**Chapter 47 — She's Not the Rebecca She Was**
*I Ended Up Living Next Door to My Ex-Husband*
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"Lillian's heart — what is that?"
Rebecca's eyes didn't waver in the slightest.
"Could you tell me? For my sake as well."
Inwardly, Cedric was shaken.
*She's mentioning Lillian's heart directly. Just like that.*
Throughout their marriage, he had assumed she was simply pretending not to know about it. And when her demeanor shifted so drastically after the divorce, he had attributed it to her finally resigning herself — finally accepting that she would never obtain it.
*Otherwise, no matter how much her feelings had cooled... there's no way she would have divorced a man she once loved so desperately.*
But the woman sitting across from him now looked genuinely unknowing. Not feigning ignorance — simply without it.
Before he could fully process that, she spoke again.
"Duke Bold has threatened me. More than once. He told me I had to obtain it from you."
"...!"
A violent tremor moved through Cedric's eyes.
Rebecca reaching for the means to control him through his imprint. Duke Bold using his own daughter as a pawn to acquire Lillian's heart. These were the very things that had formed the bedrock of Cedric's resentment — the reasons he had kept her at arm's length for the entirety of their marriage.
And yet here she was, speaking of it plainly. Without pretense. Without agenda.
Rebecca watched the shock freeze across his face and let out a quiet, almost tired laugh.
"Contrary to what you may believe, the relationship between my father and me is not a warm one."
She paused.
"In truth, it's difficult to call it a father-daughter relationship at all. To him, I have always been nothing more than a tool — a means to satisfy his ambitions."
"That means..."
*Could it be that everything she did — all of it — was done under duress? That she had no real choice?*
The moment that thought took hold, the woman before him began to look entirely different.
He had spent years believing she was his enemy — that she and her father had conspired together to exploit him. He had resented her for it. Despised her for it.
*But if Rebecca had spent all that time living in neglect — discarded by her father and shut out by me, her own husband...*
A slow, dull ache spread through the edges of his heart.
While her father treated her as a possession and he treated her as an inconvenience — what had he been doing? Turning her away. Over and over again. Pushing her behind a door she could never open, as though her reaching for him were something to be punished.
*She was always there. And I was always gone.*
He tried to imagine it — truly imagine it — and found he could not hold the thought for long. The weight of it was too much.
A life in which no one wanted you. No one saw you. A desperate, drowning kind of longing that compelled you to keep reaching even when reaching brought nothing back.
All the feelings she must have carried — they turned now, silently, into something sharp inside his chest.
*That small woman. How did she survive so many years of that?*
His throat tightened. He was afraid that if he parted his lips even slightly, something raw and unbecoming would escape him.
He swallowed hard.
What he had dismissed as obsession — as malice — may have been something else entirely. A cry. The only one she knew how to make. A desperate plea for someone — anyone — to finally look at her and truly see her.
And Rebecca, who had waited so long for an answer that never came, had eventually splintered under the weight of that silence.
*If only I had reached out first.*
The man he had been back then — the one who never once turned around — was now costing him everything, bone-deep.
The silence between them stretched.
It was Rebecca who broke it.
"I suppose you can't tell me."
Her tone was calm. Almost gentle.
Cedric slowly raised his head.
"That's not it."
"......"
"I simply realized — far too late — that I never once looked at you properly."
Rebecca regarded him quietly, then opened her mouth with the same unhurried stillness she had carried all evening.
"And even now, you still can't quite see me."
She said it kindly. So kindly it felt like something cold pressing against his skin.
"Perhaps what you feel — this sudden desire to win my heart back —" She offered a soft smile. "It may be nothing more than a passing wind."
"Rebecca, that isn't—"
"I understand. A woman who once couldn't survive without you has suddenly let go completely. That must feel strange. Maybe even hollow." She tilted her head slightly. "A little unsettling."
"......"
"That's all this is."
She said it with a finality that cut cleanly through his next words before he could find them.
As if she needed it to be final — as if she could not afford for it to be anything else.
Cedric felt the frustration rise in him — the indignity of having his feelings dismissed. But alongside it came the awareness, quieter and more damning, that he had no right to that frustration. That he had done this to her a thousand times over, and never once noticed.
His true feelings, laid bare at last — and they were being returned to him unopened.
This was his punishment. He understood that.
"I couldn't stay with you in the end, but I'm grateful you invited me today."
"Rebecca..."
"I'll take my leave now."
She rose from her seat.
Cedric stood as well, instinctively, but he did not follow. He watched her walk toward the door with steady, unhesitating steps, and found he could not call after her.
She was nearly at the threshold when she stopped.
"...The truth is."
Her red shoes stilled just before the door.
"The heart you want back — it's no longer here."
"......"
"So even if you wanted to return it to me, I have nothing left to receive it with."
Her head dipped slightly, her face turned away from him.
