The Perfect Boyfriend's Betrayal

I had been Alarics girlfriend for three years. Three whole years, zero fights.

Yet just minutes ago, standing in the shadows of this dimly lit alley, I watched him hurl curses and roughly grab a crying woman.

His ex.

His bespoke suit jacket was draped loosely over her shoulders.

She clutched the lapels tight, almost flaunting itthe expensive fabric practically radiating his signature cologne.

For the thousand days we were together, Alaric operated like a perfectly programmed, emotionless machine. No screaming matches, no jealous fits.

Even the way he held my hand felt like a polite business transaction.

He had saved all his raw, unfiltered passion and loss of control for her.

All he ever gave me was a hollow, perfectly polite shell.

Chapter 1

Alaric was my brother Maddox's frienda golden boy with trust-fund looks and a flawless resume.

The first time I saw him was in the dead of summer. He was lounging on the sofa in Maddoxs room, a phone pressed to his ear.

The balcony doors were thrown wide open, and the late afternoon sun spilled over him, turning his hair into spun gold.

I pushed the door open. He caught the movement and tilted his head.

Our eyes locked.

He offered a faint smile and pointed with his free hand toward the bathroomMaddoxs current location.

Then he turned back to his call.

He leaned forward, dropping his head slightly, exposing the sharp, clean line of his spine against his neck. The sunlight caught the faint, golden peach fuzz there.

The bathroom door clicked open. Maddox strolled out, shaking water from his hands, and snapped me out of my trance.

A picture-perfect, effortlessly magnetic guy.

It wasn't until much, much later that I found out the truth. He had been on the phone with his girlfriend that day, patiently indulging her every word.

Maddox was tearing through his college years back then, rarely coming home. By the time I saw Alaric again, we were deep in the dead of winter.

Maddox dragged me along on a ski trip up the mountains with his crew.

Alaric was there. He sat in the passenger seat, drowning in a black puffer jacket, his eyes glued to his screen.

His entire vibe had shifted. Against the dark collar of his coat, his skin looked ashen.

Whatever spark he had in the summer seemed buried under the heavy snow outside.

I leaned in close. He glanced up, his brow arching in mild confusion.

He had completely forgotten who I was.

Still polite to a fault, though. When I introduced myself again, he gave a curt nod and that same faint, detached smile.

I wasn't the shy type. I was totally crushing on him back then, hovering around him and firing off questions. He threw me a breadcrumb answer every now and then.

"Are you upset about something?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"Are you sick?"

He said no.

"Then why do you look so checked out?"

He tapped his fingers twice against the edge of his phone, finally looking up with a brief smile. "Go bother your brother, kid."

Alaric was actually pretty good to me. But he seemed hollow inside.

We only ended up together because I confessed, and Maddox and his friends practically bullied him into accepting.

It happened during a camping trip. We were sitting around a roaring bonfire.

The flames cast dancing shadows across Alarics face, making his eyes look incredibly bright.

He smiled, nodded, and pulled me down onto the log beside him. "Sure," he said, before kicking Maddox in the shin. "Don't expect me to start calling you 'bro'."

And just like that, we were official.

In the three years we dated, we never had a single argument. Not one disagreement.

He climbed the corporate ladder, I focused on my degree.

Hed pick me up from campus on weekends for a date. We exchanged a few obligatory texts during the week.

The absolute peak of our physical intimacy was him grabbing my hand to steer me to the inside of the sidewalk.

He never forgot an anniversary, a birthday, or a holiday. There was always a pristine gift box and an expensive dinner reservation.

Maddox was clueless. He thought Alaric was madly in love with me, constantly rolling his eyes and complaining about how nauseating we were.

To the rest of the world, we were the perfect, envy-inducing power couple.

Alaric had an impeccable temper. He never once gave me the cold shoulder.

But he rarely spoke. Id rattle off a million things to him, and hed just nod and offer that same, calculated smile.

I used to be captivated by that smile. Now, the mere thought of it made my stomach churn.

In this relationship, I had spent years trying to melt an iceberg, only to find out he saved his one and only volcanic eruption for someone else.

I always felt drained, but I could never quite pinpoint the infection.

I truly believed I would never see Alaric lose his iron grip on his emotions.

Until tonight. I was dragging my roommate, Clara, home from a bar after her messy breakup.

We cut through a back alley. Tucked away in the shadows was a couple, tangled together.

