He Gave My Wedding Dress To Another Woman Chapter 06

He Gave My Wedding Dress To Another Woman Chapter 06

I blinked. “You remember that?”

It didn’t matter what I drank — wine, beer, cocktails. Ever since my first sip of alcohol, the morning after always wrecked me. Pounding head, zero energy, the whole thing.

Ethan used to do the same thing — back when he still tried. Eventually, he said he was too busy, told me to take some Advil and push through.

Julian’s smile was quiet, easy. “Get some rest. Professor Hughes says you’ve got a couple of days off before you start — and he asked me to show you around.”

I showered, crawled into bed, and finally checked my phone. Ethan had texted.

[why’d you delete haley?? it was just a dress and a locket. don’t be so petty.]

[also i got an interview lined up tomorrow. come with me?]

A long gap between the two texts. One furious, one casual — like he couldn’t even keep track of which version of us he was living in.

The class group chat was blowing up. Haley had tagged everyone.

[ethan and i caught the meteor shower last night!!]

A video followed. It started innocently enough — just the sky, streaks of light across the dark. Then the camera tilted, and suddenly it was Haley resting her head on Ethan’s shoulder.

It lasted barely a second, but there was no missing it — her lips against his cheek. And he didn’t pull away.

All those years didn’t just switch off. I knew that. But knowing it and watching it play out in a group chat at midnight on the other side of the world were two very different things.

Out of sight, out of mind. I left the group chat, powered off my phone, and pulled the covers over my head.

The leftover wine dragged me under fast. I slept straight through until late morning.

My phone had blown up overnight. A string of messages from friends back home.

[chloe. haley posted something in the middle of the night and deleted it right away. it looked like she slept with ethan.]

[she was lying on his chest. no clothes on.] One of them had screenshotted it before it disappeared.

I opened the image. No anger came. No tears, either. Just a wave of nausea so sharp I had to set the phone down.

I sent the same reply to all of them. [ethan and i are done.]

I dragged myself out of bed and was barely through brushing my teeth when Julian knocked. He had breakfast.

“I wasn’t sure what you’d be in the mood for, so I grabbed some local food and made burritos too — just in case.”

He grinned. “Took me weeks to stop missing home cooking when I first got here.”

The burrito was loaded with sausage and egg — my favorite. The orange juice was sweetened just barely, exactly the way I liked it.

He must have been up for hours to put all this together.

After breakfast, Julian took me to the gardens first. He remembered that I loved flowers.

Peonies stretched in every direction — waves of them rolling over the hills, more than I’d ever seen in one place.

I plucked one petal and held it to my nose. “It’s a shame they never last.”

“People are the same. You can give someone everything, but when they’re done, they just leave.”

Julian watched me out of the corner of his eye. His lips parted, then pressed shut again, like whatever he wanted to say wasn’t ready yet.

He took me everywhere after that — every lookout, every trail worth walking. For the rest of the day, he hovered like he’d appointed himself my personal tour guide and protector all in one.

He was more thoughtful in a single afternoon than Ethan had been in months — and he made the unfamiliar feel easy, filling in context I didn’t even know I needed.

The sun was sinking behind the hills when we turned back. Julian stopped walking. I turned to face him, and the look in his eyes pinned me where I stood. “Chloe… can I have another chance?”