Echoes of a Toxic Love

I gripped my childhood friend's arm, supporting his weight in the harsh fluorescent light of the hospital corridor after his surgery, only to crash straight into the man I hadn't seen in five years.

My exboyfriend. His arm was wrapped protectively around a pregnant woman. He leaned down, his posture sickeningly intimate.

Over the low hum of the hospital lobby, I caught the faint sound of her calling him "husband." For five long years after our breakup, I had played out our eventual reunion a million different ways in my head, yet my brain had never once prepared me for the reality of him belonging to someone else.

All the oxygen vanished from my lungs. He was married.

Chapter 1 My mom hammered it into my head that Miles had just gotten out of surgery and needed someone by his hospital bed for the next few days.

Since I had just quit my job, that grueling shift naturally fell on my shoulders. Right before I walked out the door, she caught my heavy sigh.

She gave me that familiar look of utter disappointment. "Miles is a good guy, Elara. I watched him grow up. How does he fall short compared to Ezra?

Why are you so damn stubborn…" "Mom!" I cut her off sharply. Even after five years, just hearing his name made my throat constrict so tight I couldn't swallow.

My nails dug crescent moons into my palms. "Keep playing matchmaker all you want.

Miles doesn't even like me." Forcing my breathing to stay even, I dropped the cold statement, grabbed the thermos, and marched out the door.

Stepping into the private hospital room, I found Miles staring intently at his phone, his long fingers flying across the screen.

A girl's sicklysweet voice drifted from the speaker, exactly the type he always went for. "You don't look like a guy recovering from surgery." He threw me a sidelong glance, a lazy smirk pulling at his mouth. "Jealous?" I rolled my eyes and slammed the thermos onto the nightstand. "You're overthinking it.

I just think you're annoying the dogs in the next ward." I couldn't be bothered with him anymore. I grabbed a paperback and started reading, ignoring his existence.

Half an hour later, Miles suddenly gripped my arm. "What?" I muttered, not looking up from the page.

He went dead silent for a moment before forcing the words out through gritted teeth. "I need to use the bathroom." I froze, glancing up just in time to catch him turning his face away.

The tips of his ears were burning red. Propping up a sixfootthree grown man was no joke. He was weak, throwing almost his entire dead weight against my side.

By the time we made it to the restroom down the hall, I was gasping for air.

Once he finally finished his business, the bastard actually showed a sliver of decency, leaning his broad back against the wall so I could catch my breath.

I lifted a hand to wipe the sweat from my forehead, straightening my rumpled clothes. That was when I saw Ezra in a pristine white doctor's coat.

He seemed to be waiting for someone. In the dim light of the corridor, his sharp jawline and straight nose were exactly the same.

His cool, detached eyes were cast slightly downward, perfectly overlapping with the untouchable boy from my memory. Every ounce of my selfcontrol shattered.

My muscles twitched, ready to bridge the distance and throw myself at him. Until a pregnant woman stepped right up to his side.

He leaned his head down, his arm wrapping around her waist in an unmistakably intimate hold.

What dropped my stomach into an icy abyss was her voice drifting over the hospital noise.

I faintly heard her call him, "Husband." "Elara, you space out?" Miles's voice yanked me back. I flinched, almost dropping the IV pole I was holding.

A wicked smirk played at the corners of Miles's eyes. "Thinking about some other guy behind my back?

Hm?" I didn't know if he was doing it on purpose, but he practically plastered his body against mine, his voice carrying down the hall.

His hot, damp breath hit my ear, making the hairs on my neck stand up. I shrank back instinctively.

I raised my hands to shove his chest, but a heavy stare suddenly pinned me in place. My gaze snapped back down the corridor, locking dead onto Ezra. Our eyes met.

Five years ago, if Ezra had seen this, his face would have turned to ice.

He would have marched right over, clamped his arm like a steel vice around my waist, and claimed me through clenched teeth.

Later that night, no matter how many times I kissed him or let him have his way with my body, he wouldn't let it go.

He'd pin me down, acting like the victim. "You are not allowed to look at anyone else." That intensely possessive Ezra. The Ezra who was obsessed with me. Now, he just stared at me.

His eyes were completely dead, stripped of any emotion. He turned his attention back to the pregnant woman. "Let's go," he said, his voice flat.

I watched their backs disappear down the hall. It felt like someone had hollowed out my chest with a blunt knife.

Chapter 2 For five years after our breakup, I had played out our reunion in my head a million times, but I never dared to imagine he'd be married.

I bit my lower lip so hard I tasted copper, desperately trying to swallow the suffocating lump in my throat. But the acid only kept churning, spreading through my ribs.

For a split second, my muscles coiled to storm over and demand answers. Then the cold reality hit me—I didn't even have the right to ask. I was the one who pulled the plug.

