He Spoiled Me for Three Years… Because I Look Like the Woman He Couldn’t Have Chapter 02
I did not storm in and make a scene.
I did not scream, or slap anyone, or drag them into the hallway for everyone to see.
Instead, like a person determined to hurt herself, I booked the room next to theirs.
The walls were not very soundproof.
Or maybe they had never intended to be quiet.
The sounds from the room next door were violent enough to make my stomach turn. I had never seen that side of him before, not once.
With me, he had always been gentle. Controlled.
Elowen’s voice came through the wall, trembling as if she had been crying.
“Callum, three years ago, you hated me for leaving you at sea…”
“Tonight, let me make it up to you. Let me give you myself.”
After that, the noise from the other room became even rougher.
I bit down on my lower lip so hard that I tasted blood.
I forced myself to stay calm, took out a digital voice recorder, and saved the evidence.
Wave after wave of nausea climbed up my throat.
I put the recorder away and stumbled out.
Outside, I walked alone through the cold drizzle, the wind cutting across my face like a blade.
Then my phone lit up.
It was a text from my husband.
Callum: [Sienna, something at work is complicated. I’ll be back late. Go to sleep early, okay? Don’t stay up.]
I lifted my head.
I tried to force the tears back, but my vision still blurred.
I had thought I was the happiest woman in the world.
The evidence in my hand had just delivered a shattering reality check.
I did not even remember how I got home.
In the foyer, I picked up one of the small wood carvings and walked into the living room, toward the display shelves.
They were filled with tiny hand-carved female figurines.
For three years, I had believed they were proof of his love.
I used to be fascinated by wood carving.
So Callum canceled dinners, postponed meetings, and took classes with me.
He would sit behind me, enfolding me in his arms, and guide my hand as the blade moved through the wood.
He said he wanted to carve every version of me, every moment worth keeping.
I walked toward the bust in the center, the one I had always loved most.
A thought kept rising in my mind, dark and impossible to push down. Almost possessed, I moved the carving aside.
Underneath it was a hidden compartment.
When I opened it, my body began to tremble.
Inside lay an old yellowed photograph.
The girl in the photo had a bold, arrogant smile, but there was a particular melancholy in her eyes, something fragile and theatrical at the same time.
That was what Elowen had looked like before the surgery.
I held the photograph up and compared it to the wood carving in front of me.
The eyes. The expression. The subtle tilt of the mouth.
None of it was me.
I was only a reference model he had used to recreate Elowen’s old face.
Just then, the smart lock at the front door chimed.
Callum was home.
“Why are you still awake?” he asked. “Were you scared without me here?”
He walked toward me and, out of habit, reached to touch my hair.
I could not hold it in anymore.
I dodged his hand and threw the photograph into his face.
“So all of it was fake?” I asked. “These three years, every sweet thing you did for me, all of it?”
“You were just looking at her through me?”
Callum lowered his eyes to the photo. A flicker of displeasure crossed his face.
He bent down, picked it up, and carefully brushed the dust from its surface.
There was not the slightest trace of panic on his face, none of the guilt a man should have shown after being caught cheating.
“Sienna,” he said, “your place as Mrs. Whitaker is secure.”
“Elowen was only an obsession from when I was young. I just need a little time to put it to rest.”
I let out a cold laugh. “Put it to rest? In a hotel bed?”
Callum lifted his eyes and narrowed them at me. “You followed me?”
He crossed one leg over the other, his tone turning calm in the cruelest way.
“She has severe clinical depression. What was I supposed to do, stand by and watch a living person die?”
“I know you can understand that. You have so much compassion for stray animals. This is a human life.”
At that moment, the phone he had placed on the table lit up.
Elowen had sent him a voice message.
Callum did not avoid me.
He tapped it and played it out loud.
