After Three Losses, I Stopped Looking Back Chapter 01

After Three Losses, I Stopped Looking Back Chapter 01

Julian Sterling bolted from our wedding. Left me at the altar to chase after the ex who’d disappeared on him five years ago, back when he nearly lost the use of his legs.

The guests broke into murmurs and gasps. I grabbed his lapel, swallowing every instinct to scream.

“Julian, please. Not right now.”

Something flickered behind his eyes — guilt, maybe — before he peeled my fingers off one by one and shook his head.

“I’m sorry. I have to. I need to hear it from her. Why she threw me away like that.”

He didn’t look back. Not once. The murmurs and gasps swallowed me whole, and he just kept walking.

My father went rigid, shaking with a fury his heart couldn’t handle. His knees buckled before I could reach him. He hit the floor.

“Dad!”

I broke. But I couldn’t fall apart yet, so I rode with him in the ambulance to the hospital.

I was slumped against the wall outside the ER when my phone buzzed. Two messages.

The first was from Audrey Miller. [Told you. The second he knew I was back, he’d come running. You lose. Again.]

The second was from Julian. [Give me a month. We take a break, just temporarily, and after that, I’m yours. Completely. I promise.]

Something inside me went dark and still, like water with no current.

I almost laughed.

Not this time. This time, I wasn’t going to be the one who lost.

…

I sat in the surgical waiting room for hours. No updates. No one came out.

My dad had had bypass surgery two years ago. After he recovered, he’d sat me down and told me, point-blank, that Julian wasn’t the one.

I didn’t listen. I was so sure Julian loved me that I was willing to gamble my father’s blessing on it.

Now that certainty sat in my chest like shrapnel, and every breath drove it deeper.

Mom was beside me, crying. “What if he doesn’t pull through—”

“He will.” I cut her off before she could finish, because if she said the rest of that sentence out loud, I’d believe it. “Dad’s going to be fine.”

My voice cracked on the last word. I had never been this scared in my life.

My phone buzzed again. Audrey. This time she’d sent a video.

A hotel room. Julian burst through the door, still in his wedding suit, rumpled and wild-eyed.

“Why did you come back?”

Audrey said nothing. He broke first — his eyes reddening, his jaw working, everything he’d buried for five years clawing its way to the surface.

“You vanished. No goodbye, no explanation, nothing. And now you just show up and blow my whole life apart? How could you be that selfish, Audrey?”

I stepped into the empty hallway where no one could see me. I watched the man on my screen unravel, and I didn’t recognize him.

My best friend had told me more than once that Julian was too guarded with me. Too controlled. I always had an answer for that.

“That’s just how guys like him are. They don’t do emotions. It’s not personal.”

Except now I was watching Julian do every single thing I’d told myself he couldn’t. Shaking. Breaking. Begging.

Just never for me.

I closed my eyes. The ache in my chest was a living thing, but I swallowed it down and kept watching.

Audrey never answered him. She just stood there, watching him with those quiet, steady eyes.

And just like that, his anger collapsed. The accusations, the bitterness, all of it crumbled, and he pulled her into his arms like she was the only solid thing left in his world.

“You’re back. That’s all that matters.”

Audrey settled against his chest. Her gaze drifted straight into the lens — slow, deliberate — and the corner of her mouth lifted. She knew I was watching.

The video cut to black. I laughed — a short, hollow sound that tasted like salt.

Thunder cracked outside. The sky split open, and so did I.

So that was what Julian looked like when he was in love. Five years together, and I’d never once seen it.

I wiped my face and walked back to the waiting room just as the doors swung open.

I rushed forward, eyes so swollen I could barely see. “Doctor—is my dad okay?”

“He’s stable. Out of danger. But this cannot happen again. His heart won’t survive another episode like this.”

Every muscle in my body locked tight. I nodded. “It won’t. I’ll make sure of it. Thank you.”

Mom finally broke — sobs of pure relief shaking through her. They wheeled Dad out a moment later.

I looked at him on that gurney — pale, hollowed out, fragile in a way I’d never let myself see — and I wanted to tear my own skin off for being so blind.

We got him settled into a room. Minutes later, a knock.

“Miss Hayes? I’m the private physician Mr. Sterling sent over to monitor his blood pressure. How is the patient?”

Julian’s text arrived at the same time.

[I’m sorry — I didn’t realize it’d hit your dad that hard. I sent a specialist to check his blood pressure. He’s going to be fine.]

My hands were shaking so hard the phone nearly slipped from my grip. I stared at the screen, and something inside me went completely cold.

Five years together. And he thought my father had high blood pressure.

It was a heart condition. It had always been a heart condition.

I steadied my voice until it was flat as glass. “That won’t be necessary. Please go.”

I got Dad settled, then took the elevator down to the maternity ward. Through the crack of a half-open door, I saw them.

Julian had Audrey in his arms, her face drained of color, his whole body rigid with panic.

The doctor spoke first. “Can you describe your symptoms?”

Audrey didn’t answer. Julian did — immediately, without thinking, like he’d been carrying the information in his bones.

“Her cycles have always been irregular. She has a history of severe anemia and cramps, doesn’t take care of herself, and nothing’s worked — not supplements, not medication, nothing.”

I stood in that doorway, and my feet wouldn’t move.

He could rattle off every detail of Audrey’s health from memory. He couldn’t even name what was wrong with my father.

I pulled out my phone and called my lawyer. I told him to draft the annulment papers.

Then I walked into the next room and sat down.

“I need to schedule an abortion.”