Chapter 110

Alex’s POV

The night pressed against me like a weight I couldn’t shake.

By the time I got back to my apartment, the city outside was still humming, horns, voices, the low thrum of nightlife but inside it was silent.

I dropped my keys on the counter harder than I meant to, the metallic clatter echoing through the space like an accusation.

I should’ve gone straight to bed, drowned myself in the kind of sleep that erases everything for a few hours but I couldn’t.

My head was too full, too raw. Ezra’s words stuck like barbed wire, twisting tighter every time I tried to push them out.

I love her.

The way he’d said it.

The way he hadn’t flinched, hadn’t lied, hadn’t even tried to soften it. Ezra, of all people, had stood there and told me something I’d spent years pretending I didn’t already know.

Ava wasn’t mine, maybe she never had been.

The thought made my chest tighten until I had to pace, crossing the living room with