Shattered by Betrayal

CLARA'S POV

I pushed my laptop away, glaring at the half-finished marketing strategy for the Caldwell Company. The screen blurred before my tired eyes. I had three massive client presentations due tomorrow morning, and my brain felt like useless mush. The cursor blinked on a blank slide, mocking my inability to focus on the task. My mind kept drifting away from target demographics and budget allocations, zeroing in on the only thing that mattered right now. Rhys was coming home in two weeks.

Two months. That was how long it had been since I last saw my boyfriend in person. Two agonizing months of scheduled video calls that grew shorter by the day, and late-night texts that arrived hours after I fell asleep. Whenever I voiced my concerns, my stepfather, Alistair, would tell me I was overthinking things. Alistair had been my rock since my mom remarried ten years ago. He was the kind of dad who showed up, the kind who remembered the important milestones. I trusted his judgment over my own insecurities. I convinced myself the distance was just a temporary hurdle for us.

I dragged the laptop back onto my lap, trying to type out another bullet point for the presentation. Pathetic. I could not concentrate on the screen. The stress of the upcoming meetings tightened my shoulders into hard knots. I needed a quick release to clear my head. I shoved the laptop onto the mattress and reached over to my nightstand drawer. I pictured Rhys in his blue practice jersey, his hair slicked back with sweat, his large hands braced on the wooden headboard above me.

The bedroom door slammed open.

I jumped, my heart leaping into my throat. My mother stood right in the doorway. She caught me red-handed, my fingers still wrapped around the handle of the drawer. I scrambled to sit up, tangling my legs in the heavy duvet, my face burning with a heat that rivaled a furnace.

"Oh darling, I am so sorry I interrupted. But playtime is over." My mom flashed a wide smile, her eyes dancing with amusement instead of scolding me.

"Mom, knocking is a thing adults do." I shoved the drawer shut, almost catching my fingers in the wood. My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

"Your door was wide open, Clara. Be grateful it was me and not Declan." She let out a soft laugh, leaning against the doorframe.

"Please just stop talking." I buried my face in my hands, wishing the floorboards would open up and swallow me whole. Living in the renovated space above the garage was supposed to give me a sense of independence. Instead, it meant my mother barged into my space whenever she felt the urge. Still, the lack of privacy beat paying two grand a month for a tiny apartment in the city.

"Alistair and I have some exciting news waiting downstairs. I want you in the living room in five minutes, or I am dragging you out of that bed myself." Her voice shifted, taking on a serious tone before she turned and left the room.

The second the door clicked shut, I grabbed my phone from the mattress. I needed to shake off the lingering embarrassment. I needed to hear Rhys’s voice to ground myself. I needed something familiar and good to balance out whatever dramatic announcement my parents were about to drop on me downstairs. Exciting news in this family usually meant something that benefited everyone except me. I hit his contact name and held the cold phone to my ear.

One ring. Two rings. Three.

Rhys always answered. He always picked up when I called, no matter what he was doing on the road.

The screen flickered. The video call connected. I expected to see his smiling face, maybe a messy background of his locker room or his hotel bed. Instead, I stared at a shaking screen angled at a strange slant. The camera was propped up on a bedside table, capturing a chaotic blur of tangled white hotel sheets.

A woman’s breathless voice hit my ears through the phone speaker.

"Oh god, yes—Rhys, right there—"

I froze in horror. My brain short-circuited, refusing to process the images flashing across my screen. But the camera angle shifted just enough to provide a clear view of the bed.

Rhys lay flat on his back. His head was thrown back against the pillows, his mouth open as he let out a harsh groan. A blonde woman straddled his waist. Her hair cascaded down her bare back in a messy wave. I watched my boyfriend of two years driving his thick cock deep into her wet pussy. He gripped her bare hips, his knuckles turning white as he thrust upward with brutal force, meeting her downward slams. Their bodies slapped together in a sickening, wet rhythm.

"Livia—Christ, Livia—" Rhys groaned, his voice rough and strained.

