Chapter 124- It’s over

Words : 1231 Updated : Oct 5th, 2025

Chapter 124: Chapter 124- It’s over The door creaked open. But it wasn’t her. It was Laurent. The flicker of hope in Morrison’s eyes shattered into nothingness, leaving behind only a hollow ache that made his chest tighten. Laurent had come at Lilian’s request—to help pack a few essentials for her journey abroad. Bert had insisted she bring nothing at all; he had everything waiting for her in America. After all, Bert owned a fashion design company there. Clothes were the last thing Lilian would ever lack. And yet, how could she leave behind the dresses Bert had made with his own hands? They weren’t just clothes—they were pieces of his devotion, woven with meaning. Along with them, she needed her documents and a few personal items. That was why she had asked Laurent to step into the place she had sworn she would never return to. For Lilian, this home was no longer a sanctuary. It was a graveyard of memories—too many stolen kisses, too many tender whispers, and wounds so deep she could never heal them here. She had made up her mind: once she left the country, Dave would sell this apartment. Everything would be severed, clean and final. Lilian had given her heart, all of it. But she was not the kind of woman who begged, nor one who clung to love when it spat her out. Pride was the one thing she would never abandon. Her mother, Tiffany, had once told her, "If he leaves you, it’s because you weren’t enough for him." Cruel, perhaps, but Lilian had swallowed that bitter truth whole. So she cut the cord. Completely. Morrison was no longer hers. Neither the house, nor the car, nor the job that had tied her to this city for more than twenty years—she would walk away from all of it without a backward glance. When Laurent stepped into the apartment and saw Morrison standing there, her brows rose in shock. Yet the realization struck her almost instantly: Morrison had once shared Lilian’s bed, shared her life. Of course he had a key to her apartment. But why was he here now? Why would a man who had been the one to end it... suddenly stand in the middle of Lilian’s world again, carrying a face carved with regret? The first thing Laurent noticed was the regret. It was written in Morrison’s eyes, in the way his shoulders sagged, in the way his very presence screamed of a man who wanted to turn back time. The moment Morrison realized it was Laurent who had entered, his expression shuttered. He forced down the storm in his gaze, lowered his voice until it was nothing more than a rasp, and asked, "How... is she?" Laurent froze. The Morrison she had once known had been untouchable: dazzling, arrogant, unstoppable. But the man before her now... this was someone else entirely. His spirit looked frayed, his posture weary. With the cut on his lip and the bruise on his cheek, he appeared almost fragile. How could Laurent reconcile this broken figure with the blazing star of a man she had once admired from afar? And how could she even answer that question? If she said Lilian was doing well, would that not erase the depth of her love for Morrison, as if she had never cared at all? But if she said she wasn’t well, then she would be admitting Lilian still carried Morrison in her heart. Laurent’s lips parted, but no words came. The silence between them grew heavy, thick with truths neither dared to speak. Her head throbbed with the weight of that question. So she deflected, her tone deliberately detached. "You two broke up. There’s no point in asking anymore." She bent down, slipped off her shoes at the entrance, and stepped inside. Only then did the truth of the room unfold before her eyes—romance, but only the ghost of it, the kind that lingers like a cruel joke. The candles had long since burned out, their wax hardened into pale ruins. A cold dinner sat untouched on the table, next to a delicate cake that had lost all warmth. And then Laurent remembered. Last night had been Morrison’s birthday. Her breath caught in her throat. Standing earlier at the doorway, with Morrison’s tall frame blocking her view, she hadn’t noticed. But now she did. And her heart clenched for Lilian. If the breakup had happened on an ordinary day, the wound might have been deep—but survivable. Yet on this day, when Lilian had poured her whole heart into preparing surprises for the man she loved, Morrison had chosen to shatter her. It was cruelty dressed in timing. It was betrayal wrapped in candles and cake. How heavy, how merciless must that pain have been? To offer up her heart so completely, only for him to crush it beneath his heel. Laurent’s chest ached at the thought. If she, merely an outsider, could feel the sting so deeply, how could Lilian—the girl who had loved him with every fiber of her being—possibly endure it? The ache hardened her voice. "Leave. She’ll never come back here again." Without waiting for his reply, Laurent strode past him and into Lilian’s bedroom. She opened the wardrobe—and froze. Rows of men’s suits and shirts stared back at her. She let out a long, bitter sigh. So it had been serious between them. Serious enough that their lives had bled into one another’s, halfway to cohabitation. No wonder Lilian had fallen so hard, so deep. And no wonder the damage was irreversible. Dave had once blamed himself, whispering that if they had noticed earlier—if they had intervened—Lilian might never have sunk this far. But truthfully, none of them had been paying attention. Not Dave, not Tiffany, not Daniel. Each of them was drowning in their own chaos. Who had the time, the energy, to truly see Lilian? Still, one question gnawed at Laurent. How had it begun? How had Lilian and Morrison, two people from such different worlds, found themselves bound together? She set aside the clothes in her hands, walked back to the living room, and faced Morrison, who still hadn’t moved, still hadn’t left. Her voice was calm, clinical, though her eyes held sharp curiosity. "Tell me," she said slowly, "how did you and Lilian start?" Morrison stiffened. His lips parted, closed again, and finally he turned to her, voice low, uncertain. "She never told you?" She was certain he must have. Lilian, with her open heart, her inability to hide anything—surely after yesterday, after everything, she would have run to Laurent, confessed everything? She had always done so before. But Laurent shook her head. Her gaze never wavered. "Not a single word." If she had heard it from Lilian, she wouldn’t be standing here, demanding it from him. In truth, Laurent had expected it too—that Lilian would crumble, would seek her comfort. But from the moment she returned this morning until she asked Laurent to pack her things, Lilian had said nothing about Morrison. Not a fragment of their past. Laurent had felt her heart twist with sympathy and had urged her gently, "If it hurts, let it out. Don’t hold it in." But Lilian had only smiled faintly, her voice steady, her eyes already somewhere far away. "I don’t hurt. There’s nothing to say. It’s over."

Chapter 124- It’s over

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