Alaric slammed the girl against the rough brick wall. His chest heaved, his voice laced with a raw, out-of-control brutality I had never heard before. "Are you insane? What the hell do you take me for?!"

The voice was so distinctly his that Clara actually jolted awake against my shoulder.

I had been standing there frozen, debating if I should call out to my own boyfriend.

But Clara blinked her bloodshot eyes and sniffled. The alley was dead silent.

A single drop of water falling from a fire escape hit the pavement. The sound echoed like a gunshot.

Chapter 2

"Marlowe, is that your boyfriend?" she yelled.

Her voice was still blown out from screaming over the club music, making it painfully loud in the quiet alley.

But Clara was a walking disaster. One shout and she was instantly gagging again.

I ignored the two people standing in the shadows and dragged her toward a rusted trash can on the curb.

I shoved a water bottle into her hands. The second she finished throwing up, her knees buckled, and her dead weight slumped against me.

I hoisted her up just as my phone buzzed with a notification from my driver. I turned around. Alaric was standing right behind me.

His face was a blank mask, his voice smooth and steady.

He twitched his hand, like he was going to help me support Clara, but quickly dropped it back to his side. "I'll drive you back."

I shot a cold, piercing glare at the woman standing behind him, still drowning in his expensive jacket.

I waved my phone in the air. "Save it. My Uber is already at the intersection. You two get back to whatever this was."

The woman behind him was stunning. She stood half a step back, her arms crossed tight over her chest, swallowed up by his oversized camel-colored suit jacket.

Our eyes locked. She was studying me. Scanning every inch of me.

The corners of her eyes were tinged red from crying, but she was still beautiful, practically glowing under the harsh glare of the streetlamp.

I snapped my gaze away and looked at Alaric. He stepped forward, clearly intending to escort us to the car, ignoring the massive elephant in the alley.

He had zero intention of introducing us.

The four of us marched down to the intersection in suffocating silence, broken only by Claras occasional drunken groans.

Alaric hesitated several times, his hand hovering near my shoulder before dropping back down.

He was always so painstakingly aware of physical boundaries with other women.

Yet here he was, at two in the morning, his signature jacket draped over a stranger he refused to name.

When we reached the idling Uber, Alaric finally spoke his second sentence of the night. He lightly caught my elbow. "Put her in this one," he said, gesturing to the Uber. "I'll drive you two back to campus."

Her. I didn't bother arguing.

I hauled Clara out of the way, leaving the back door open. The woman stared at Alaric before sliding into the backseat.

She instantly snapped her head toward the opposite window, her jaw clenched tight.

Alaric rapped his knuckles against the glass. "The jacket."

It was the first time I heard her speak. Her voice was just as pretty as her face.

Her eyes instantly welled up again. "Alaric, are you really going to be this cold?"

Alaric lowered his eyes. He didn't say a word.

He just dropped his hand and motioned for the driver to pull away.

Alaric drove a matte-black SUV. It was a rugged car, something that didn't quite match his polished, corporate exterior anymore.

I shoved Clara into the backseat and climbed in after her, pulling her heavy head onto my lap.

Alaric glanced back at me through the rearview mirror. I couldn't even force a fake smile, so I just stared blankly back at him.

The engine rumbled to life. Neon city lights blurred past the window.

I kept my face turned toward the glass as Alaric's voice floated back from the driver's seat. "Did you drink tonight?" he asked.

His tone was exactly the same as alwaysclear, steady, laced with that perfectly manufactured gentleness.

"No. I was just babysitting."

"Are you hungry?" he pressed.

The streetlight caught his reflection in the mirror, sliding down the sharp slope of his nose. Half his face was buried in shadow, the other half starkly illuminated.

"No." I shook my head, my eyes tracking the endless rows of identical trees outside.

Alaric was my first love.

I had no idea if other couples acted like this after three yearsif they navigated their relationship with the same stiff, professional courtesy.

Whatever fire I had in those first two years had been systematically smothered out.

In three years, my face had never once flushed around him. Not from screaming in rage, and definitely not from blinding, intoxicating passion.

Was this what I wanted?

He was methodically bleeding dry every romantic fantasy I ever had.

Yet, every single time I looked at Alaric, my pulse would betray me. I was still pathetically drawn to him.

Even now. Even after catching him in a dark alley with a gorgeous woman wrapped in his jacket, I somehow expected him to drop the charade.

Instead, he just shoved her in a cab and asked me if I was hungry, acting like nothing happened.

