Chapter 3

Gwen's POV

I ran a fever all night. By the next morning, it still hadn't broken; my skin burned, and my lips were peeling and cracked.

Before dawn had fully broken, Ethan barged into my bedroom with two bodyguards.

Wrapped in my duvet, half-delirious from the fever, I was dragged out of bed, shoved into the car between the guards before I could even grab a coat.

The car drove straight to the main auditorium of Mia's university.

The auditorium was packed. A sea of people sat in the audience—Mia's classmates and professors.

A few reporters had even set up cameras in the back corners, lenses pointed at the stage.

Mia stood in the center of the stage, her eyes rimmed with red, saying nothing.

Every now and then, she glanced briefly at the crowd before quickly ducking her head again.

A few professors stood beside her. When they saw me being brought up to the stage, their brows drew together in disapproval.

"Gwen," Mia said softly, her voice just loud enough for the front rows to catch, "if you just apologize publicly, we can put this behind us. I won't press charges."

"Yeah, just apologize! Don't be so cruel," a girl called out from below, backing Mia up.

Ethan didn't give me a chance to speak.

He reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone, shoved it into my hand, and forcibly tapped the screen to wake it.

"Unlock it."

Too weak to put up a fight, I punched in the passcode.

It was my birthday.

He knew it.

Ethan pressed the phone back into my palm.

"In front of everyone," he said, his voice measured but carrying clearly across the auditorium, "delete every single thing. One by one, with your own hands."

A low collective gasp rippled through the room.

I cradled the phone, the glare of the screen reflecting off my fever-flushed face.

Everything on this phone had been collected piece by piece through contacts just the night before.

When I gathered it, my only thought had been to wait for his reply, lay it out before him, and have a clear, honest conversation.

Now I understood: these files were the very last shreds of leverage I had left.

And this was precisely what he wanted today—to force me to crush them with my own hands in front of the world.

I started with the photos.

Stored in the album were the pictures I’d had people take over the years: Mia holding Ethan's arm as they left a restaurant, Mia leaning against his shoulder during a movie, Mia taking groceries from his hands at his apartment door.

My fingers trembled as I tapped to delete them, one by one. With every photo I deleted, I turned the screen outward, holding it up so every pair of eyes below could see it clearly.

When I reached the photo where Ethan was draping his coat over Mia's shoulders, my finger paused.

"Delete it. What are you waiting for?" Ethan urged in a low voice from behind me.

Someone in the audience let out a snicker, quickly shushed by the person next to them.

I deleted it anyway.

"Delete the timeline too. Don't leave a single entry," Ethan demanded.

I deleted an entry, held it up, deleted another, until I reached the one I hated to let go of the most—Ethan waving at the camera through an airport glass partition. That was originally taken for me. My thumb hovered over the screen.

I had kept that picture thinking that one day, when he was finally done being busy, I'd show it to him and tell him I'd kept every memory safe.

"What, having second thoughts?" someone yelled sarcastically from the crowd.

In the end, I pressed down.

"Chat history, contacts—delete all of it," Ethan's voice came from behind.

I deleted them slowly. So slowly that people in the front rows began shifting impatiently in their seats, slowly enough that the shutters of the cameras in the back clicked continuously, capturing every bit of my humiliation.

"Wipe it completely clean!" someone shouted.

I didn't miss a single thing. I deleted until the gallery was empty, the chat list wiped, until nothing remained.

I slammed the phone face-down on the podium.

Not a single person in the audience spoke; even the excitement of watching the drama had fizzled out.

"Now, say you're sorry," Ethan said, thrusting a microphone in front of me.

I took the mic, gripping it tightly.

I stepped up to the front, my legs long since numb, leaning heavily on the edge of the podium with one hand to stay upright.

I lifted my head.

"Go on, just say sorry and get it over with!" someone urged from below.

Everyone was watching me, waiting for that apology.

All the evidence in my hands had been forcibly wiped out.

Now, the only thing I had left was the statement everyone in this room was waiting to hear from my lips.

What that statement would be was still entirely up to me.

I didn't say I was sorry.

I brought the microphone to my lips. My voice was raspy and broken, but I delivered every single word with utter clarity into everyone's ears.

"Ethan and I have broken up."

The room erupted into an uproar.

I had deleted all my own files in front of everyone, only to drop this bomb at the very end.

"You—" a man standing in the front row stammered, entirely at a loss for words.

The pitiful facade on Mia's face cracked completely.

"Gwen!" Ethan hissed from behind me. "Do you have any idea what you're saying?"

"I know exactly what I'm saying," I said into the mic. "I said: you and I are finished."

Ethan froze on the spot, his hand reaching out to take the microphone hanging motionless in midair.

Without waiting for anyone to react, I supported myself on the edge of the stage and moved down the steps, one agonizing step at a time.

I missed a step, hastily catching myself against an adjacent chair, but I didn't fall.

I walked straight through the parted sea of slack-jawed onlookers, looking at none of them, right out the front doors of the auditorium.

Outside, the sunlight was blindingly white. I tilted my head back, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

The fever was still raging, and my legs were still shaking.

I reached out to steady myself on the cold iron railing by the steps.

With those words spoken, the man I had waited for all these years had nothing to do with me anymore.

I thought saying it out loud would feel liberating.

It didn't. It just felt empty. All the memories I had collected over the years were gone today.

Behind me, the steps remained empty. Ethan never ran out after me.