Chapter Text
# Chapter 47: The Warning
*Caleb POV*
Caleb had been home from the wedding for maybe an hour when someone started pounding on his door with desperate, frantic force.
He knew who it was before he even opened it. Could feel it in the way his chest tightened, in the way his hands shook as he reached for the lock.
Sylus stood in the hallway still in his tuxedo, bow tie hanging loose around his neck, his face blotchy and wet with tears. He looked like he'd run all the way here, his perfectly styled hair falling in his eyes, his hands trembling at his sides.
"Sylus, what—"
"I can't do it." Sylus's voice was raw, broken. "I can't go back there. I can't—" A sob cut him off, and he pressed his hand over his mouth like he was trying to physically hold back the breakdown.
"Where's MC?"
"Hotel. Sleeping. She's sleeping and I—I left. I just left her there and I ran and I don't know what I'm doing." The words tumbled out in a rush, hysterical and disjointed.
Caleb grabbed his arm and pulled him inside, closing the door quickly before any neighbors could witness this. "You need to calm down—"
"Don't tell me to calm down!" Sylus's voice rose to something close to a shout. "I just married someone I don't love! I just stood in front of everyone we know and promised forever to the wrong person!"
"Sylus—"
"I love you." The words came out broken, desperate. "I love you so much I can't breathe. I love you so much it's destroying me from the inside out."
Caleb felt like the ground was tilting under his feet. "You're married. You just got married today."
"I know!" Sylus was crying openly now, harsh sobs that shook his whole body. "I know and I did it anyway because you told me to! Because you said you'd moved on and I thought—I thought I could do this. I thought I could just pretend and eventually it would hurt less but it doesn't!"
He collapsed onto the couch, burying his face in his hands. "It hurts more. Every day it hurts more. Watching you, being near you but not being able to touch you, having to smile and play the perfect husband when all I want is you."
Caleb stood frozen, watching Sylus fall apart in his living room. "Why did you come here?"
"Because I'm losing my mind!" Sylus looked up at him with wild, desperate eyes. "Because I stood in that hotel room looking at her sleeping and I realized I'm going to have to do this for the rest of my life. Wake up next to someone I don't love. Go to sleep thinking about someone I can't have. And I don't know if I can survive it."
"Sylus, you're not making sense—"
"I want you." Sylus stood up abruptly, moving toward him with shaking hands. "I want you so badly I'm going insane. Please. Please just tell me there's still a chance. Tell me you feel something and I'll—I'll figure it out. I'll fix this. I'll do anything."
"You're married," Caleb said again, like it was a lifeline. "You made vows today."
"Vows I didn't mean! Promises I can't keep!" Sylus's voice cracked completely. "Do you know what it was like, kissing her at the altar while looking at you? Do you know what it's doing to me, knowing I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life pretending?"
"Then why did you do it?"
"Because you told me you'd moved on!" The words came out like an accusation. "You said it didn't matter, that you wouldn't destroy her happiness. So I thought—I thought if I couldn't have you, at least I could make her happy. At least someone would get what they wanted."
"Sylus—"
"But I can't make her happy." His voice dropped to something quieter, more terrifying. "I can't love her the way she deserves. And the longer this goes on, the more I resent her for not being you."
Something in his tone made Caleb go very still. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying I'm dangerous." Sylus's hands were shaking badly now. "I'm saying every day I wake up angry that she's there instead of you. Every time she touches me I have to fight the urge to—" He stopped himself, breathing hard.
"To what?"
"To hurt her." The admission came out barely above a whisper. "Not because I want to. Not because she's done anything wrong. But because I'm so fucking angry and she's there and you're not and I don't trust myself anymore."
The words hit Caleb like ice water. "You're talking about hurting MC."
"I'm talking about the fact that I put my hands around her throat once before when I was drunk and thinking about you." Sylus's voice was hollow now, all the hysteria draining away to leave only truth. "And I think about it sometimes. When she's sleeping. When she's talking about our future. When she's happy and I'm dying inside."
"Jesus Christ, Sylus—"
"I'm not going to do it!" Sylus said quickly. "I know I'm not. But the fact that I think about it, that the thoughts are even there..." He laughed, the sound broken and wrong. "She's not safe with me, Caleb. I'm too angry, too resentful, too in love with someone else."