I was the one who walked away. Ezra, a man built on pure, unadulterated pride, had practically shattered his own ego, begging me to stay. He tried everything.

And I was the coward who cracked under the pressure and let him go. "I asked around.

He's still single." Miles's casual drawl snapped my head up, instantly drying the tears stinging my eyes. "What?" He flashed me a wolfish grin. "He's my attending physician.

Crazy coincidence, right?" I blinked, a pathetic spark of hope fluttering in my chest. "You asked him yourself?" "Not exactly." Miles rubbed his jaw. "Got it from the nurses." Miles always had an easy time charming women.

He'd squeezed it out of the nursing staff that Ezra had suddenly transferred from out of state a month ago. His employment paperwork explicitly listed him as unmarried.

The iron band tightening around my chest refused to let up. "But that pregnant woman just now…" I knew Ezra. He despised liars and never compromised.

If they weren't together, he would have instantly shot her down the second she called him "husband." He didn't. Miles just stared at me, deadpan.

He let the silence stretch for a beat before tossing out a new theory. "Maybe it's a shotgun wedding situation.

Knocked her up before the ring." When Ezra stepped into the room for evening rounds, my eyelids were swollen and raw from crying.

For a fraction of a second, his footsteps seemed to falter. I swore I saw a flicker in his gaze. But just as fast, the ice returned.

He broke eye contact, striding purposefully past me to Miles's bed to start his routine checks.

He fired off clinical questions about Miles's postop recovery and vitals, keeping his voice strictly professional. He didn't look my way once.

I shoved my hands into my pockets, my fingernails digging into the fabric. My stomach churned with battery acid. "What did you eat today?

Any increase in the frequency of your headaches?" Ezra asked, pen hovering over the chart.

Miles leaned back against the pillows, stretching his long legs with a lazy smirk. "Had some soup Elara made for me from scratch.

Her mom said she slaved over the stove for three hours, practically sliced her finger off prepping the seafood. "Pretty sure not even her exboyfriend ever got the VIP treatment." He clicked his tongue. "Funny thing, too.

After I finished it, my headache completely vanished. Magic." Ezra's pen stopped midstroke. He turned his head slowly, leveling a cold, hollow stare right at me.

I hadn't done anything wrong, yet a wave of guilt slammed into me. I took a subconscious halfstep back, putting distance between us. Back then, Ezra had spoiled me rotten.

He did all the cooking. He never let me lift a finger in the kitchen. He had owned my body, my heart, and my stomach with effortless total control.

I had only learned how to boil water after I lost him. Just thinking about it made my throat burn all over again.

Then, Miles's voice cut through the tension, practically shoving Ezra out the door. "Since everything looks good, you should head out and get some rest, Doc." Miles locked eyes with Ezra, his voice dropping into a slow, mocking drawl. "It's getting late.

Kind of inconvenient for you to stick around." I snapped out of my daze and shot Miles a warning glare, which he completely ignored.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Ezra's flat, emotionless voice beat me to it. "Oh?" I froze. My pulse suddenly kicked into a frantic, erratic rhythm against my ribs.

Chapter 3 Miles tilted his head, shooting me a rapid, microscopic wink before shifting his gaze dead center onto Ezra. "Nothing major.

It's just…" He let out a low chuckle, his eyes locked onto Ezra in a blatant, aggressive challenge. "The stitches on my back can't get wet.

Elara was just about to strip my shirt off and give me a sponge bath." Ezra's entire body went rigid. My muscles coiled, bracing for him to snap—to say something, do something.

Instead, he abruptly shoved his chair back, snatched up the medical chart, and walked out without a single backward glance. The door clicked shut behind him.

I stood frozen in the middle of the room. The silence rang in my ears. I didn't want to admit it, but the cold reality was suffocating me.

Ezra… he really didn't give a damn about me anymore. "Elara?" "I'm fine." I stared holes into the linoleum floor, my hands trembling so hard I had to ball them into tight fists.

I don't know how long I stood there before a tissue appeared in my peripheral vision. It was Miles. I jerked my head up, crashing straight into his dark, bottomless stare.

He watched me intently for a long beat before his tone slipped back into that lazy drawl. "It's been almost five years, right?

Still can't let him go?" I sniffled, not hesitating for a fraction of a second. "No. I can't." Miles went uncharacteristically quiet.

When he finally spoke, a faint smirk tugged at his lips. "You slipped a love letter into my locker back in the day.

How did you get over that so fast?" The sudden ambush of my most humiliating teenage moment made me blink.

When my brain finally caught up, I let out a dry, incredulous laugh. "That was a lifetime ago. Besides, you shot me down in flames, remember?

Said you only saw me as a little sister." Miles kept his eyes on me. He let out a soft, breathy laugh but didn't say a word.

