Page 203 of Broken Saint

I’m falling deeper and deeper into relapse and I have no idea how to get out, even if I had the strength to do so.

Colton has a house. A whole other home that he never told me about.

Letty hasn’t told me the details, but I shamelessly eavesdropped on a conversation between her and Luca.

He bought the home to escape. It’s his sanctuary.

And his penthouse in the city is…his fuckpad.

Disgust and disbelief collide within me.

He told me that I was the only one to go there.

But…the truth is that I was no different from all the other women he brought back to that place.

I wasn’t special.

His words, his promises were empty.

So why did he tell you about his mom?

I shake that thought away.

I want to believe that he meant every word.

He warned me that it would be hard, that he would try and push me away. But this right now isn’t pushing.

He’s severed everything that was between us.

The way he’s turned his back on me, on us, is cold and cruel.

After everything…

After everything we shared. I told him everything—all my insecurities, all my struggles—and he held me and told me that he loved me, for fuck’s sake. But the whole time he was hiding this whole other life from me.

“What do you want to do, Ella?” Letty asks. She’s been skirting around the question for days, but it seems like my time might finally be up.

I guess I can only drown in my own misery for so long.

Movement outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of her home catches my eye, and I watch as Mom chases Kyan around the garden with a huge smile on her face.

She deserves that. She deserves to be a grandmother.

Another wave of pain rolls through me.

It occurs to me that this is probably how I should have felt when I discovered Chad cheating on me. It’s even more evidence I don’t need that I never loved him.

Colt, though…I’m not sure it’s possible to love another in the way I love Colt. He wormed his way into my heart, my soul, every fiber of my fucking being a long time ago. And if I’ve learned anything from this experience, it’s that there’s a very good possibility he’ll never leave.

He left his mark on my life, and it’ll forever be tainted by it.

Every man I ever meet will be compared to him, and something tells me that no matter how good that man may be, he’ll never stand up to Colt.

What we have together is magic.

He’s my soul mate, my one true love. We just…

I sob again and Letty moves closer, wrapping her arm around me and holding me tight.