Do Not Fall For The Baseball Captains (Victoria and Elijah) novel Chapter 136

Chapter 136

Chapter 136

Victoria’s POV

34

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The guest bedroom in Adele’s apartment felt entirely too small, but I couldn’t bring myself to step outside the door.

I was curled in a tight ball in the middle of the mattress, my head buried in a throw pillow to muffle the ugly, broken sounds coming out of my chest.

Adele sat on the edge of the bed, her hand rubbing slow, comforting circles over my back, while Allison paced near the foot of the bed with a glass of water in her hand.

They had been trying to pull me out of this spiral for five straight hours, but nothing they said could touch the sickening, hollow ache inside me.

“Tori, please stop doing this to yourself,” Adele pleaded softly, her voice thick with worry. “You’re going to give yourself a migraine. Drink a little water, okay?”

“I ruined it,” I sobbed into the pillow, my voice muffled and raspy. “He looked at me like… like he didn’t even know who I was. I hurt him so badly, Adele.”

“You reacted like a human being who saw something horrifying on the internet,” Allison spoke up, her voice firm as she stepped closer.

“Look, if any woman opened her phone and saw a screenshot of her boyfriend reaching out to his toxic ex using a burner account, she’d lose her mind. You didn’t react out of nowhere. It looked real, Victoria. It looked completely real.”

I lifted my head from the pillow, my eyes swollen and burning, my vision blurred by fresh tears.

“He told me he didn’t do it. The look in his eyes… he was telling the truth, Allison.”

Allison let out a quiet sigh, sitting up a little straighter.

“Listen to me, Tori. We know Elijah. We love Elijah, and deep down, I don’t believe he’d ever do something like that to you. But if we’re looking at this strictly from the outside, there’s no actual proof to disprove that screenshot yet. It’s his word against an image circulating everywhere.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Allison added quickly, raising one hand in gentle surrender when she saw my jaw tighten.

“I’m not trying to plant seeds in your head. I know in my gut Elijah didn’t send those texts. He’s completely obsessed with you. But he’s a man, Tori. At the end of the day, neither of us can prove or disprove anything right this second. I’m only saying this so you stop beating yourself up. You didn’t overreact. Anyone in your shoes would have sprinted straight to that field.”

Their words were meant to pacify me, to wrap my guilt in something understandable, but it didn’t lessen the crushing weight on my chest.

They were looking at the situation from the outside. They didn’t see the exact moment the light in Elijah’s

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15:46 Fri, Jul 24

Chapter 136

eyes went completely out. They didn’t see the disappointment that took its place.

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After another twenty minutes, I forced myself to sit up, swallowed half the glass of water Allison handed me, and promised them I was feeling stable enough to be left alone.

They hesitated, but eventually, they squeezed my shoulders and closed the door behind them to give me

space.

The second the latch clicked shut, the silence of the room closed in on me like a trap.

I snatched my phone off the nightstand with trembling hands. I opened our conversation and winced.

All my messages were still there, lined up one after another. Apologies. Explanations. Anything I thought might get him to answer, but not one of them had been opened.

I hit the call button, bringing the phone up to my ear.

One ring. Two rings.

“Hi, this is Elijah. Leave a message.”

The beep sounded, sharp and unfeeling.

“Elijah, please,” I whispered into the receiver, my voice trembling so hard the words barely made sense. “Please just call me back. Just hear me out for five minutes. I know why you’re hurt. I know why you’re angry with me. You’ve given me every reason in the world to trust you, and I… I panicked. I’m so sorry. Please, Eli. Just talk to me.”

I hung up, pressing the cool glass of the screen against my forehead as another wave of tears spilled over.

He had every right to be furious with me. When someone proves their loyalty over and over again, when they give you the keys to their whole life, questioning them the second a storm hits isn’t just a mistake-it’s betrayal written a different font.

People are masters at hiding who they really are.

A person can be completely good to you one day and turn around and be someone else entirely the next, leaving you constantly walking on eggshells because you never truly know what to expect from another human being.

But Elijah wasn’t just another human being.

He had proven his character to me over and over again, yet I didn’t even bother to give him the benefit of the doubt or investigate before accusing him.

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