"Because I am no longer the Rebecca I was."
---
In the sitting room of the Twins' princess, the evening had grown quiet.
Bianca had finished her dinner and settled onto the sofa with a book, though "settled" was perhaps too generous a word. Her eyes had not moved past the same page in quite some time. She flopped onto her back, stared at the ceiling, then pushed herself upright again.
Her nanny watched this performance with a barely concealed smile.
"Princess, you seem to be having some difficulty concentrating."
"Hmm? Oh — ehehe..."
Bianca snapped the book shut and fixed her nanny with an accusatory look from beneath her lashes.
"Nanny, what do you think His Highness the Grand Duke and Her Highness are talking about right now?"
"You asked me that a few minutes ago," the nanny said, her voice warm with amusement. "And a few minutes before that. And before that as well."
"Oh... did I? I suppose I did."
"My, my. You really do love Her Highness very much, don't you, Princess?"
"...Yes." Bianca's smile reached all the way to her eyes. "Very, very much."
At that moment, a maid came hurrying into the room.
"Princess — it seems Her Highness has already returned to the Dark Mansion."
"Already?"
Bianca tilted her head, her brow furrowing.
*Nanny always says the longer Her Highness stays, the happier they must be. Does this mean they fought again...?*
The thought darkened her expression. She pushed out her lower lip — then, as if making a decision, pressed her hands firmly to her cheeks.
"Nanny, I have to go see His Highness right now!"
It was far too early to give up.
Bianca flew down the corridor and burst into Cedric's reception room with characteristic urgency.
He welcomed her as he always did — but Bianca noticed immediately that his color was wrong. Something heavy lived behind his eyes tonight.
"Your Highness," she said, her voice dropping with concern, "did you and Her Highness argue again?"
Cedric shook his head.
"...No. Not exactly."
Bianca exhaled in relief — then studied his face more carefully, and the relief began to fade.
"Then why do you look like that...?"
He only sighed in answer. A long, slow breath that said more than words would have.
Bianca's anxiety crept back in, quiet and stubborn.
"Does Her Highness... not want to come back?"
The silence that followed was answer enough.
Bianca understood, even at her age, that there were silences that meant no.
She left the room with her shoulders curved inward, her small hand finding her nanny's without thinking. She trudged back down the corridor with heavy feet.
"Nanny..."
She looked up with a face that had gone very still.
Tears gathered in her large eyes, slow and glassy.
"Is there truly no way to make things better between them?"
"Princess..."
"They're the only family I have." Her voice caught. "His Highness and Her Highness — they're all I have."
The tears spilled over.
The nanny gathered her immediately, drawing the child close and beginning to soothe her with practiced hands — rubbing small circles into her back, smoothing the fine hair from her forehead.
But this time, even the nanny's most reliable methods couldn't seem to stem the tide. The tears kept coming, quiet and persistent.
After a long while, something occurred to the nanny. An idea. She let it settle before she spoke.
"Princess," she said gently, "I may have a thought."
"...Hmm?" Bianca looked up, her reddened eyes still swimming — and yet already bright with the beginnings of curiosity. The tears were barely dry, and here she was, already leaning forward.
The nanny's mouth curved warmly at the sight of her.
"There's something I heard recently, at the Dark Mansion. Something rather interesting, actually..."
---
Meanwhile, Cedric sat alone with the memory of Bianca's retreating shoulders, and let out a long, quiet sigh.
Two departing backs in a single evening. Two people walking away from him. He sat with that thought and found it difficult to bear.
*"The heart you want back is no longer here. Because I am no longer the Rebecca I was."*
Her final words replayed without mercy.
He had known, of course, that she no longer loved him. He had known it intellectually, clearly, without confusion. But hearing it said aloud, in that calm and certain voice — that was a different thing entirely.
*This is what hell feels like.*
The thought came quietly.
*And Rebecca lived inside some version of this — because of me — for years beyond counting.*
The pain he felt now, he supposed, was not without reason.
Manakin's voice drifted through his mind, unbidden: *You fool. You could still reach her.*
A faint, self-deprecating smile crossed his lips.
He had gone to her with every intention of making amends — of slowly, carefully rebuilding what he had wasted. And he had been undone by a single refusal.
Rebecca had endured his rejection not once, not twice, but so many times she had lost count — and she had kept trying, kept reaching. He had managed one evening.
He would not give up. Even if tonight had come to nothing, even if she had walked away from every word he'd offered — he would continue. He would find a way to reach her. He would make it count, in the end.
With something almost resembling resolve settling in his chest, he turned his gaze toward the Dark Mansion, as had become an unconscious habit.
He would do it. Eventually. There was still time.
He believed that then.
He would come to regret it — bitterly, completely — one quiet morning not long after, when he woke to discover that Rebecca had slipped out of the castle without a word, and was already gone.
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