I used to be relentless. I chased him, I tracked him down, I invaded his space.

I literally confessed my feelings in front of a massive crowd.

Once we started dating, I was the one who reached for his hand. I was the one who leaned in for a hug.

But after getting subtly, politely dodged enough times, my spine snapped. I lost the nerve to ever try and kiss him first.

Chapter 3

My throat closed up. The words died on my tongue before I could even force them out.

I dug my elbow into the hard plastic of the door panel and rested my chin on my hand, staring at the blurred neon lights streaking past.

"Alaric. Is this relationship actually what you want?"

The steering wheel jerked slightly under his grip. His voice dropped, losing that polished edge. "What's wrong? What are you trying to say?"

I kept my eyes locked on the window.

Even the rigid line of his shoulders in my peripheral vision still pulled at me, but I refused to look.

"I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore."

Silence swallowed the car.

A long, suffocating minute ticked by before he finally spoke. "Do I get a reason?"

"Stop playing dumb, Alaric. Dating you is literally draining my life away. I get zero emotional return on investment."

"Honestly, if you hadn't draped your expensive jacket over that woman tonight, I would seriously doubt if you even had a normal human sex drive."

It was the first time in three years I let the venom out.

The words scraped against my throat, a thousand little needles Id been swallowing down finally tearing their way out.

"Maddox has cycled through a dozen girlfriends, and Ive watched every single trainwreck. But even at their worst, they never looked like us."

"Alaric, I don't even recognize myself anymore. I used to see you and want to throw my arms around your neck. Now? My phone buzzes with your name, and my stomach drops. My first instinct is to run."

"Youve given me nothing for so long that Im terrified to ask for scraps. Its like a flinch reflex."

"My brain knows its a dead end, so it just shuts down. It's toxic, and I despise the girl I've become around you."

"Youre a flawless, calibrated machine. No glitches, but absolutely zero pulse."

"I dont even care why you said yes to me three years ago. Im the one who started this, so Im going to be the one to kill it."

Dead silence filled the cab. Claras drunken breathing vanished into the heavy air.

Pushing all those words out left my chest hollow, like someone had cracked my ribs open and let the freezing night air pour straight in.

Alaric didn't say a word. He jerked the wheel, pulling the SUV into a gravel lot bordering a sprawling, empty park.

He killed the engine and turned to me. "Walk with me?"

His voice was stripped of that manufactured warmth. It was flat. Empty.

I shifted Claras dead weight against the leather seats, shoved my door open, and stepped out onto the damp grass.

Three years ago, at that bonfire trip, I sat on the grass right beside him.

I had spent the entire night watching the firelight dance across the crinkles by his eyes, my pulse hammering in my throat.

Tonight, three years later, the wet grass soaked through my sneakers. I kept my head down.

Alaric matched my pace, a silent shadow trailing beside me.

"Its my fault." He broke the silence first.

Under the stark, unforgiving moonlight, his voice finally dropped to a freezing chill.

"No. We just don't work."

He cut a glance at me before staring straight ahead. "Honestly? I was perfectly content with how things were between us. I had no idea you were carrying all of this. What else? Tell me. I want to know."

The pathetic, messy words locked in my throat. I had never once let my guard down around him.

Playing the cool, tension-wired girlfriend was my default setting.

I shook my head. "I'm done talking."

He hesitated, letting the silence stretch before lowering his voice. "The woman tonight. She's my ex. Things ended badly between us."

"She moved overseas, and we cut all contact. Tonight, she just showed up out of nowhere"

I held up a hand, cutting him off cold. "Im not throwing a tantrum and dumping you over a midnight alleyway reunion. But I also don't care to hear the sob story. I'm just exhausted."

I planted my feet, stopping dead in my tracks.

We had reached the dead center of the park.

The moon hung directly overhead, spotlighting the exact moment it all ended.

Chapter 4

"Save your breath, Alaric. Once I make a decision, I don't look back. Drop the act. I am out of patience with you. Our little game ends right here."

He lowered his head. The shadows swallowed his features, but I could feel the dead weight of his stare drilling into my face.

"I'm sorry I made you unhappy."

He stood there without his jacket, wearing only a crisp dress shirt. Broad shoulders, narrow waist. I only came up to his collarbone.

The rest of the night was dead silent. I got back into the SUV.

My chest felt totally hollowed out, scraped clean. I actually leaned my head against the glass and fell asleep.

