Pole Position: Between Logic and Passion

16

I turned around slowly, heart pounding.

It was still there. On the bed. Still locked. Still unread.

But something about the silence after that buzz… it dared me.

I hesitated for half a second — then walked back

My pulse was deafening now, loud in my ears as I stepped closer.

The screen lit up again just in time.

A new message. My fingers moved before I could stop them, reaching for it. The screen lit up.

Unknown Number
“Friday feels like an eternity away. You have no idea how much I miss you and I can’t wait for us to tell your family the news. I picked up the test today and I think we should do a… like a gender reveal—”

Three dots.
That’s all.

My heart stopped.
And then started pounding so fast it made me dizzy.

Gender reveal? Test? Tell your family?

My hand dropped the phone like it burned me.

It felt like something had cracked open in my chest, something raw and ugly and sick.

There was someone else.

And not just someone else — someone he was building a future with. Someone he was hiding from me while whispering sweet words and pressing kisses into my skin.

Was she pregnant?
Was that what this was?

I stumbled back, one hand on my mouth.

No wonder he wanted privacy. No wonder he brought me to the middle of the ocean.
God, I was so stupid.

Of course he wanted these three perfect, isolated days.

It all made sense now.

Three days in paradise — just the two of us, no paparazzi, no questions, no interruptions. He planned it so carefully. He wanted the yacht. The ocean. The privacy. The illusion.

Because he was about to start a life with someone else.

Maybe forever.

And this... this was his closure.

The last chapter. The goodbye he wouldn’t have the decency to say out loud.

He needed this weekend to feel clean, sweet, untangled. He needed to live out whatever fantasy he had left about us. Have me, one last time, exactly how he wanted. Tie a pretty little bow around it.

And then walk away — guilt-free.

My chest started heaving before I even realized I was crying.

I clutched my stomach, trying to breathe through it. But I couldn’t. My whole body felt like it was rejecting itself. My throat tightened, my vision blurred, my skin burned.

I stumbled to the bathroom and closed the door.

And then I collapsed onto the floor.

The sob that came out of me was so broken, so guttural, it barely sounded human.

How could I have been so stupid?

How could I have let him touch me like that, hold me like that, whisper things to me like that — when all along he was just… saying goodbye?

He wasn’t mine.

Maybe he never had been.

I leaned over the toilet, nausea crashing through me like a wave, and I threw up.
Again. And again.