Chapter 21:What’s Left Unsaid

Chapter 21: Chapter 21:What’s Left Unsaid

The soft chime of the penthouse elevator greeted Iris as she stepped into the private lobby. She pressed the illuminated button and waited, but nothing happened. Frowning, she pressed it again.

The panel blinked red once before a calm electronic voice filled the empty hallway.

"Biometric authentication required."

Iris stared at it for a second before letting out a defeated sigh. She remembered that last night, Alexander had used his fingerprint to make it work.

"Right...of course it needs his fingerprint." She let out a breath that was somewhere between a laugh and a groan

It figured. A man who lived in a penthouse like this probably didn’t trust ordinary keys or elevator buttons.

She pushed through the stairwell door instead, and she stood there, glancing toward the staircase at the end of the hallway....it looked endless.

"Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me." Her voice echoed softly down the concrete shaft.

She looked back toward the luxurious elevator one last time as though it might suddenly decide to cooperate out of pity.

It didn’t.

With the resignation of someone accepting an unfortunate fate, Iris looked back at the stairwell.

"Well... congratulations, Iris," she muttered under her breath. "You wanted to leave unnoticed. Looks like you’re getting your wish and your morning workout too."

She slipped off her heels, held them in one hand, and began making her way down the concrete stairwell.

By the twentieth flight, her legs were beginning to protest, and by the thirtieth, she had stopped counting altogether.

"Oh... my... God..."

She paused on another landing, bending over with both hands on her knees while trying to catch her breath.

"Does... nobody... who lives here... actually use the stairs?"

Her voice echoed around the empty stairwell, and a small laugh escaped her despite herself.

If Zoey had been here, she would have recorded the entire thing just to tease her for the next ten years.

She took another deep breath to steady herself. "Come on." She pushed herself upright again. "Just a little more."

Twenty-something floors later, her legs were shaking and her lungs felt scraped raw, Iris finally stepped through the emergency exit into the hotel’s luxurious lobby.

Cool air-conditioning washed over her flushed face. She stood in the lobby for a moment just to remember how to breathe like a normal person, then walked out into the sun, blinking against the light like she’d just crawled out of a cave.

A cab was idling near the entrance, someone’s luggage still being pulled from the trunk. She slid into the back seat before the driver could even ask.

"Morning, miss." The driver greeted with an easy smile. "Where to?"

"Good morning." She smiled politely at the driver, settling in comfortablely at the seat.

"Could you please take me to Emerald Heights Apartments, please?" Iris gave her address, and let her head fall against the window for the ride home.

"You got it." The driver said and the cab pulled away from the hotel.

******

Almost an hour later, the taxi slowed before the familiar apartment complex.

"We’re here."

Iris blinked, realizing she’d spent most of the journey lost in thought and sighed.

"Thank you." She paid the fare, climbed out, and watched the cab disappear into morning traffic.

Then she turned toward her building to see the last thing she wanted to see, which caused her to stop in her tracks immediately.

Someone was pacing back and forth outside the entrance, tall and broad-shouldered. His golden-blond hair catching the morning sunlight. He was none other than Jason.

His blond hair a mess like he’d been dragging his hands through it for the better part of an hour. He hadn’t noticed her yet.

And a few feet away, leaning causally against the sleek black frame of Jason’s Porsche 911, with his arms folded across his chest, stood another man....Shawn Matthews. Jason’s closest friend since freshman year.

Shawn noticed her first. He straightened off the car in one smooth motion and said something low that made Jason stop mid-stride and turn.

Iris braced herself. She’d imagined this moment more than once during the cab ride .... imagined her chest caving in, her eyes stinging, that old familiar ache clawing its way up her throat. She waited for it.

But it didn’t come.

She looked at him — really looked, This was the man she’d loved for three years, the man she’d imagined marrying someday. At the face she used to trace with her fingers in the dark, the mouth that used to whisper things that made her feel like the center of the universe.....the same man she’d cried over only hours ago— and felt nothing but a distant, almost clinical sort of tiredness.

It was strange.....almost unsettling. There was disappointment, there was anger, there was betrayal. But the overwhelming love that had once consumed her...It was simply...gone.

She frowned slightly. How was that possible? Could a heart really change overnight? Or...Had something inside her quietly broken beyond repair?

She didn’t know. And for the first time...she realized she didn’t particularly care to find the answer.

Huh, she thought. So that’s it, then.

She didn’t have time to examine the feeling further because Jason was already closing the distance between them, and there was nowhere to go but toward her own front door.

"Iris." His voice cracked slightly on her name. "Iris, wait — please, I need to talk to you."

She kept walking, aiming her key at the lock like he wasn’t even there, but his hand closed around her wrist before she reached it. She tried to twist free, an instinctive little tug, but his grip didn’t budge.

"Let go, Jason."

But he didn’t. Instead, he pulled her gently back around to face him.

She looked down at his hand. "Get your hands off me Jason."

"I just need five minutes to talk to you." Jason tried to beg her, but Iris wouldn’t hear it.

"I don’t have five minutes for you."

"Iris..."