Alaric woke me up. I hauled Clara back to our dorm.

Just like always, he waited down on the street until our room light flicked on before driving off.

But tonight, I didn't walk out to the balcony to watch his taillights disappear.

By the time I washed up, it was 2 AM. I was wide awake.

I lay in the dark, the harsh glare of my phone screen lighting up my face.

Two years ago, high on my own delusional romance, I had changed all of Alaric's contact names to a sickeningly sweet "Boyfriend" with a heart emoji.

Now, staring at the screen, it just looked like a cruel joke.

One by one, I methodically typed his actual name back in. I swiped left on three years of chat histories. Delete. Call logs. Delete. Unpinned his profile.

Within seconds, his icon sank to the bottom of my feed.

I woke up late the next morning. I rolled over and nearly jumped.

Claras face was hovering right over my mattress, blinking her huge eyes at me.

"I didn't drink myself to death last night," she announced.

Being reminded first thing in the morning that I was officially single wasn't exactly a thrill. I shoved her forehead away.

"I'll take you out drinking tonight. And I won't touch a single drop."

I let out a dry laugh. "Don't flatter yourself. My situation isn't like yours."

"Honestly? If I could, I'd want a messy relationship like yours. One where we actually scream, cry, throw surprises, and laugh."

I sighed and dragged myself upright. "But look at Alaric and me. A textbook 'perfect couple' for three years. Don't you think it was all fake?"

She blinked again. "But I thought you guys were totally solid"

"We only looked solid because there were zero actual feelings involved."

I wasn't stupid. Back when I first confessed to him, I caught the whispers from his friends.

I noticed the dead zones in his emotional reactions. I knew there was an untouchable ex-girlfriend haunting his head.

But I was young, reckless, and full of myself. I never even considered backing down.

I actually thought I could just work hard enough to erase her.

I had to hit a brick wall at full speed to finally wake up.

But now that my skull was cracked open, I had zero regrets.

That weekend, Maddox called and ordered me out to dinner with him and his girlfriend. We met up at his favorite spot downtown.

The second I walked in, Maddox craned his neck, looking right past my shoulder.

"Is Alaric parking the car?"

I shoved his shoulder. "We broke up."

"Oh, broke up." It took his brain a solid thirty seconds to process the words.

He violently snapped his head back toward me. "Wait, what? Broke up? He dumped you?!"

I stared at him for two flat seconds. He was acting unhinged.

I rolled my eyes, spun on my heel, and started to walk out.

He grabbed my arm.

"Maddox, I am incredibly annoyed right now. Do not push me."

"How the hell did you break up? You guys were perfect! Come on, tell your brother. Did he piss you off?" He was still sporting his signature stupid grin.

I shook my head. "No. We're just done. It was mutual. We aren't a match. Do not go running your mouth, and absolutely do not go looking for him."

His smile finally dropped. "Then why? You dated for three years, and suddenly you aren't a match?"

Chapter 5

His girlfriend waved at us from the restaurant entrance. I shoved Maddox forward.

"Drop it. Don't make a scene, and do not interrogate him. It's embarrassing for everyone."

"Maddox, hear me? You keep treating him exactly like you always do. We just didn't work out. Nobody owes anyone anything."

Maddox acted like a chaotic idiot, always messing with me, but he was fiercely protective.

I didn't want my messy breakup ruining his friendship with Alaric. That would just make things weirder.

But the universe loves a sick joke. We had just walked into the restaurant and were standing at the host stand.

I was staring down at the menu when Maddox's girlfriend squeezed my hand.

I turned my head. Alaric pushed through the doors of a private dining room in the back, surrounded by men in sharp business suits.

Maddox, wrapping an arm around his girlfriend, caught my eye, then raised a hand to greet Alaric.

There was no way to pretend I didn't see him.

Alaric murmured something to the guy next to him and headed straight toward us.

He wore a perfectly tailored black suit that highlighted his lean waist and long legs.

The dark fabric only made his pale skin look more striking, giving him an untouchable, aristocratic edge.

"Hey, Alaric," I said, using the casual greeting Maddox taught me before we ever started dating.

He paused for a fraction of a second, but quickly recovered, flashing a smooth smile. "You guys grabbing dinner?"

I swept a cool, indifferent glance over him, not letting my eyes linger for a second.

I looked at him like he was just another faceless stranger off the street.

Obviously. It was such a hollow, polite question. Since when did Alaric resort to meaningless small talk