The air in the room suddenly felt too thick, the silence too heavy. I grabbed the empty thermos and mumbled an excuse about needing hot water, bolting out the door.

The second the door clicked shut, my phone buzzed in my pocket. A barrage of long voice memos from my mom.

I didn't even need to listen to know the drill: a relentless cocktail of guilt trips and tough love.

The translation was always the same—take good care of Miles, and lock him down while I had the chance.

I slumped against the freezing hallway wall, the chill seeping through my shirt. Ever since the messy divorce with my dad, my mom had morphed into a different person.

The smiles vanished, replaced by an aggressive, hairtrigger temper and a suffocating need for absolute control. She was terrified I'd walk out on her like he did.

Hell, I had never even stepped foot out of our home state until I left for college. As for Miles… we were inseparable from kindergarten all the way through high school.

I spent over a decade trailing after him like a lost puppy. How could I not have had a crush on him? But he didn't want me.

Senior year, I finally scraped together the nerve to hand him that stupid letter. He stood there in dead silence, reading every single word.

Then, looking me dead in the eye with agonizing sincerity, he dropped the bomb. "Elara, you're just a sister to me." Miles was born with a face that ruined girls for sport.

He was always reckless, lazy, effortlessly untouchable. Rejecting my confession was the most serious thing he had ever done to me.

Later, he confessed he was crazy about some girl he met at a state physics decathlon. He was planning to follow her to Europe for college. How did I feel back then?

I honestly couldn't remember the sting anymore. I only remembered the text he sent me right before his flight took off. [I know you want to go to med school out of state, Elara.

Never compromise your own life for anyone else.] So, I forged my mom's signature, changed my college applications behind her back, and moved across the country.

And that was how I met Ezra.

By the time I found myself casually dropping Ezra's name into every single FaceTime call with Miles across the Atlantic, it wasn't just Miles who figured it out. I knew it, too.

Miles went completely off the grid for a long time after that. By the time his name finally popped up on my phone again, Ezra and I were already official.

Chapter 4 It was our first night living together, and my cramps were absolutely brutal.

Ezra pulled me onto his lap, his long fingers massaging my lower stomach through the thin fabric of my shirt with slow, agonizingly gentle pressure.

Once the sharp ache finally dulled, he brought over a steaming bowl of soup. But I was feeling wicked.

I hooked my pinky around his. "I'm not eating without a reward." Ezra kept his face perfectly blank, but he never could resist me when I whined.

His large hand suddenly cupped the back of my neck, pulling me into a devastating, soulstealing kiss. Just enough to leave me breathless.

When he finally pulled back, setting me upright as I melted against his chest with a flushed, triumphant grin, his expression remained impassive.

But his voice was rough as gravel. "The soup is getting cold.

Eat." Maybe because I was the one who chased him first, and he had always been so frigid back then, I absolutely loved teasing him once we were official.

The more detached he acted, the more obsessed I became with making him lose control. And once we finally crossed that line, Ezra tasted blood.

The one initiating, the one stripped of all restraint… became him.

Miles's text came right around that time. [Elara, I'm coming home.] Under Ezra's dark, probing stare, I didn't flinch. "He's just my neighbor. Basically my brother.

I've known him for over twenty years." Ezra barely bought it. Every time Miles's name lit up my screen after that, Ezra went into full defense mode.

He tried to act completely unfazed, but he was terrible at faking it. It was honestly adorable.

Because of that, and a million other little things, I slowly stopped replying to Miles. Ezra and I had a pact: grab our diplomas, then grab a marriage license.

But the second I graduated, my family went up in flames. A relative called in a panic, claiming my mom was critically ill.

By the time I booked a frantic flight and rushed home, I realized they had all conspired to trap me. My mom had never forgiven me for forging those college applications.

She resented me. She resented my rebellion, resented me slipping through her fingers.

And more than anything, she fundamentally rejected Ezra. "Elara, if you wanted to do premed, you could have gone to the state school right here.

If you want to get married, Miles is a perfectly good boy." She practically spat the words. "Everything I arranged for you is exactly what you need!" During that nightmare, my mom completely froze my credit cards.

She confiscated my car keys and my phone, deadbolting every possible escape route to forcefully sever my connection to Ezra.

She even used my phone to text him the most degrading, venomous lies, pretending to be me: [What makes you think I'd ever marry into a family with a gambling addict father and a disabled mother?

Did you seriously believe Miles was just a brother to me?

You were nothing but a cheap thrill to cure my boredom in college.] By the time I found out and completely lost my mind, desperate to run back and explain everything, my mom went nuclear.

She slammed Ezra's hospital internship recommendation letter and a full bottle of sleeping pills onto the dining table.

