Underwater: The Silent Luna novel Chapter 147

Chapter 147

Joseph’s words stayed with Cynthia long after she left his office. They did not just stay with her in the normal way harsh words stayed with someone. They sat under her skin. They scraped at her pride. They burned in a place she did not know how to soothe. She had gone there expecting many things. She had expected coldness maybe, suspicion definitely, and perhaps evert some difficulty. But what Joseph gave her was worse because he spoke to her like she was dirt beneath his shoes, like she was some shameless woman who had come crawling back for scraps, and Cynthia could not stand it.

She did not think she deserved that kind of treatment. Not from him. Not from any of them.

In her mind, Joseph had been extreme. Cruel for no good reason. Self-righteous in a way that irritated her more the longer she thought about it. What was so terrible about her returning to be with an ex? People did that all the time. People returned when they realised they had made the wrong choice. People returned when life humbled them. People returned when what they had before still meant something. Ethan had loved her. Deeply. Everybody knew that. So what exactly was so wicked about her coming back to reclaim what she once had? Joseph had looked at her as though she was a thief trying to rob a grave, and Cynthia hated him for

that.

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that Joseph had overreacted because he was afraid.

Afraid of what she could still do.

Afraid of what Ethan might still feel.

Afraid of what could happen if she got close enough to him again.

If they were not constantly hiding Ethan and his wife away from her, she was sure things would already be going differently. She knew men. She knew what absence did to them. She knew what unfinished feelings looked like even when they were buried under anger. Ethan had been hurt for so long after she left. Everyone said it. Everyone knew it. Men did not just carry that kind of damage and then suddenly wake up healed because a new woman sat beside them. Love like the kind they had shared did not simply disappear because time passed and pain rearranged itself. Cynthia did not believe that. Not for a second.

No, she was sure that if she had been allowed real access to him, if she had been able to speak to him without all these walls and warnings and suspicious eyes around them, she would have broken through his defences. She would have chipped at him the way she knew how. She would have found the old ache in him and pressed against it until it softened. And in time, he would have had

her back.

She believed that.

She needed to believe that.

Because the alternative was uglier.

The alternative was that Ethan had truly moved on. That he had become somebody else’s man in a way that was real. Permanent. Closed to her. And Cynthia did not want to sit too long with that thought because it made something restless and ugly move inside

her.

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Chapter 147

Still, one part of what she had seen did satisfy her.

Seeing Ethan still in that wheelchair had confirmed something she had once told herself when she walked away. It had made her

feel, in some hard little place inside her, that she had done the right thing. Maybe not prettily. Maybe not kindly. But rightly. She

had not tied herself forever to a man whose life had become so complicated, so heavy, so limited. Looking at him now, broken inj

body even if not in spirit, reminded her why she had left that chapter of her life when she did. People liked to paint her as wicked

for it. Fine. Let them. But they did not have to live with the consequences of loving a broken Alpha. She would have. She was the one who would have paid for it. So yes, seeing him in that chair had steadied her. It had reminded her she had not ruined her own

life by staying.

And yet, annoyingly, that was not the full truth either.

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Underwater: The Silent Luna