Love,Written In Ruins-Chapter 47: You Understand

"Price of my information?" Eric repeated the words as if they were a foreign language he was trying to translate. He leaned back, the leather of the parlor booth creaking under his weight. He gave a sharp, nervous laugh, his eyes darting to the waitress—who was still hovering near the kitchen—before returning to Jayla.

"Jay, what are you talking about? You know how busy I am at work. I’m a man on the rise. It’s no surprise to hear that I’m a ’busy man’ in the office. People talk when they’re jealous of success."

​Jayla’s smile didn’t falter. It remained fixed, a perfect, crimson crescent of red lipstick that felt more like a scar. "I know, right? I shouldn’t be surprised at all. Rumors about my man being a ’busy man’... I should have expected it."

​She tapped the white envelope against the table with a rhythmic, hypnotic thud-thud-thud. Then, with a flourish of her fingers, she reached into her leather jacket and produced a sleek, titanium-grade credit card. She slid it across the marble tabletop, followed closely by the envelope, stopping them inches from Eric’s sundae.

​"By the way," she purred, her voice dripping with a newfound, lethal sugar. "Thanks for letting me buy the bag with your card. I really should have brought it to show you. It’s a work of art. But I figured..." Her eyes flicked briefly to her outfit, defiance incarnate. "...this is enough."

​Eric’s eyes dropped to the card, then traveled up the fishnets to the red leather shorts and the crop top. His ego, always a bloated, hungry thing, swelled visibly. He nodded, a slow, predatory heat returning to his gaze. "No problem, babe. You know I like to take care of you. And you’re right—the outfit is more than enough. It’s a hell of a surprise."

​He looked at the envelope, his brow arching. "You didn’t need to get me a gift, though."

He nudged the envelope with his fingers, clearly assuming it was for him.

​Jayla laughed—a sound like breaking glass. "Oh, but it is a very precious gift, Eric. Open it. I want to see your face when you see how much thought I put into it."

Something in her tone made his fingers hesitate. Just for a second.

​Then Eric, confident in his own untouchability, tore the seal. He pulled out the high-resolution photographs, his thumb brushing against the glossy finish.

​As he flipped through them, the color didn’t just leave his face; it vanished, leaving his skin a sickly, translucent gray as the photos spilled out like evidence in a courtroom.

​There he was. But the background wasn’t an office cubicle or a boardroom. It was a dimly lit, velvet-draped bar. His hands draped possessively around a woman’s waist as she had her legs wrapped around him. A blonde. Young. Laughing. Her face tilted up toward his like she belonged there. In the photos, Eric wasn’t the tired employee; he was a man being thoroughly, intimately worshipped.

​The next photo was worse. A hotel lobby, the lighting golden and incriminating. Eric’s fingers were buried deep in a different girl’s hair as he devoured her mouth like a man starving.

The final sheet wasn’t a photo at all—it was a shot of a bank statement. A joint account Janet held with Eric, flooded with six-figure deposits that didn’t match his "data analyst" salary by a long shot.

​Eric’s mouth opened, then closed. He looked at Jayla, his brain visibly scrambling for a lie big enough to cover the crater she’d just blown in his life. "Jay... I can explain. It’s not what it looks like. She’s... she’s a client, and the account is—"

​"Oh, no need to explain, Eric," Jayla interrupted, her tone eerily calm. She crossed her legs, the fishnets straining against her skin, and leaned back in her seat. She picked up her spoon and took a delicate bite of her strawberry ice cream, savoring the cold sweetness. "A man has needs, after all. Especially considering I haven’t been a very ’good’ girlfriend to you."

​Eric paused, his eyes narrowing in confusion. "What? You understand?"

​"Of course. I neglected your needs," she continued, her voice a mock-sympathetic whisper. "For the entire year of our relationship, I kept you at arm’s length. I dared to keep another man in my heart while I was with you. So I understand. It’s my mistake. For that, I ask for your forgiveness."

​She watched the shift in him with detached interest. Fascinating—and revolting. His shoulders eased, his spine straightened, relief blooming into something uglier: entitlement. He mistook her calm for absolution, her softness for surrender. In his mind, the scales tipped back in his favor. He wasn’t the betrayer anymore; he was the wronged man being graciously understood.

And just like that, the trap closed.

Eric felt it—the familiar surge of power, the intoxicating comfort of being forgiven before he had even asked. Of being owed. He didn’t see the calculation behind Jayla’s eyes, the way she measured his reactions like currency. He only saw what his ego wanted him to see: a woman accepting blame, a woman lowering herself, a woman handing him control.

Jayla let him believe it. For now.

His fear evaporated, replaced by a grotesque, ballooning arrogance. If she was taking the blame, he was more than happy to give it to her. He straightened his collar, his chest puffing out.

