He Erased Me From The Photo I Erased Him From My Life Chapter 20
At eleven p.m. Chicago time, Owen was woken by a barrage of phone calls.
He opened the link Liam had sent him and saw that familiar picnic photo.
In it, he stood turned slightly to the side, a hand on Lucy’s shoulder, while Sloane pressed close to him, a soft smile on her face.
Natalie was nowhere in sight.
At the time, it hadn’t even crossed his mind to ask her to hand the phone to someone else so she could be in the picture, too.
As Owen scrolled through the comments, his expression darkened.
Sloane had twisted the canceled wedding into a story of Natalie’s jealousy. She had framed his decision to cut ties with her as something Natalie had forced him to do. She said nothing about the hotel, nothing about the ruined documents.
Just then, his phone rang.
“Owen,” Sloane said, her voice already choked with tears. “Did you see that Natalie had a lawyer threaten me?”
“Delete the post.”
A two-second silence hung on the line.
“Why? What did I lie about? She couldn’t stand Lucy.”
“I betrayed her,” Owen said, his voice flat. “And I kept choosing you over her.”
He gripped the phone tighter.
“This was never about Lucy. And Natalie didn’t force me to do anything.”
Sloane’s breathing grew heavy.
“So you’re taking her side now?”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“The truth is that *you* booked the hotel and *you* ordered the pills!” she suddenly shrieked. “Why am I the only one being threatened with your dirty laundry?”
Owen closed his eyes.
“Because you dragged her name and her job into it.”
“Then come on my livestream tomorrow night,” Sloane said at once. “Tell everyone I was emotionally shattered and you chose to stay and comfort me. As long as you say she misunderstood, this will all go away.”
“She didn’t misunderstand.”
“Owen!”
“That hotel room had one bed. You and I both know what happened that night.”
Only ragged breathing answered him.
After a long moment, Sloane’s voice turned cold. “If you won’t help me, then I’ll tell everyone you took advantage of me when I was at my most vulnerable.”
In the past, whenever she cried, Owen’s first instinct had always been to fix it for her.
This time, hearing her threat, all he felt was a profound, chilling emptiness.
“You can say that.”
He walked into his study and opened his laptop.
“And I’ll admit to everything I did. The hotel. The pharmacy order. The fake ER photo. And every single time I abandoned Natalie for you.”
Sloane hung up abruptly.
Owen stared at the dead screen for a moment, then composed an email to Natalie’s lawyer.
He didn’t ask for an apology to be passed along. He didn’t ask if Natalie would ever be willing to see him again.
The email contained only one sentence:
“Should Ms. Reed require it, I am willing to publicly corroborate every fact reflected in the existing record.”
After sending it, Owen sat alone in the dark for a long time.
He had finally chosen Natalie.
But this time, it had nothing to do with winning her back.