My Fiance Claimed to Be from a Parallel Universe to Sleep with My Bestie Chapter 01

My Fiance Claimed to Be from a Parallel Universe to Sleep with My Bestie Chapter 01

At our engagement party, Marcus Dawson suddenly announced that he had come here from an alternate timeline.

In his timeline, his fiancée was Celeste Sullivan.

And he had never been with me at all.

I immediately put the family home on the market, ready to spend every cent I had if that was what it took to get him help, bring him back, and bring him back to my side.

Then I heard him tell the guests at our engagement party, “Celeste loves this engagement party, and she’s always loved me. If I don’t give her a ceremony and some kind of acknowledgment, I’ll always regret it.”

“Let me be selfish for one week and spend it with Celeste the way she deserves.”

“A week from now, I’ll get back on track and marry Nora Lynn.”

Twenty-five years of devotion and obsession loosened inside me all at once.

How many times had it been now?

It was the ninety-sixth time he had chosen Celeste and given up on me.

But this time, I was going to set myself free, too.

…

“In my timeline, the woman I loved was always Celeste.”

At my engagement party, my fiancé wrapped his arm around Celeste’s waist.

She blushed shyly and leaned into his arms.

Only then did I notice what she was wearing.

She was wearing a custom designer gown scattered with stars, while his suit carried subtle silver moon embroidery.

They were obviously coordinated as a couple, and worse, they looked perfect together.

It made me, his actual fiancée, look like the other woman.

No, that was not quite right.

According to Celeste, I was the other woman.

After all, she had once told me that the woman who was not loved was the real other woman.

Marcus’s earlier words to the guests flashed through my mind.

So this performance today had not been spontaneous.

He had planned it all along.

He knew perfectly well that I had spent three full months preparing this engagement party.

He knew how much of myself I had poured into it, how many plans I had drafted, and how many sleepless nights I had spent perfecting every detail.

Still, he trampled all over my work and handed his assistant the engagement party I had built for myself.

I just could not understand one thing.

If he had already made his choice, why invite me here at all?

Around us, the guests began cheering as they watched them together.

“They look perfect together! A perfect match!”

“Celeste looks so soft and sweet, Marcus. Lucky you—you’re in for one hell of a night.”

Then the guests seemed to remember something.

They turned toward me, their expressions awkward, and started making excuses for him.

“Nora, Marcus isn’t the Marcus from this timeline. He’s from another one.”

“That means he isn’t really the same person. You can’t hold it against him.”

“Maybe the Marcus who loves only you will come back one day. You have to wait for him.”

So this was what a pack of enablers looked like in the flesh.

But I could not really blame them.

If even Marcus himself was treating me like a fool, how could I expect his family and friends not to take their cues from whoever had the upper hand?

No wonder the guest list Marcus had drawn up did not include a single friend who belonged only to me.

Every cheer in that room had been prepared for Celeste.

He had invited me here only so he could step over my heart and use my sincerity as a stage to declare his feelings to her.

He wanted her to know that between the two of us, his choice was her.

Before this moment, I had never imagined that on a day that was supposed to belong to me, I would be pushed out in such a humiliating way and forced to watch my own engagement party from the sidelines.

This was what it meant to destroy someone from the inside out.

Then Celeste looked up at Marcus with expectation in her eyes.

“Marcus, how can there be an engagement without an engagement ring?”

His hand moved toward his pocket by instinct.

He took out a velvet box.

The moment the box opened, my heart nearly stopped.

Inside was an antique gemstone ring.

It carried the warm, polished glow of something softened by time, as if it were murmuring a promise to the lover it belonged to.

“Marcus, you cannot give her that ring!”

I heard my own voice shaking beyond my control.

“You know what that ring means to me!”

That ring was a family heirloom.

When I was little, my family fell on hard times, and the ring was sold off at auction.

That had become the deepest regret of my grandmother, who had loved me more than anyone.

Later, I tried to track it down, but after it had changed hands across borders so many times, its trail had almost disappeared.

Just when I was about to give up, Marcus found it for me.

I would never forget the tenderness in his eyes that day.

He said that when we got engaged, he would put it back on my finger himself.

I stepped forward, trying to take it back.

But Celeste took his hand and gave it a gentle little tug.

“Marcus, I love this ring so much.”

“Please don’t leave me with a regret at my own engagement party.”

Marcus hesitated no longer. He was about to put the ring on her finger.

“Give it back to me!”

I rushed forward.

But before I could even touch Celeste, Marcus shoved me away hard.

He stepped in front of her and shielded her behind him.

The coldness in his eyes when he looked at me made it seem as if even he had convinced himself that he really was the Marcus from another timeline.

“I bought this ring back,” he said. “I can give it to anyone I want.”

In the end, he slid the ring onto her ring finger.

It felt as if everything had finally been settled.

The crowd started cheering again.

“Kiss her! Kiss her!”

In the end, I could not stand to watch it.

I grabbed a chair and smashed up the entire engagement setup.

I kept going until I had no strength left.

When I looked up, Marcus was glaring at me with fury, blaming me for ruining Celeste’s engagement party.

I gave him a faint smile.

“You said you bought the ring, so you could give it to anyone you wanted.”

“But I planned this engagement party. I paid for it, too. That means I have the right to decide what happens to it.”

If I wanted to smash it, then I would smash it.

If my sincerity would never be allowed to bloom, then it could grow thorns instead.

I picked up the last untouched glass of wine at the engagement party and raised it toward Celeste from across the room.

“If you want what I’m done with, you can have it.”