Her voice shattered into a shrill scream. "If you dare step foot out that door to go to him, I promise you, I won't just swallow this entire bottle!

I will use every connection I have to make sure he never gets his medical license for the rest of his life!" In that split second, I broke.

No matter how fiercely I loved Ezra, I couldn't watch my mother kill herself over it. Nor could I destroy his future. That night, Ezra stood outside my window.

He looked like a ghost, his face hollowed out and completely drained of color. He looked like a man who had stripped off every last ounce of his pride.

Even after reading those gutwrenching texts, even after believing I was in love with someone else, he stood there, practically begging for me to come back to him.

But with my mother's threat hanging over my head like a guillotine, my feet stayed glued to the floor. I couldn't even walk downstairs to look him in the eye.

Chapter 5 The hospital wall was freezing. The longer I leaned against it, the more the chill seeped straight into my spine.

My phone vibrated with another message from my mom, jarring me out of my tangled memories.

This time, it was a text: [You ran into Ezra again?] The fact that she typed it out instead of sending a voice memo was enough to prove exactly how furious she was.

I locked the screen, a wave of irritation washing over me. When I looked up, Ezra was standing just down the hall. I had no idea how long he had been there.

He was still holding the medical chart, his expression perfectly stoic. My breath hitched. I couldn't form a single word. He hadn't left? Was he actually waiting for me?

Ezra's gaze flicked down to the empty thermos in my hand. "Getting him hot water?" His voice was flat, carrying an inexplicable, biting chill. I blinked.

Before I could even open my mouth to answer, he turned and walked away. By the time my brain caught up, my feet had already followed him into the elevator.

Under his freezing stare, I forced my shoulders to relax, feigning composure. "A nurse just told me the water dispenser on this floor is broken.

Said I'd have to go down to the third floor." That same nurse had also mentioned Ezra's office was on the third floor. The cramped space of the elevator was suffocatingly quiet.

Ezra stood with both hands shoved into his pockets, staring dead ahead. An undeniable, sharp edge radiated from him, filling the confined space.

I pressed my back against the cold metal wall, my eyes unconsciously tracing the sharp lines of his profile. He was more grounded than he was five years ago.

And even more devastating to look at. Feeling my stare, Ezra threw a brief, sidelong glance my way.

A clear sneer pulled at the corner of his mouth, his eyes mirroring the undisguised mockery.

I swallowed hard, finally pushing the words out. "Ezra, running into you again… I was actually surprised.

And really ha—" The word happy died in my throat, cut off by a voice as cold as absolute zero. "I had no desire to see you." Every muscle in my body locked up.

A dull, heavy ache swelled in my chest, making it hard to breathe. The elevator doors slid open with a sharp ding, and Ezra strode out, not sparing me a single second of hesitation.

I bit the inside of my cheek and stepped out after him. I honestly couldn't read this version of Ezra.

He claimed he didn't want to see me, yet his strides weren't particularly fast. It almost felt like he was intentionally setting a pace I could follow.

When he walked into his office, he didn't even shut the door. It only took my brain a few seconds to process the opening.

I walked inside. "Lock the door." The abrupt command made me freeze. I shot him a hesitant look.

Ezra was just shrugging off his white coat, meeting my gaze with completely hollow, unreadable eyes. I lowered my eyes.

The second the lock clicked shut, his large hands suddenly clamped down on my waist, slamming me hard against the solid wood of the door.

His broad shoulders completely blocked out the rest of the room.

Heavy, erratic breaths tangled between us, the sheer force of his dark, predatory aggression making a muffled gasp rip from my throat.

Before the sound even fully escaped, his mouth crashed down on mine, sealing it shut. That familiar, clean scent of his completely suffocated my senses.

He kissed me with brutal, savage force, like he was trying to tear me apart and consume me whole.

In all the countless times we had been together before, he had never treated me with such feral violence. The tip of my tongue throbbed with a sharp, stinging ache.

Hot tears pricked the corners of my eyes.

I instinctively pushed against his chest, trying to squirm away, but he only pressed his heavy frame flush against mine, pinning me tighter to the wood until I couldn't move an inch.

Ezra finally broke the kiss, his chest heaving against mine.

His pitchblack eyes were blown wide, swimming with raw, unfiltered lust, yet the icy stare beneath it remained rock solid.

He stared down at me for a long, agonizing beat before letting out a low, mocking scoff. "Isn't this exactly what you wanted?" The sheer insult paralyzed me.

And that momentary freeze was the only opening he needed.

Just as his fingers slipped down to grab the zipper at the back of my dress, his phone suddenly buzzed violently in his pocket.

My eyes instinctively dropped to the screen lighting up in his hand. The caller ID flashed a single name: "Chloe". My heart missed a full beat. Chloe.

Was that the pregnant woman's name