He Gave My Wedding Dress To Another Woman Chapter 10

He Gave My Wedding Dress To Another Woman Chapter 10

Dawn crept in through the window. His phone stayed silent.

The only notification was from Haley. [ethan i twisted my ankle. can you take me to urgent care?]

Ethan showed up at her door and found her moving around the kitchen, perfectly fine. His jaw tightened. “I thought you said you sprained your ankle.”

“Would you have come if I hadn’t?”

Haley pressed herself against his chest, voice going soft and syrupy. “Stop thinking about Chloe. Be with me. Okay?”

“I’m the one you want. You wouldn’t have spent all that time with me if I wasn’t.”

Something cold settled behind Ethan’s eyes. He didn’t push her off. Not yet.

“So setting Chloe up — telling me she went behind your back to Professor Hughes — that was all so you could have me.”

“The dress. You asked for it on purpose.”

“Getting me drunk on that mountain and taking photos while I was passed out — that was planned too.”

“Right.”

Haley mistook his calm for surrender. She smiled wide, thinking she’d won. “Yes. All of it. Everything I did was for you, Ethan. I’m glad you finally see that.”

She rose on her toes, tilting her face toward his.

He shoved her back so hard she stumbled.

“You manipulative little —”

His fist slammed into the wall inches from her head. The crack echoed off the walls. When he spoke, every word came through locked teeth.

“I helped you because you said your parents were dead. You said you had no one. You said all you wanted was a future and someone to look out for you.”

“And the whole time, you were using me. You blew up the only thing in my life that actually mattered.”

The shock on Haley’s face lasted a fleeting moment before it twisted into something ugly. “Too late, Ethan. You can’t undo this.”

“Everyone already thinks we slept together. No one’s going to believe your version.” Her voice went hard. “So here’s how this works — you stay with me, you help me graduate, and you pay my bills. Every month.”

There it was. The mask off, the teeth bare. He was looking at the real Haley for the first time.

He turned and walked out without a word. In the hallway, he pulled a voice recorder from his pocket and uploaded the entire conversation to the campus message board.

It went viral within minutes.

The whole campus heard exactly who Haley really was.

Other people started coming forward. Stories about Haley stringing along half a dozen guys before Ethan. And her parents — the supposedly dead ones — were alive, well, and running a business back home.

Within a matter of hours, every thread on the board was dragging her name through the mud.

But Ethan didn’t walk away clean either.

The consensus was simple — he’d done this to himself. He had a good thing and let it rot.

They still called him a piece of shit.

The university stepped in. Haley was expelled.

Ethan’s honors were stripped.

Friends forwarded all of it to me.

I read it, exhaled through my nose, and closed the app. Not my mess to clean up.

I’d seen every one of Ethan’s messages, too. I ignored them on purpose. There was nothing left to say.

Days later, after my initial tours with Julian wrapped up, we dove into the work.

The team was developing a new medication, and we hit the ground running.

The days filled up fast, and I was grateful for it.

Julian showed up every day like clockwork — coffee, meals, small things I didn’t even realize I needed until they appeared. The whole team noticed. Professor Hughes especially loved giving us grief about it.

We were hovering in that space between something and nothing — close enough to feel it, too careful to name it.

But the wall was still there. He’d vanished on me once, and that kind of thing leaves a mark.

One evening, I stepped out of the lab and stopped. Julian was in the parking lot, squared off with someone I didn’t recognize.