We Will Love Again – Episode 19
Peter chose a quiet café far from Crazy Maple and Triple AI. When Alaina arrived, he was already seated by the window, looking older than the young man who had once waited in a sports car to help her break Noah’s heart.
“You shouldn’t have agreed,” she said instead of greeting him.
“You shouldn’t have carried this alone for five years.” Peter rose and hugged her briefly. The gesture was friendly, but from the entrance it looked intimate enough to awaken every old resentment Noah possessed.
Noah entered with Aaron and stopped. Logic told him Peter and Alaina had no romantic history. Jealousy responded to the sight before evidence could intervene.
Alaina stepped back at once. “Noah insisted on this meeting. I didn’t.”
“I gathered.” Peter offered Noah his hand. “It’s been a long time.”
Noah ignored the hand and sat opposite him. “Not long enough for me to forget the car.”
Peter took his seat without reacting to the insult. “That was the idea.”
The answer changed the air around the table. Noah leaned forward. “What was the idea?”
Alaina cut in. “Peter, don’t.” Her plea confirmed that the words held more than an embarrassing breakup story.
Peter looked at her with regret. “You asked me to play the villain. You never asked me to lie for the rest of my life.”
Noah’s attention snapped to Alaina. “Play the villain?” His voice remained low, but fury gathered beneath it.
“It wasn’t like that,” she said, though no explanation followed. She had spent years constructing the lie and now discovered she possessed no safe way to dismantle it.
Peter answered for her. “Alaina and I never dated. I drove the car. I said the lines she needed me to say. That’s all.”
Noah stared at him. The sidewalk, the discarded ring, and Peter’s arrival replayed with a different meaning. What Noah remembered as spontaneous betrayal had been staged.
“Why?” The question emerged raw. He turned to Alaina. “Why would you do that to me?”
Tears threatened her composure. “I thought it was the only way you would leave.”
“Leave for where?” Noah demanded. “Oxford?” The name came from a life he rarely connected to Alaina, because he had never told her about the offer.
Peter glanced between them and understood too late that Noah still did not know who revealed it. Alaina’s silence became desperate.
Noah saw the answer in her face before anyone spoke. He rose slowly, betrayal taking a new and more terrible shape. “Who told you about Oxford, Alaina?”
