I Stopped Waiting for the Man I Loved for Ten Years Who Never Stood by Me Chapter 05

I Stopped Waiting for the Man I Loved for Ten Years Who Never Stood by Me Chapter 05

Harbor City in July was brutally hot.

So hot I couldn’t tell if the wetness on his cheeks was sweat or tears.

He stared at the surgery record.

Finally, he forced the words out of his throat. “Paige, that was your baby too. How could you just decide not to have it?”

I stated the obvious. “A woman always has the right to choose what happens to her body.”

Then I told the front desk to refuse him any further visits and went back to my dad’s room.

I still sued Dylan. And Tinsley too.

She was jointly liable.

The court awarded all medical expenses and actual damages.

Since neither of them was drunk driving or hit and run, Dylan got thirty days in county jail and Tinsley got fifteen.

I didn’t really care. I just wanted a clean break from all of it.

After my dad got out of the hospital, we went back to Springdale.

I’d been laid off, but the severance package—four weeks’ pay—came through quickly. That was about sixty thousand dollars. Plus what Dylan paid in damages.

I ordered a custom prosthetic leg for my dad and made a financial plan. That money was enough for my parents’ retirement.

Springdale has a low cost of living, so I didn’t have to worry too much about their later years. But my mom kept sighing when she looked at my stomach, which still wasn’t showing.

At dinner, she brought up the past on her own.

“Right after you graduated college, you brought Dylan home to meet us.”

“Your dad and I were totally blindsided.”

“Dylan was just so nice. Outgoing, warm. And he was handsome. You two looked so good together. We both really liked him.”

Yeah. Dylan was the boyfriend my parents approved of.

Before I graduated, Dad used to say he’d break my legs if I ever dated young. But the first time I brought Dylan home after graduation, he didn’t say a word.

A few years later, he and my mom started dropping hints about when we’d get married.

Before I turned twenty-eight, I never really thought about it seriously. I just said we’d do it when the time came.

We graduated in Harbor City. I found a job. He wrote songs for people. After I had steady work, he saved up and opened a live music bar.

For eight years, we had so much fun.

I wasn’t ambitious at work. I just got my tasks done and tried not to make mistakes.

My boss told me more than once, “You’re young. You should go for it. With your ability, you could go really far if you pushed yourself.”

Back then, I was still an idealist. I worked hard, but I played even harder. I just believed every age had its own purpose.

In high school, you study like crazy.

In college, you work on yourself.

After that, you fall in love and actually enjoy being young.

Then I saw my parents’ hair turning gray. And I saw more and more young girls around Dylan. I told myself I couldn’t just focus on romance and adventure.

The day to day grind mattered more. So I started planning for the big stuff. Started working my ass off to make money.

But I got it all wrong. I was done playing around. Dylan wasn’t. Or maybe—he hid his influencer income because he just didn’t want to marry me.

Saving up enough to marry me was just an excuse.

He liked a relationship where he didn’t have to take on full responsibility for another person’s life. He liked situationships even more.

I thought back to when we were younger. Our first year of college. We were both eighteen. I was a finance major. He was mechanical engineering. Totally unrelated fields.

But we met in music club. I walked in and he was on stage singing an original song. Then came two years of a situationship.

We’d walk side by side around the track without talking, and that alone would make us happy for days.

On my twentieth birthday, he wrote me a song. We started dating. Romantic. Young.

Really, neither of us had changed. It’s just that he wanted freedom. And I wanted commitment.