Chapter 83
Chapter 7
When the call ended, Charles seemed unable to process what had just happened.
He stood frozen on the other end of the screen, the ring box slipping from his fingers and hitting the floor
with a dull sound.
I knew better.
He would react eventually.
He always did.
He had learned long ago how to recover quickly, especially after the day he chose to protect Madeline and began dismantling me piece by piece.
This time, though, his collapse didn’t reach me. I shut the memory of that call away and threw myself entirely
into my work.
Perhaps realizing that I was truly done, Charles didn’t try to contact me again.
Instead, he became brazen. Trips. Photos. “Accidental” displays of affection.
Public posts documenting his romance with Madeline, as if performing happiness might rewrite reality.
It felt like two timelines unfolding in parallel.
While they celebrated landing a project over candlelit dinners, I stayed late in the lab, running stability
simulations.
While they went shopping, checking in at trendy restaurants, I sat on the floor surrounded by cables, fighting a stubborn malfunction.
While they drank themselves into bravado at networking events, announcing their relationship to a chorus of congratulations,
I had a sudden breakthrough, a new approach, a different pathway.
One month later, persistence paid off. We finally solved a problem that had haunted the robotics field for years: autonomous balance in dynamically shifting environments.
The cost was still prohibitive. Scalability remained uncertain.
But progress had never been loud or fast. It was slow. Deep. Relentless.
That night, Professor Keller booked a top hotel to celebrate.
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Wine flowed freely. His face flushed, he clasped my hands and sighed, lamenting my abrupt departure years
ago.
“If you’d stayed,” he said regretfully, “this might’ve been cracked two years earlier p>
Then, in front of the entire team, he declared me his most outstanding student.
I felt embarrassed. And yes, regretful.
Five years. The prime years I could’ve spent building something extraordinary, lost to a relationship that led
nowhere.
Still, it wasn’t too late.
After dinner, we all headed home.
That was when I saw him. Standing outside the courtyard of my rented apartment.
For a moment, I thought the wine had finally gone to my head. Then Charles looked up and saw me.
He staggered forward, steps unsteady.
I could smell the alcohol on him as he approached. He looked like he’d had quite a bit to drink.
I frowned lightly, my eyes following him as he halted just about three feet away from me.
“You look like you’ve gained some weight,” he said suddenly.
Strange. He’d never paid attention to me before.
Under the streetlight, I noticed the faint redness around his eyes.
I smiled.
“I’m not stressed,” I replied. “I eat well. I sleep well. That tends to happen p>
I had always been slim, 5’7″ and only about 99 pounds. I had to take care of Charles every day, stew over his. attention to other women, and often lost my appetite.
Over time, I gradually developed a mild eating disorder.
Only after leaving, after months of recovery, did my body return to something like normal.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, calm, distant.
I looked at him the way one looks at a stranger.
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He noticed. Pressed his lips together.
After a long pause, he said, “Eleanor… I broke up with Madeline p>
“I’ve thought it through,” he continued. “I’m willing to give everything up and come abroad with you p>
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Chapter 7
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