"Then leave her."
"I can't. She'll destroy my life if I do. She has so much information, so many secrets. She'll make sure I lose everything."
"Better than being a danger to her."
"Is it?" Sylus looked at him with hollow eyes. "Because if I leave her and lose everything, I lose any excuse to see you. Any reason to be near you. And I think that might actually kill me."
The silence stretched between them, loaded with the weight of what Sylus was really saying. That he was trapped. That MC wasn't safe. That this situation was spiraling into something dark and dangerous.
"Please." Sylus's voice broke again. "Please don't make me go back there. Don't make me spend my wedding night with someone who isn't you. I'm begging you, Caleb. Just—just tell me you feel something. Anything. Give me a reason to fight for this."
Caleb looked at him—this man who'd just married his best friend, who was confessing to having violent thoughts about her, who was falling apart in his living room—and felt something fundamental crack in his chest.
"I can't," he whispered.
"Can't or won't?"
"Both." Caleb's voice was steady even as his heart was breaking. "You're married, Sylus. You made your choice."
"You made it for me!"
"No. You made it when you said yes to her proposal plans. When you didn't fight harder. When you let it get this far." Caleb moved to the door, opening it. "And now you need to go back to your wife."
"I can't—"
"You have to." Caleb's voice was firm despite the way his hands were shaking. "Because the alternative is exactly what you just described. And I won't be responsible for that."
Sylus stared at him for a long moment, tears streaming down his face, his entire body shaking with suppressed emotion.
"I love you," he said one final time.
"I know." Caleb's voice cracked. "But it doesn't change anything."
"Then let me have this." Sylus moved before Caleb could process what was happening, closing the distance between them in two strides. "Just this once. Let me have you just once."
His hands came up to frame Caleb's face, and then he was kissing him with desperate, devastating intensity. It wasn't gentle or tentative—it was everything Sylus had been holding back for months, all the longing and desperation and love poured into one moment.
Caleb should have pushed him away. Should have remembered that Sylus was married, that MC was waiting for him in a hotel room, that this was wrong on every possible level.
But instead he found himself kissing back, his hands fisting in Sylus's jacket, pulling him closer even as his mind screamed that this was a mistake. Because this was what he'd wanted for so long, what he'd convinced himself he could never have.
And it was everything.
Sylus kissed him like he was drowning and Caleb was air. Like this was the last thing he'd ever do and he wanted to make it count. His hands were shaking against Caleb's face, tears still streaming down his cheeks, and Caleb could taste salt and desperation and goodbye.
When they finally broke apart, both of them were breathing hard, foreheads pressed together.
"I love you," Sylus whispered against his mouth. "I love you, I love you, I love you."
"Sylus—"
"I know. I know it doesn't matter. I know I have to go back. But I needed—" His voice broke completely. "I needed to know what it felt like. Just once."
He kissed Caleb again, softer this time but somehow more devastating. A goodbye kiss. A kiss that tasted like regret and lost chances and everything they could have been.
Then he pulled away, his hands falling from Caleb's face, and the loss of contact felt like dying.
"Thank you," Sylus said quietly. "For giving me that much, at least."
He walked to the door like a man going to his execution, pausing at the threshold without looking back.
"When she gets hurt," he said quietly, "and she will get hurt eventually because I can't keep doing this forever... remember that you could have stopped it. You could have saved her from me."
"Sylus—"
But he was already gone, disappearing down the hallway and leaving Caleb alone with the horrifying knowledge that he'd just sent a man who'd admitted to having violent thoughts back to his best friend's bed.
Back to a marriage that was going to destroy all three of them in different ways.
And there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it without breaking MC's heart and admitting that he'd been in love with her husband all along.
Caleb closed the door and sank to the floor, finally letting himself cry for all of it—for the choices made, for the happiness sacrificed, for the terrible future he could see coming and was powerless to prevent.
This was the real ending. Not the wedding. Not the vows.
This moment, where everyone's choices finally crystallized into something terrible and inevitable and completely unfixable.
And somehow, that was the saddest ending of all.