He chanted her name like a prayer. He stared up at her flushed face, his eyes dark with lust. I saw the raw, carnal pleasure contorting his features. He pumped his hips faster, pulling her down onto his rigid shaft, burying himself to the hilt. The phone screen jolted with every single thrust, the camera shaking on the nightstand from the sheer force of their fucking.

"God, I am close—Rhys, I am so close—" The blonde woman threw her head back, riding him harder, her breasts bouncing with the frantic motion.

The phone slipped from my trembling fingers.

It clattered onto the center of my bed, landing face-up on the duvet. I did not reach for the device. I sat frozen, staring dead at the screen. I could still hear the wet, slapping sounds of their bodies colliding. I could hear her high-pitched moans echoing in my quiet room. I could hear him groaning her name over and over again, wrapped in a blanket of pleasure that belonged to someone else.

Two years. Two solid years of my life vanished in a single instant. Two years of enduring freezing, drafty arenas just to watch him practice. Two years of gripping the steering wheel for endless three-hour drives just to see him for a rushed weekend. Two years of wearing his oversized jersey, acting like a proud girlfriend, believing his promises held weight.

He had been fucking someone else.

Someone named Livia.

A fierce, blinding heat rushed into my chest. I snatched the phone from the bed. I stabbed my finger against the red button on the screen, killing the call and cutting off their filthy noises. My hands shook so bad I nearly dropped the device a second time. My throat tightened into a painful knot. Hot, heavy tears spilled over my lower lashes, tracking down my cheeks. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, pushing hard enough to see stars. I told myself he was not worth a single tear. He was not worth the sacrifices, the miles, the lonely nights. He was a liar.

But my face was already soaked. My chest heaved with silent, ragged breaths.

I dropped my hands to my lap. I did not bother walking over to the mirror to fix my appearance. I did not wipe away the streaks of mascara or smooth down my messy hair. I felt hollow, scraped out from the inside. I pushed myself off the bed and walked out of my room, my bare feet padding hard against the floorboards as I headed downstairs to the main house.

The main house smelled rich and warm, filled with the scent of freshly brewed coffee and the sweet vanilla aroma of whatever my mother had baked earlier in the week. It felt like a normal, comforting Sunday morning. It was a stark, cruel contrast to the shattered reality sitting heavy in my chest.

The second I stepped into the living room, both of my parents snapped their heads toward me.

"I was just about to come drag you out of—" My mother stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes widened, scanning my tear-stained face. "Clara, what is wrong?"

I tried to form a coherent sentence. I opened my mouth to speak, but the moment she asked the question, the dam broke. I broke down into ugly, gasping sobs. The sound ripped through the quiet living room, raw and pathetic.

Alistair moved without hesitation. He crossed the hardwood floor in two long strides. He wrapped his strong arms around my shaking frame, pulling me into a tight, comforting hug against his chest. One of his large hands smoothed down my messy hair while the other rubbed slow, soothing circles on my back. He held me together while I fell apart in his arms.

"I caught him cheating." My wrecked voice broke the silence, the words tasting like ash on my tongue.

A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the room.

I pulled my face away from Alistair’s chest. I watched my mother’s mouth fall open in pure shock. I watched Alistair’s jaw clench tight, a muscle ticking hard in his cheek.

"That Buffalo pretty boy with the perfect hair?" My mother’s voice sliced through the quiet space, sharp and rigid with sudden anger.

"Lenora," Alistair warned in a low tone, keeping his arm wrapped around my shoulders.

"You deserve better than him, Clara. You always have." My mother’s features softened, her anger melting into deep, maternal sympathy.

I wanted to believe her words. I wanted to feel righteous anger, but all I could picture was Rhys staring up at that blonde woman, giving her the same passionate look he used to give me.

My mother let out a long sigh, clasping her hands together in front of her waist. "We had something else we wanted to tell you. Declan got the official call to play for the Seattle Wolves."

My stomach plummeted straight to the floor. The air punched out of my lungs.

Rhys was on that exact same team. Rhys lived in that exact same city.

