He Skipped Our Wedding License 10 Times but Married My Bestie Chapter 03

He Skipped Our Wedding License 10 Times but Married My Bestie Chapter 03

By the time Derrick came back, the wind had already dried my tears.

All that was left was the smell of smoke hanging in the room.

He frowned, sweeping away the countless cigarette butts littering the floor before reaching out to pinch the lit cigarette from my fingertips.

He didn’t say a word, just pulled me tight into his arms.

I stared up at the flickering ceiling light and spoke softly. “Derrick, we need to change that light bulb.”

He muttered a quiet agreement.

I had asked him to fix it last week, but he forgot.

Then again, the light bulb wasn’t the only thing broken around here.

Lately, he was always busy, though I had no idea what he was actually doing.

It had been a long time since we last held each other like this.

I pulled out of his embrace and turned to look at him.

Derrick had sharp features and a high bridge to his nose, and even though he wore a faded denim jacket, he couldn’t completely hide the innate elegance buried in his bones.

It was the exact same face, yet it no longer stirred a single emotion in my heart.

“Still mad at me?” He let out a low laugh, his voice carrying that familiar, teasing charm.

When I stayed silent, he leaned down and buried his face into the crook of my neck, his hot breath tickling my skin.

I pushed him away, my voice flat. “Don’t, it’s dirty.”

His smile stiffened, and a shadow of panic flashed through his eyes.

But when his gaze dropped to the muddy stains on my white dress, he visibly relaxed.

“Alright, let me wash it for you, okay?” His voice was tender as his fingers brushed through my hair.

I opened my mouth to explain, but decided against it.

Aside from lacking that official piece of paper, Derrick really did treat me well.

He raised me like a daughter, desperate to compensate for all the affection I had missed out on growing up.

He even hand-washed my undergarments, carefully ironing out every single wrinkle.

Even though he hated spicy food, he would always sit down and eat extra spicy broth with me.

I couldn’t fathom how he managed it—riding a beat-up motorcycle to take me to cheap street stalls by day, then driving a Maybach to take Saylor out on a luxury yacht by night.

I guess the wealthy were just born actors.

Saylor arrived while Derrick was hanging up my clothes.

Seeing the pack of beer in her hand, Derrick’s expression instantly soured. “Nevaeh is allergic to alcohol, Saylor. Keep that stuff to yourself.”

“Bullshit, Nevaeh can drink anyone under the table. We used to work part-time at a bar together, and I even saved her life once. So really, you should be grateful to me.”

So, she still remembered.

Saylor and I loved money—obsessively so.

Sometimes I felt like we were the tragic heroines of some melodramatic novel.

Saylor had a gambling father, a paralyzed mother, and a golden-child brother to feed.

I just had pure poverty and a mother who didn’t care about me.

Our mirrored misfortunes had made us inseparable.

One night back then, I had called her crying, begging her to bail me out of a bar.

She didn’t hesitate for a second.

Faced with a pack of thugs, she was terrified, but she still stood in front of me, squaring her shoulders and bluffing that she had already called the cops.

In the end, the bar owner told us that if we each downed a bottle of hard liquor, he would let us go.

She almost drank herself to death that night.

That was the girl who called me her best friend. And she’d betrayed me.

Thinking about all those bedroom photos she regularly posted online, a wave of nausea hit my stomach.

Why did it have to be her?