Too Late To Love Me I Already Left With His Twins (Lydia and Dave) novel Chapter 29

Lydia POV

After what happened between us, he didn’t come home again.

Not the next day.

Not the day after that.

Not even once.

If it weren’t for the dull soreness between my thighs that stayed for days and the memory of his mouth on mine that kept ambushing me at stupid hours, I would have convinced myself I made the whole thing up.

That maybe I had finally lost my mind in this oversized luxury prison and invented intimacy out of loneliness.

But no.

It happened.

And apparently, it meant absolutely nothing.

At first, I tried to lie to myself about it.

Work, I told myself.

He’s probably busy.

He’s probably buried under meetings and mergers and spreadsheets and whatever else emotionally unavailable billionaires use as personality traits.

But even while telling myself that, I knew I was lying.

Because busy men still text.

Busy men still call.

Busy men still acknowledge the existence of women they have slept with.

Especially if that woman is their wife.

Still, my pride would not let me message him.

I refused.

Absolutely refused.

So instead, I distracted myself.

Which is how I ended up spending three straight afternoons trying to learn how to do my own makeup properly with nothing but YouTube tutorials, a beauty blender, and deeply misplaced confidence.

It was going badly.

My eyeliner on Tuesday looked like personal revenge.

My contour on Wednesday made me resemble a confused motivational speaker.

By Thursday, I had accepted that maybe some talents were simply not assigned to me at birth.

I was upstairs washing off yet another failed attempt when I heard voices drifting in from the hallway.

wo of the household workers.

I wasn’t listening at first.

Then I heard one name.

Cyn.

And my whole body stilled.

I stepped closer to the half-open bathroom door without meaning to.

“…heard she ended it herself,” one of them whispered. 1

“After all these years?”

“Yes now. That’s what Bernard said.”

My fingers tightened around the sink.

“She left him?”

“That’s what I heard.”

The room tilted.

Just slightly.

But enough.

Enough for everything in my chest to suddenly make horrible, humiliating sense.

Oh.

Oh.

So that was it.

That was why he came home that night.

That was why he looked wrecked.

That was why he sat beside me.

That was why he kissed me.

Not because he saw me.

Not because he wanted me.

Not because something had shifted.

No.

Because she left.

And I was there.

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217

A warm body in the right room at the wrong time.

My throat tightened so fast it hurt.

The workers’ voices faded into meaningless noise after that.

I didn’t even realize they had walked away until the hallway went silent.

I stayed there for a second.

Then another.

Then I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror.

And suddenly I couldn’t bear the sight of my own face.

“Idiot,” I whispered.

The word cracked halfway through.

And that was all it took.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and burst into tears so violently it shocked even me.

I am not a dramatic crier.

I’m really not.

I usually prefer suffering with structure.

A neat little internal collapse.

A dignified breakdown.

But this?

This was ugly.

Raw.

Humiliating.

The kind of crying that folds your body in half and makes your chest ache afterward.

Because it wasn’t just about Dave.

That was the worst part.

It was bigger than him.

It was every single time I had been made to feel like I was the easier option.

The more convenient option.

The leftover.

The filler.

The “good enough for now.”

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First my family.

Now him.

Why me?

What was it about me that made people think I could carry their damage for them?

What was it about my face that said:

Use this one. She’ll survive it.

By the time I cried myself to sleep, my head was pounding and my pillow looked like it had personally suffered

When I woke up, it was dark outside.

And I was starving.

Not regular hungry.

Not oh, maybe I should eat something hungry.