The Hockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife (Blair and Grayson) novel Chapter 19

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Chapter 19

~BLAIR

I should have left the phone alone.

The villa was quiet after Grayson disappeared inside. The island breeze moved through the palm leaves like nothing in the world was wrong. Even though everything in my life had flipped upside down.

I sat on the lounge chair in a red bikini, sunscreen still sticky on my skin, and told myself I was only going to check the time.

Instead I opened the browser.

I had created the fake profile months ago, not knowing I’d be using it to stalk my ex-boyfriend after he married the coach’s daughter.

I told myself I was only looking because some petty part of me wanted confirmation that Chase had moved on completely.

That the past was as dead as it felt.

There were photos from the wedding I had already seen-Sophie in white, Chase looking proud, hands on her waist like she had always belonged there, right next to him. There were shots from the reception. Champagne. Speeches.

Then I saw the video.

The caption was short.

Our song. Forever starts now.

My thumb hovered over it for a second too long before I pressed play.

My heart dropped.

It was our song.

Our song?

The one we used to slow dance to in his tiny apartment when Chase barely had any money and I was pretending to be poor along with him.

The one he had played the night he told me he loved me for the first time. The one we had both said, more than once, half-joking, half-serious…would be the song at our wedding.

He had used it for Sophie. For their wedding together. And called it their song?

Why did it hurt so badly?

I watched them sway together under romantic lights while the same melody that had once belonged to us filled a room full of people celebrating a marriage I had never been warned about.

Chase was smiling down at her like she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Sophie had her eyes closed like the moment meant something.

The phone screen blurred.

It felt like someone had reached into my chest and ripped my heart out. All the careful distance I had built since the articles, since walking into this marriage with my head high, collapsed under the weight of one video.

Six years. Every late-night conversation. Every sacrifice. Every quiet hope I had carried while I waited for him to become the man I thought he was.

And it had meant nothing.

Successfully unlocked!

He hadn’t just moved on. He had taken the pieces of us that were supposed to be sacred and handed them

Chapter 19

to someone else without hesitation.

Flocked the phone and set it face down on the lounge chair like it might burn me.

5 voucher

For a while I just sat there, staring at the water, breathing through the sharp, humiliating ache. Then I stood up, walked into the villa, and went straight.to the bar cart in the living room.

I took the first drink.

Then the second. Not even looking at what I was gulping down.

By the third I had stopped measuring.

The alcohol spread through me fast in the heat, loosening the tight control I had been holding since the wedding.

The hurt didn’t disappear. It just got louder. Messier. Less contained. I carried the bottle back out to the pool deck and sat on the edge with my feet in the water, drinking straight from it while the sky started to shift toward evening.

I kept seeing the video.

Chase’s hand on Sophie’s back.

Our song playing for a life that no longer included me.

“Heartless,” I muttered to the empty deck. Then louder. “You complete heartless asshole.”

The words felt good in a raw, childish way. I took another drink and laughed once.

“Six years,” I told the pool. “Six years and you couldn’t even pick a different song. You couldn’t even give me that much.”

I pushed myself up, unsteady, and paced along the edge with the bottle hanging from my fingers.

The bikini I had put on earlier now felt irrelevant. Everything felt a little distant and too close at the same

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