic thought straight out of his head, Rhys gave the sentiment to the angel on his shoulder, letting him carry it away into the sky as fast as it had come. He couldn’t afford romantic ‘what-ifs.’ Not now. Not ever again.

Rhys hardened his posture, locking his expression into impassive, unyielding stone. He looked down at Dione, stripping every trace of doubt or softness from his eyes.

“Unfortunately, Dione... we can’t do this any longer,” Rhys said, his voice entirely steady, cool, and definitive. “It’s over.”

Dione crumbled right before his eyes. Her mouth parted, but no sound came out. She looked entirely speechless, her shoulders slumping as her world caved in around her.

She opened her mouth to protest, to beg, to scream—but before she could utter a single word, Rhys raised a single, firm hand in the air, stopping her cold.

“Please,” Rhys whispered quietly, his voice carrying a dark, dangerous edge of authority. “Don’t make a scene in your front yard.”

Without waiting for a response, Rhys turned his back on her, stepping off the lawn and heading straight back toward his own house across the street.

“And one last thing,” Rhys added over his shoulder, not even bothering to look back at her as he walked. “You can tell Arthur that I won’t be needing your help with the business after all. Tell him the extra workload was just becoming too much of a burden on your household.”

Rhys walked up his front steps, opened his door, and slipped inside, shutting out the afternoon sun.

He stood alone in his quiet entryway, pressing his back against the cool wood of the door. A deep, heavy silence filled the house, leaving Rhys with nothing but his own chaotic thoughts and the bittersweet, lingering taste of Dione’s last, desperate kiss still haunting his lips.