She tried pulling free again from his grasp but his grip instinctively tightened. And that was when his nose wrinkled — the same look he used to give when milk had gone off in the fridge.

"Where the hell have you been all night?" His eyes dropped to the coat swallowing her frame, and something shifted in his expression. "And whose coat is that?"

"Really Jason? That’s what you wanted to talk about?"

"I asked you a question."

She tilted her head. "And I heard you. It’s just... I honestly expected you to start with something like ’I’m sorry.’ Maybe even ’I made the biggest mistake of my life.’"

She gave him a small shrug. "But apparently we’re discussing my wardrobe instead. Upon all the excuses you could have started with, that’s the burning question on your mind right now?" Iris asked, arching a brow.

Jason ignored the sarcasm, he stepped closer to her, close enough that his frown deepened.

There’s something off about her...something that wasn’t right. Or perhaps...something was different, he just couldn’t explain it.

Her scent was now different. It wasn’t the familiar floral fragrance he’d known for years. There was another scent clinging to her, a masculine one.

"You smell different." He leaned in slightly, like he was trying to place it, and his jaw tightened. "Something’s different about you. So tell me — where were you?"

A slow smile crept across her face, not the warm kind. "If it isn’t obvious, Jason, I spent the night at a man’s place."

"You’re lying." He said it fast, too fast, like the words could hold back whatever ugly thing was rising in him. "You’re just saying that because you’re still mad about last night. I know that you didn’t spend the night with another man."

"And how exactly are you so certain?"

"Because I know you." Jason replied immediately.

Iris smiled faintly. "That’s interesting. I used to think I knew you too."

The words landed harder than shouting ever could. Jason swallowed. "That’s why I’m here — to explain everything properly."

"Explain what, exactly?" Her voice climbed, sharp enough that a woman walking her dog across the street glanced over. "That you’ve been sleeping with my best friend for three months? I saw everything I needed to see last night, Jason. The sex act was vivid and clear, there’s nothing left to explain."

She yanked at her wrist again. He didn’t let go.

"Iris, please, just listen to me for one second." His free hand came up like he wanted to touch her face, then thought better of it and dropped.

"What happened with Vanessa...the first time it happened...that was a mistake, a genuine mistake."

She laughed, a quiet laugh. He didn’t know how ridiculous he sounded right now. "You said the first time was a mistake, was the second time a mistake as well?"

Jason looked away in guilt.

"What about the third? The tenth?"

He closed his eyes briefly. "Iris..." He tried to find another excuse but Iris didn’t let him utter more lies.

"You said three months." She corrected herself. "No scratch that...actually, Vanessa said you both have been fucking each other for three months. And that’s roughly ninety days."

Her voice never rose as she spoke. "So tell me Jason," She met his eyes. "On which of those ninety days did it stop being a mistake?"

Jason had no answer. Instead, frustration slowly replaced guilt. "You don’t understand Iris...I tried to stay faithful, I really did."

He ran both hands through his blond hair. "But there’s something..." He struggled for the right way to say the words he wanted to say. "I don’t even know how to explain it."

His shoulders tensed. "But Iris, I’m a man. I have needs, physical needs, same as any other guy. We’ve dated for years, and you knew that I wanted to be intimate with you, but you pulled away each time I tried to do more than a kiss.

I tried so hard to stay faithful to you all these years, I really did, but you wouldn’t let me touch you. What was I supposed to do with that?"

Iris stared at him for a long moment, and when she spoke, her voice had gone very quiet — the kind of quiet that was more dangerous than shouting.

"You still don’t get it, do you Jason." It wasn’t a question.

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You still think the affair is what destroyed us." She slowly shook her head. "It was never just about you cheating. People cheat, Jason. It’s awful, but it happens, and maybe ... maybe ..... If it had been some woman I’d never met, a stranger, I could have found a way to survive it. Maybe I would have walked away. Maybe, after a very long time, I might even have forgiven you."

Jason stared at her wide eyed.

"But you didn’t choose a stranger. You chose Vanessa. You chose someone who used to sit on my bed and help me pick out dresses. Vanessa wasn’t just another woman. You knew exactly who she was to me."

Her voice caught for only a heartbeat before steadying again.

"She’s someone I told my secrets to.....She was my best friend. The person I trusted almost as much as I trusted you."

She looked from Jason to Shawn, who remained silently beside the Porsche, pretending not to listen even though every word had reached him.

Then her gaze returned to Jason. "You didn’t just betray our relationship, you destroyed the safest part of my life. That’s the part I can’t come back from. Not the sex — it was the betrayal of who you cheated on me with."

Jason opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

"I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering whether the two people standing beside me are lying."

Jason’s brow furrowed like she’d spoken in a foreign language. "What are you saying?"

"I’m saying we’re done, Jason. There’s no version of this where I keep dating you, knowing every time I look at you I’ll think of her too. So let’s just end it cleanly. Maybe you and Vanessa can figure out what you actually owe each other."

Something in his face cracked open at that — not sadness, not exactly. More like disbelief that the ground was actually giving way beneath him.