Page 51 of The Route to You

“I don’t know. She must have hacked my phone or something. Or she’s trying to extort me.”

Hacked the phone of a congressman who treated security like religion?

Maybe some stupid part of Sloan had wanted him to tell the truth. To say, yes, I did it. I’m sorry. To let her have something clean.

Or maybe she’d imagined that a reality could exist that she hadn’t been cheated on and that Evan wouldn’t do something like this to her, to them .

But his words, his denial, his lies . . . they somehow made it all more real.

Her back hit the door as her legs went weak. She slid down to the floor, weary with exhaustion, the phone pressed to her ear. From the corner of her eye, she saw Kyle shift, alert, watching her. Not intruding. Just . . . there.

His presence grounded her in a way she hadn’t realized she needed.

“Evan, listen to me, and don’t interrupt.” She closed her eyes, her pulse pounding in her ears. “It’s over. I don’t believe you. There are things that can’t be faked, like pictures that you didn’t send to me, which means you must have sent them to someone else. With details you can’t just grab off the inter⁠—”

“You clearly have no idea how good deep fakes are these days.”

God. He couldn’t even respect me enough to not interrupt.

She gritted her teeth. “The thing is, it doesn’t actually matter, because I’ve realized something in the last day. I don’t like how you treat me. Or how your family treats me. And none of that compares to the fact that I don’t like who I am when I’m with you.”

“Listen here.” Bernice’s voice cracked in like fingernails scraping on glass and Sloan instantly knew she’d had an audience this whole time. “My son is a congressman. A congressman . You will not be using this to destroy his career, Sloan, or we will make sure you go down⁠—”

The sound shifted, as though Evan had lifted the phone and turned the speaker off.

“Sloan, Mom’s just angry. And hurt.”

She stared at the phone in disbelief for a few seconds.

His mother? He had his mother listening to our private conversation?

Her skin crawled at the thought.

She forced her voice to be steady. “Evan, I’m not coming back. So if you could just do me the favor of being honest now, for all those times you weren’t honest before, I’d appreciate it. You owe me that much. And even if I believed you, which I don’t, I’ll never be able to trust you blindly. Never.”

Silence.

Her fingers cramped around the phone as she prodded, “Evan?”

“You know,” he said at last, his voice going colder, “you’re no angel, Sloan. You want to talk about trust? Do you know how long it took me to trust that you wouldn’t do something to ruin me after that stunt you pulled three years ago?”

The sudden, startling memory of waking up hooked to hospital wires and Penny’s red-rimmed gaze slammed into Sloan’s solar plexus.

How. Dare. He.

Her vision flashed white with rage. “Don’t you dare. That is not the same thing as you cheating on me.”

“Maybe not to you.” Evan’s words bit out like he wanted them to cut her. “I was there for you when you messed up, Sloan, because that’s what you do when you supposedly love someone. You look past their mistakes. You don’t just walk away.”

Still no actual denial. As if Evan felt it was acceptable to betray her. Justified. The hell?

Hurt crested so fast it stole her breath. Her mind raced, trying to find the logic, the fairness.

Anything that would justify the cruelty of his words.

If he loved me . . . he’d be begging me to come back to him for that reason alone. Instead, he believed his actions were justified. As if my dark place excused his infidelity. He’d been keeping score.

Her voice trembled as she said, “That’s not love, Evan. That’s manipulation. Tell the police I left, and I don’t want to be found. You did this to us, and I’m done.”