"What's wrong?”
He looks up at me, and there's something in his eyes—relief, I think, mixed with vindication. "Officer Gray came by while you were in the shower. She unofficially shared some information with me. And…” He hesitates, grimacing as his words trail off.
My stomach rolls, but I force myself to sit across from him. "Tell me."
Devon sighs. “She smashed our car window.”
I freeze. “What? How?—”
“The lady across the street had it on her Ring camera. The police asked around, and apparently, they caught her smashing our car and running around the corner.” He shakes his head as I stare past him.
To think she did that to us with both of us in the house… I shudder.
"Jade—" He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice is rough. "She's done this before. To other people. We weren't her first targets."
I gape at him. I thought this was a tirade againstme.
“Mila had been stalking Grant and his wife for months before the conference. She'd attended specifically because she knew he'd be there. When he rejected her advances—she pivoted to me.”
Devon was selected because he was someone from her past that ‘rejected her.’
"She chose you," I whisper. "On purpose."
"Yeah." Devon winces. "Because I was easy. Because Grant wouldn't give her what she wanted, so she found someone who might."
“So, all that about Grant being aggressive after she ended things…” I trail off, shaking my head. “Fucking hell, Devon.”
“Yeah, no wonder he tried to tell me to be careful.” Devon pinches the bridge of his nose before continuing. “There's more. Officer Gray said there was a report from Bali—from the yoga retreat where Mila did her training. A male instructor she'd worked with had filed a complaint after she began following him, sending invasive messages, and making false claims about their relationship.”
I stare at him, unsure what to say. Even knowing this wasn’t just directed at me didn’t make this any easier to swallow.
"She did this in India too," Devon continues, eyeing me like I mightbreak. "Another man. Same pattern. Target, fixate, escalate. When it doesn't work, she moves on to the next guy.”
For weeks, I've felt like the victim—betrayed, humiliated, broken. But hearing this, the unhinged trail of Mila's behavior, I realize I was never the only one in her crosshairs.
Devon was a victim too—of a calculated predator.
"Her power was an illusion," I whisper.
"What?"
I meet his eyes across the table. "Everything she made me feel—worthless, inadequate, not enough. It was all constructed. She didn't have any real ammunition, so she manufactured it. The kiss, the pregnancy, the Instagram posts—none of it was about what actually happened. It was about what she could makemebelieve had happened."
Devon swallows. "I should have told you the truth from the start. About the kiss. About all of it."
"Yes. You should have."
"If I had?—"
"She still would have done this. Look at the pattern, Devon. Grant, the instructor in Bali, India—you. The only difference is how much damage she can do before she's stopped."
I stand and move around the table, and Devon turns in his chair to face me. I cup his jaw in my hands, feeling the stubble rough against my palms.
"You made a mistake," I tell him. "A terrible, painful mistake that I'm still healing from. But you didn't create this. You didn't cause her obsession."
His eyes are wet. "Jade?—"
"I love you." The words come out stronger than I expect. "Not because I'm afraid of being alone. Not because I'm desperate or insecure or any of the things Mila called me. Because despite everything—the lies, the pain, the weeks of hell—I still want to build a life with you."