A wave of nausea hit me. Eight months ago, sitting on the floor of my bedroom, eating cheap pizza and watching terrible movies, I had made a promise to my stepbrother. I had looked Declan dead in the eye and swore that when he made the NHL, I would be sitting front row at his very first game. Declan had been my anchor through every bad day, every harsh breakup, and every lonely night. Now, his biggest dream was colliding head-on with my worst nightmare.

"I can not face Rhys right now. I just can not do it." My voice cracked on the final word, the sheer thought of seeing his face making my skin crawl.

"Then do not look at him." My mother countered without missing a beat. "You made a promise to your brother, Clara."

Guilt twisted a tight knot in my chest. She was right. I had promised.

My mother stepped over to the coffee table. She snatched up a glossy magazine and dropped it onto my lap. "That is your brother right there. Front page of Sports Illustrated."

I looked down at the cover. Declan’s familiar face stared back at me beneath a bold headline praising the Wolves’ newest secret weapon. A swell of genuine pride broke through the misery clogging my throat. He had worked his entire life for this exact moment. I turned the page, desperate to focus on his achievements and push away the intrusive, sickening images of Rhys and Livia.

As I flipped the page, my body went still.

An advertisement for a prominent energy drink commanded the glossy spread. I did not register the brand name or the bold promotional text. My eyes locked onto the man dominating the photograph. He wore a dark dress shirt, unbuttoned halfway down his torso to reveal a rigid, sculpted chest. His abs were deeply defined, forming a hard, v-shaped cut that disappeared beneath the waistband of his dark trousers. The cold metal can tipped against his mouth, a stream of condensation and liquid spilling over his bottom lip, tracking down his sharp jaw and trailing over the thick pulse point of his throat.

His eyes were piercing. They were a vivid, cold blue, staring into the camera lens with a dark, predatory intensity. The gaze felt heavy, as if those icy eyes were burning straight through the paper to look right at me. A sudden, involuntary shiver raced down my spine, and my thighs clenched together beneath the fabric of my pajama pants.

"Who is this guy?" I cleared my throat, forcing my voice to sound steady as I tapped the page.

Alistair’s expression darkened the second I asked. The warm, comforting father figure vanished, replaced by a tense, rigid posture. He gripped his ceramic coffee mug so hard his knuckles turned stark white. I swore the ceramic was going to crack under the immense pressure of his grip.

"Kaelen Voss." Alistair spat the name out like a curse, the syllables laced with pure venom.

"Who?" I asked, confused by the sudden shift in the room’s atmosphere.

"My nemesis," Alistair stated, his voice dropping to a flat, dangerous register.

"Your nemesis? What are you, a supervillain?" I blinked at him, trying to process the raw hatred radiating from his usually calm demeanor.

"He is the NHL's top player," my mother explained in a careful tone, placing a reassuring hand on Alistair's arm. "And he has made Alistair's life a living hell since he started coaching. That man did things that forced him out of the game for good."

I had heard the vague stories over the years. Hushed conversations about a powerful, untouchable figure who had ruined everything and destroyed Alistair's prestigious coaching career. But I had never heard an actual name attached to the phantom villain.

Kaelen Voss.

The star player for the Seattle Wolves.

He was the last person on earth Alistair wanted me thinking about.

I stared down at the photograph again. I studied those cold blue eyes, that sharp, dangerous jawline, and the hard body that looked like it had been carved from solid stone. My pulse jumped, a strange thrill cutting through the heavy fog of my recent heartbreak.

If I had to endure a miserable week in Seattle, sitting in the freezing stands and watching my cheating ex-boyfriend pretend I did not exist, at least there would be something worth looking at.

I tucked the magazine under my arm before either of my parents could snatch it back. I stood up from the couch, wiping the last stray tear from my cheek.

"Fine. I will go to Seattle." I met Alistair's eyes, lifting my chin in defiance. "I promised Declan I would be there for his first game. I refuse to break my promise to him just because Rhys turned out to be a piece of shit."

Alistair's rigid expression softened. A mixture of relief and paternal pride washed over his face.

"Besides," I added, forcing a casual tone into my voice even though my heart was still racing inside my chest. "Maybe watching a little hockey will help me move on."