​"Well," Eric said, his voice regaining its smug, indulgent edge. "Now that we know it’s your fault, I suppose we can move past this. We can pretend nothing happened. But Jayla... you need to forget about that man in your heart. That place belongs to me only. And," he leaned in, his eyes dark with a sudden, repulsive entitlement, "we should start being... intimate. Regularly. So that this doesn’t have to happen again."

​Jayla’s smirk deepened. He’s actually doing it, she thought. He’s gaslighting me while I’m holding a baseball bat.

​"Sure, Eric. Whatever you say." She said, her voice dropping into a register that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. "But there’s something else that surprised me."

​She reached into her jacket again and pulled out a second, smaller envelope. It was cream-colored, heavy cardstock, with a delicate gold foil border. She slid it toward him.

​Eric took it, his fingers trembling slightly as he realized exactly what it was. He didn’t even need to open it. It was an invitation to his own wedding.

​"Wait," he stammered, his eyes darting back to the photos. "Where did you get this?"

​"That’s not important," she said, licking the spoon clean. "What’s important is that ’Manager Janet’—the slave-driving boss I pictured as a middle-aged harpy—is actually a gorgeous twenty-five-year-old blonde who’s your fiancée. And your marriage is just two weeks away."

​She leaned forward, her red lips inches from his face. "But that’s not even the shocking part, Eric. The shocking part is you’re not some struggling office drone. You are a millionaire’s son. Actually, the only child of the Miller Shipping empire. You fooled me into thinking you were just a ’hustler’ working a nine-to-five. But that’s your business. What I don’t get... what I truly cannot fathom... is where you got the guts to believe you could make me your mistress."

​Eric was stunned, his mouth hanging open as his entire carefully constructed double life lay gutted on the table. But then, the shock turned into a dark, ugly smirk.

​"Oh, Jayla," he said, his voice dripping with a sudden, cruel confidence. "Who said anything about you being a mistress? I’ll just get engaged to you in private. Just the two of us. Janet will be my wife for the cameras, for the family legacy. And you will be my fiancée in the dark. It’s a win-win for us. You get the lifestyle, the cars, the money—and I get you."

​Jayla stared at him, genuinely fascinated by the depth of his delusion, then let out a low, melodic chuckle. "What makes you think I want to be with you at all after what I’ve just discovered?"

​His smirk didn’t leave his face. If anything, it turned colder. "If not me, then who? You think you’re going back to him?"

Jayla stiffened.

​​"You know, I can’t seem to understand something," Eric continued, his voice rising with a jagged edge of resentment. "I saw you first. Long before you even met that guy. But you chose him after seeing him just once. You let him fuck you."

The word landed like a slap.

"And even with me being your fucking boyfriend, you still hold him in your heart like he’s a god. It’s pathetic, Jay."

​Jayla looked at him like he was a specimen under a microscope. "You approached me weeks after my encounter with him. When exactly did you ’see me first’?"

​"Three months before the night you met him," Eric spat, the jealousy finally breaking through his polished exterior. "I followed you. I watched you. I was waiting for the right moment. And then he just... stepped in. A nobody. A ghost."

​Jayla laughed—hard. It was a genuine, belly-deep laugh that made the customers in the back of the shop turn to look. "Ah, so you met me first, but due to cowardice, you didn’t approach me? You want to know why I chose him? It’s simple, Eric. He saw me. He approached me. He didn’t hide what he wanted. He was a man. So I gave him the green light."

​Eric slammed his hand onto the table, the sundaes rattling. "Why is it always him? Why does he always end up being the chosen one? Why can’t it be me?"

​Jayla stared at him, a flicker of confusion crossing her mind. There was a hostility in his voice that went beyond a jilted lover—it was an old, festering wound. It sounded personal. It sounded like a rivalry she didn’t know existed. She didn’t ask him to clarify; she just kept the knife twisting. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

​"Maybe it’s because, for starters, he didn’t lie about who he was," she provoked.

​Eric laughed, a harsh, jagged sound. "Oh, really? Did he tell you the truth? Did he tell you about his mother’s ’profession’? Did he tell you that he comes from a line of—"

​He stopped abruptly. His eyes shifted toward the front door of the shop. His finger rose, pointing toward the glass.

​"Were you still seeing him behind my back?" Eric whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of fear and fury. "Because I can’t think of a single scenario why he is standing right there, right now."

​Jayla’s breath caught. Her heart, which had been a steady drum of vengeance, suddenly stalled.

The bell of the shop chimed—a bright, cheerful sound that signaled the end of the world.

​Her one night from two years ago? Here?

​The man who had been a ghost in her system, the one she’d compared every touch to, the one who had "ruined" her for men like Eric.

​She didn’t turn immediately. Her body went cold first—every instinct screaming at once. Then she turned her head, the motion feeling as if it were happening in slow motion.

Someone was standing in the doorway.

Tall. Still. Watching.

The world didn’t tilt.

It stopped.