Seven Failed Weddings, and He Still Let Her Ruin My Marriage Shoes Chapter 08

Seven Failed Weddings, and He Still Let Her Ruin My Marriage Shoes Chapter 08

The Hayes family spared no expense for our wedding.

Mrs. Hayes personally handled the arrangements and gave us a beautiful wedding.

The day before the ceremony, I was so nervous I could not sit still.

This was my eighth time preparing to walk down an aisle, and a deeply ingrained panic told me that, just like the first seven attempts, some hidden catastrophe would strike at the last second and ruin everything.

Callum noticed my unease and pulled me into a gentle embrace.

“Trust me, Elara. Tomorrow is going to be flawless.”

True to his word, the entire day went off without a single hitch.

The moment the ring was placed on my finger, I could not stop the tears from falling.

The wedding Nolan had refused to give me, Callum gave me.

During the reception, though, I noticed a mutual friend Nolan and I both knew.

After the wedding ended, he came over to me.

“Do you know Nolan has been looking for you for a month? He’s practically losing his mind.”

I looked at him with faint amusement.

“What does his losing his mind have to do with me?”

He said nothing after that.

But the next day, I saw Nolan at the door of the house Callum and I now shared.

After a month apart, he was unrecognizable; he had dropped an alarming amount of weight, his face was hollow and gaunt, dark stubble shadowed his jaw, and his eyes were completely bloodshot.

The moment he saw me, a flicker of light appeared in his eyes.

He rushed toward me and tried to grab my hand.

I stepped away.

His expression stiffened for an instant, then he looked at me with pleading eyes.

“Elara, please. I came to take you home. I’ll marry you right now. I swear to God nothing will go wrong this time. Just come back with me, please.”

I looked at him coldly, disgust passing through my heart.

“Nolan, I’m already married.”

“And thanks to you, I can’t go back to Bennett Hollow for the next seven years.”

Nolan stared at me, his eyes brimming with bloodshot tears, his voice hoarse.

“That doesn’t matter. I don’t care that you married someone else.”

“File for divorce. Once we go back, I’ll confess everything in front of

everyone in Bennett Hollow. I’ll tell them it was all my fault.”

He choked on a sob, hot tears streaming down his gaunt cheeks.

“Elara, after you left, I realized I truly can’t live without you.”

“I’m done with Tessa. Whatever happens to her from now on has nothing to do with me.”

“I promise I’ll put you first in everything, and I won’t let my mother bully you anymore.”

Looking at him as he begged for my forgiveness with such deep emotion, I could not help laughing.

It was a sad laugh.

I felt sorry for myself.

“Nolan, so you knew your mother was bullying me.”

“Then why did you never stand up for me even once?”

“I didn’t need you to cut ties with her. I didn’t need you to do anything extreme.”

“All I needed was for you to say one word for me when she mocked me. Why couldn’t you even do that?”

Nolan opened his mouth, but before he could speak, I raised my hand and stopped him.

“Because you didn’t care. Your attention was on Tessa, so even though you knew your mother treated me badly, you didn’t want to deal with it.”

Nolan’s face turned pale at once.

“No, Elara, please… I know I can’t undo the past. But we have to move forward. We can bury that old pain. Just come home with me, and I’ll spend every single day of the rest of my life making it up to you.”

I looked at him, unable to understand him, though my voice remained unusually calm.

“If life moves forward, then I have even less reason to go back with you.”

“Because I’ve already found someone better than you.”

At that, Nolan’s voice suddenly rose out of control.

“How long have you even known him? How long have you known me?”

“We’ve known each other for years. We were together for ten years.”

I curved my lips slightly.

“But during those ten years, you weren’t good to me, were you?”

“I risked my life searching for you on that mountain, and what I got in return wasn’t your sincerity. It was your certainty that you could hurt me and I would stay.”

“You were so sure I would never leave that you let me be humiliated again and again at those pickup ceremonies.”

“Nolan, from the moment I gave up on you, I stopped loving you and stopped hating you.”

“This is where we end. Those ten years were just a lesson life forced me to learn.”