I Stopped Waiting for the Man I Loved for Ten Years Who Never Stood by Me Chapter 06

I Stopped Waiting for the Man I Loved for Ten Years Who Never Stood by Me Chapter 06

After he got out of county jail, Dylan went back to the place he’d rented with me.

The apartment they’d lived in for seven or eight years. But there was almost no trace of them as a couple.

I had moved out.

I’d taken the photos off the walls and the plants I’d carefully tended. Only the furniture remained.

He noticed a blanket bunched up on the corner of the couch.

It reminded him of me, wrapped in that blanket, lying on the couch watching shows and playing games.

When we messed around, I’d cover his face with the blanket and run away laughing. Then it hit him.

Tinsley had used that blanket to wrap around her feet. It was dirty now. And along with it, his memories with me were dirty too.

That’s what Paige must think, he realized.

He threw the blanket in the trash. Then he lay down on the couch. Even that small movement seemed to drain all his energy.

Staring at the ceiling, he remembered a game we used to play. A black and white picture with a red dot in the middle. You stare at the dot for thirty seconds. Then you blink and look at the ceiling, and there’s a surprise.

He still remembered looking up and seeing my bright smile on the ceiling. So he pulled out his phone and found that picture again. He stared at it for a long time, his eyes burning.

But when he tilted his head back and blinked up at the ceiling… The tears just fell. He couldn’t stop them. Through blurred vision, he couldn’t make out the smile he was trying to see again.

We’d been so happy together. How did he end up alone? Dylan thought about it for a long time.

He thought back to the first time I had asked him to get married. At twenty-eight, he thought he was still young. Too young to think about something permanent.

Plus, he hated the feeling of having his life laid out for him. If he got married—

Whether he wanted to or not, he’d be stuck cooking and eating with me every day. Sleeping together. Then having kids. Day after day, season after season, and I would always be there.

It wasn’t that he didn’t love me. Dylan thought, he loved me like crazy. But we were already living that life together without being married.

This life—the one he was in—he chose it. It was what he wanted.

Not what he was supposed to do.

He always felt like marriage would change everything.

So when I brought it up again, he said he’d marry me when he saved up a hundred fifty thousand dollars.

A TikTok influencer with eight million followers.

With his regular income, he could make that in a few months. But he chose to hide it.

Not because he was afraid she’d want his money. He just didn’t want to lose the excuse to avoid marriage.

The money he made was always for me anyway. They could have a great life together, traveling, going wherever they wanted.

Morning at the beach, afternoon in Paris. That was his vision.

He never expected me to start obsessing over work.

First I forgot Valentine’s Day. Then I was too busy for his birthday.

He got so angry.

And when he realized I was working that hard because I wanted to marry him—

It made him even angrier.

If that’s what marriage looked like—being too busy to actually live—then he definitely didn’t want it.

So when I broke up with him, Dylan didn’t take it seriously.

He thought it was just another move to force his hand.

They’d gone silent for two months before.

Then I got pregnant. He was happy, but also lost. If I was pregnant, we should get married, right?

And once we had a kid, we couldn’t just run around having fun anymore.

When Tinsley mentioned the music festival, he chose to avoid the situation again. But this time, he messed up completely.

His avoidance cost my father a leg.

Now he finally admitted it. I was right.

He was too immature. Too immature to take responsibility. And he’d broken me.