Updated Sep 23, 2025 • ~10 min read
Cole Sloane sat in his dingy studio apartment at 2 AM, surrounded by empty beer bottles and the wreckage of his former life, staring at his phone like it held the answers to every question that had been torturing him for the past month. Angel’s goodbye email was still open on his laptop screen, the words he’d memorized and dissected and raged against until they’d lost all meaning except for their devastating finality.
The woman you thought you loved never existed. She was just another one of your lies.
Bullshit. Complete, utter bullshit. Angel had loved him—Cole had felt it in every touch, heard it in every whispered endearment, seen it in the way her face lit up when he walked into a room. You couldn’t fake that kind of connection, couldn’t manufacture the chemistry they’d shared for over two years.
Angel was just hurt. Confused by Harper’s manipulation and Victor Bellamy’s legal theatrics. She’d been poisoned against him by a vindictive ex-wife who couldn’t accept that some marriages simply ran their course. Once Angel had time to process everything rationally, once she understood that Harper had orchestrated this entire campaign of destruction out of spite, she’d realize what she’d thrown away.
Cole just had to find her first.
He’d tried everything. Called Pinnacle Consulting, only to be told Angel had quit and provided no forwarding information. Driven to her apartment building, only to discover she’d moved out without leaving a forwarding address. Even tried calling her friend Dahlia, who’d told him in very explicit terms that if he contacted her again, she’d call the police.
Angel had disappeared as completely as if she’d never existed, and Cole was beginning to panic.
Because without Angel, Cole had nothing. His marriage was over, his daughter was lost to him, his financial future was obliterated. Angel was supposed to be his consolation prize, his proof that sacrificing everything else had been worth it. She was supposed to be waiting for him when the dust settled, ready to build the life they’d planned together.
Instead, she’d vanished, leaving Cole alone with the consequences of choices that had made sense when he’d thought he was transitioning from one relationship to another, but looked like catastrophic self-destruction now that he was facing them alone.
Cole grabbed his phone and scrolled to Harper’s number. He’d called her seventeen times yesterday, left voicemails that had grown increasingly desperate as the day wore on. Harper had to know where Angel was—women talked, especially when they had a common enemy. Harper probably felt victorious watching Cole scramble to find the woman she’d “stolen” from him through her legal machinations.
But Cole wasn’t giving up. He’d built his entire future around Angel Martinez, and he wasn’t about to let Harper’s vindictiveness destroy that too.
The phone rang once, twice, three times before Harper’s voice cut through the silence with arctic precision: “What do you want, Cole?”
“I want to know where Angel is.”
“I already told you—I don’t know where Angel is. Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
Cole gripped the phone tighter, frustration and desperation making his voice harsh. “Don’t lie to me, Harper. I know you’ve been in contact with her. I know you’re getting some sick satisfaction out of watching my life fall apart, but this has gone far enough.”
Harper’s laugh was sharp enough to draw blood. “Your life fell apart because of choices you made, Cole. I didn’t force you to steal from our family to fund your affair. I didn’t force you to lie to me for twenty-six months. And I certainly didn’t force Angel to realize what kind of man she was involved with.”
“Angel loves me,” Cole said, the words coming out more desperately than he’d intended. “What we have is real, Harper. It’s not some casual affair or midlife crisis. We were planning a future together, a family—”
“Were you?” Harper’s voice cut through Cole’s rambling like a scalpel. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like Angel took one good look at the man behind the lies and decided she wanted nothing to do with him.”
Cole felt something crack in his chest at Harper’s casual cruelty. How had he ever loved this woman? How had he spent eight years married to someone who could take such obvious pleasure in his pain?
“You did this,” Cole said, his voice rising. “You poisoned her against me. You and that shark lawyer of yours painted me as some kind of monster when all I did was fall in love with someone else.”
“All you did?” Harper’s voice was deadly quiet now, which was infinitely more frightening than shouting. “Cole, you stole forty-seven thousand dollars from our family to fund your affair. You involved Angel in discussions about our daughter’s custody. You spent two years lying to both of us while we built our lives around your deception. That’s not falling in love—that’s systematic emotional and financial abuse.”
“I was going to pay it back—”
“With what money? You’re paying me four thousand a month in alimony, twenty-five hundred in child support, plus your own living expenses. You can barely afford that studio apartment you’re living in, let alone repay the money you stole.”
Cole flinched at Harper’s casual knowledge of his financial circumstances. She was right—his salary barely covered his court-ordered obligations and basic living expenses. The comfortable lifestyle he’d maintained while funding his affair was gone forever, along with everything else he’d sacrificed for Angel.
