𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐈𝐆𝐘

EIGHTEEN | THE BETRAYAL

The next day, Veronica decided to conduct a little experiment.

Contact between her and Jonathon had slowly fizzled out to nothing ever since she started seeing Jade as a patient. He had requested this favor from her and it was supposed to help mend their declining friendship, but she was starting to get the impression that he was just using her to help his new...friend.

At least that's what the narcissistic woman believed.

In reality, Jonathon had been slowly and progressively distancing himself from Veronica ever since he realized that it wasn't fair for him to keep making moves on her in hopes that she'd eventually change her mind about him. While he truly always viewed himself as a legitimate friend to Veronica, he recognized that he was slowly becoming one of those toxic males who couldn't fully accept rejection or simply be her friend without waiting in the background to become more.

He had never been that type of man before, and he didn't want it to become his norm. He was better than that—he respected women too much to keep doing that. He especially respected Veronica, but he also knew that he couldn't just reverse his problematic behaviors overnight. He realized he needed space so he could stop thinking about her in that capacity because it wasn't something he had yet been capable of controlling while in her presence.

And he needed to heal. After all, he had been utterly heartbroken.

Jonathon truly didn't harbor any ill feelings towards the woman at this point in time, and he had honestly expected to rekindle their friendship at some point. But as he got closer to Jade, Veronica just sort of...stopped crossing his mind.

It sounded absolutely terrible because Veronica was once a very close friend of his. But things had changed between them—not necessarily in a bad way, but in a way he felt neither of them could ignore. Sometimes people just grow apart, and that's okay. Jonathon truly wanted her to be happy, and he believed she'd wish the same for him.

And him being happy meant that Jade was his priority right now. It really sucked that he couldn't tell anyone about her, but he was feeling so good about how things were going between them. As someone who had always been a hopeless romantic, he had been waiting to form a connection with someone like this his entire life.

Jade was like his storybook romance. She had forced her way into his headspace and set up camp. Like a little squatter, she was there to stay. And he had every intention to let her.

His heart was home to her now.

Veronica was growing very suspicious of such a transformation taking place, and she was finally at a point where she just had to see for herself whether or not he was intentionally ignoring her. She had reached out to him several times in the last few weeks, but his responses were always short and bland. He didn't seem interested in their conversations anymore, nor did he appear to have the slightest desire to meet up with her.

So while he was sat in his classroom that Tuesday afternoon around lunch time, Veronica had decided to stop by. He taught a standard writing course on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so she knew Jade wouldn't be around.

As she walked, she saw from afar that his door was propped open, but she stopped dead in her tracks when she heard a faint but all too familiar voice.

She was there.

Veronica slowly peaked her head into the room and was furious when she spotted Jade standing across from Jonathon in his desk. The two were rambling on and on about some book, and she watched as he took bites out of his sandwich while listening intently to everything that Jade was saying.

The spying woman's eyes narrowed in displeasure, and she stepped back into the hallway before pulling her phone out to text him. She asked him if he was still on campus, then poked her eyes back inside the room once she heard his phone chime.