He Left Me to Freeze, So I Burned His World Down Chapter 28

He Left Me to Freeze, So I Burned His World Down Chapter 28

The words drifted into Ava’s ears. The composed smile on her face faltered for a fraction of a second.

So Bennett’s mother hadn’t approved of the marriage at first.

After she had woken up in that freezing boathouse, she had asked Bennett if he was still willing to marry a woman who was about to be dragged into a messy divorce and was determined to destroy her ex-husband.

And he had cleared every obstacle for her.

She had thought he’d won his family over with the inherent power of the Shaw name.

It turned out he had paid his own heavy price for her.

In that instant, she felt that every ounce of suffering she had endured had been repaid by his stubborn, quiet devotion.

She reached out and gripped Bennett’s hand more tightly. Leaning close, in a voice only he could hear, she asked softly, “Darling, are you tired?”

Bennett’s tall frame stiffened. The light in his eyes flared like a spark, bright and startled.

“What did you just call me?”

“Darling.”

Ava lifted her head and met his gaze, as if they were the only two people in the world.

“You don’t like it?”

“No.”

Bennett’s ears turned red, and his voice held a trace of nervousness he himself didn’t notice.

“I just… I didn’t expect you to call me that.”

Ava’s smile deepened. She leaned a little closer, close enough to feel the warmth from his body.

“And you? What are you going to call me?”

Bennett looked down at her, his Adam’s apple moving.

“Ava.”

“I don’t like that.”

Ava teased him with a sweetness that felt new even to her.

“From now on, you can call me Ava, or you can call me… darling.”

“Darling.”

Bennett obeyed almost immediately, his voice low and solemn.

“Mm.”

Ava answered quickly, her heart full.

They looked at each other and smiled. It was a new, bright future that belonged only to them.

At the same time, outside the church, Graham had been beaten until he could no longer stand.

Two bodyguards dragged him away from the entrance like a sack of garbage and threw him onto the lawn.

As they hauled him away, through the last narrow crack in the heavy oak doors, he saw the smile on Ava’s face.

It was a smile from the heart, light and happy. A radiance he hadn’t seen on her face since the riding accident, maybe not even once in all the years of their marriage.

In that moment, he finally understood.

Letting go was the only thing he could still do for her.

He had brought all of this on himself.

After that day, Ava never saw Graham again.

She only knew that the Lockwood name soon vanished from Virginia’s social circles. When it was occasionally mentioned, it was only with contempt.

No one knew where Graham went, and no one cared.