“I’ll figure it out,” Cole said weakly. “I’ll get a second job, maybe take on freelance work—”
“To impress a woman who’s made it clear she wants nothing to do with you?” Harper’s voice held a note of what might have been pity if it wasn’t so cold. “Cole, Angel is gone. She doesn’t want to be found. She doesn’t want to hear from you. She’s moved on with her life, and you should too.”
“She’s just confused—”
“She’s just smart,” Harper corrected. “Smart enough to recognize that a man who would betray his wife and daughter isn’t trustworthy enough to build a future with.”
Cole felt rage building in his chest, hot and desperate and directed at the woman who’d systematically destroyed everything good in his life. “This is your fault, Harper. All of it. If you’d just been willing to work things out reasonably, if you hadn’t turned this into some kind of vindictive legal war, Angel and I could have built something beautiful together.”
“Cole.” Harper’s voice was patient now, like she was explaining something simple to a particularly slow child. “Angel left you. Not because of me, not because of the divorce, not because of the court proceedings. She left you because she finally saw who you really are underneath all the lies and manipulation.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about,” Harper interrupted. “I was married to you for eight years. I know how you operate when you don’t get what you want. I know how you blame everyone else for problems you create. I know how you rewrite history to make yourself the victim of other people’s vindictiveness.”
Cole was breathing hard now, panic and rage making it difficult to think clearly. “Where is she, Harper? Just tell me where Angel is, and I’ll leave you alone. I’ll stop calling, stop trying to get extra visitation with Ava, stop fighting the financial arrangements. Just tell me how to find her.”
The silence that followed was so complete Cole thought the call had dropped. When Harper finally spoke, her voice was thoughtful, like she was considering an interesting puzzle.
“You really don’t understand, do you?” Harper said finally. “You really think this is all about revenge, about me trying to hurt you out of spite.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Cole, I don’t want to hurt you. I want to protect my daughter from you. I want to rebuild my life without you in it. I want to move forward with someone who’s actually capable of love and loyalty and basic human decency.” Harper paused, and Cole heard something in her voice he’d never heard before—genuine pity. “The fact that moving forward requires you to face consequences for your choices isn’t revenge. It’s justice.”
“Harper, please—”
But the line was already dead.
Cole stared at his phone in the silence of his studio apartment, surrounded by the remnants of a life he’d destroyed in pursuit of a woman who no longer wanted him. Outside his window, the city continued its normal rhythm—people going to jobs they didn’t hate, returning to families they hadn’t betrayed, building lives on foundations that weren’t constructed from lies.
Cole had given up everything for Angel Martinez, and Angel Martinez had decided he wasn’t worth having.
He scrolled through his contacts, looking for someone—anyone—who might have information about Angel’s whereabouts. But the list was shorter than he’d expected. Most of their mutual friends had been work colleagues who’d naturally sided with Angel when she’d left Pinnacle Consulting. His own friends had grown distant since the divorce, uncomfortable with Cole’s obvious desperation and financial constraints.
Cole was alone in ways he’d never imagined possible when he’d been planning his transition from devoted family man to romantic hero.
His phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number: “Mr. Sloane, this is Jennifer Walsh from Pinnacle Consulting. Angel Martinez requested that I inform you that any further attempts to contact her through the company will be reported to the police as harassment. Please respect her decision and move on with your life.”
Cole stared at the message, feeling something fundamental break inside his chest. Angel hadn’t just disappeared—she was actively protecting herself from him. She viewed his attempts to reconnect as harassment rather than romantic persistence.
The woman he’d sacrificed everything for now considered him a threat to be avoided rather than a partner to be cherished.
Cole threw his phone against the wall of his studio apartment, watching with grim satisfaction as the screen cracked and the device skittered across his cheap linoleum floor. But the destruction brought no relief, no sense of control or power.
Because breaking his phone wouldn’t bring Angel back. Nothing would bring Angel back.
Cole sank onto his Murphy bed and buried his face in his hands, finally allowing himself to acknowledge the truth he’d been avoiding for weeks:
He’d lost everything, and it was entirely his own fault.
Somewhere across the city, Harper was tucking Ava into bed in the house that used to be his. Somewhere else, Angel was building a new life that had no room for Cole Sloane in it.
And Cole was sitting alone in a studio apartment he could barely afford, surrounded by the wreckage of choices that had seemed so rational when he’d been telling himself he deserved better than what he had.
The silence stretched around him like a judgment, and for the first time since his affair began, Cole Sloane was forced to sit with the consequences of his actions without anyone to blame but himself.
It was the loneliest sound he’d ever heard.
I call bullshit on Angel not knowing. Go back and read the texts she was sending him. If he was divorced and living with an ex wife for the child’s sake, then he wouldn’t have to ‘tell’ his ex anything. Yet Angel is asking him and the texts he sent her about leaving her (wife) on the weekend?? Author needs to reread her story instead of just throwing words down.
Oh you never know with all the twists 🙂