Let Him Stumble While You Climb Chapter 07

Let Him Stumble While You Climb Chapter 07

“You already knew, didn’t you?” His voice trembled.

“Yes,” I said.

That simple answer hit him like a blow, leaving him cold all over.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you stop her?”

Caleb stopped in front of me.

He had always carried himself as though he were in complete control and above everyone else. I had never imagined he could look this helpless.

“Vera, we’ve known each other for eighteen years…”

“So what?” I cut him off. “I tried to warn you.”

“That morning, I called you over and over. I asked whether you had given her your username and password because I wanted to know if you understood what she could do with them.”

“You refused to listen. You treated me like the villain and told me to mind my own business.”

“Caleb, during the second half of senior year, I watched you throw away your education for her. You skipped class, stopped trying, and let your practice SAT scores plummet.”

I rose from my chair and forced him back with every step I took.

“I was the one who kept the two of you apart. I made you work through practice problems every day and stayed up with you until

—

after midnight. I dragged you out of the hole you had put yourself in.”

“You never appreciated any of it. You convinced yourself I was only trying to break you and Vivian apart.”

“I did everything I could for you.”

“If you don’t care about your own future, why should I keep exhausting myself trying to protect it for you?”

Caleb had nowhere left to retreat. His back struck the wall, and every trace of color drained from his face.

His mouth opened, but his throat seemed to close around every word.

When Vivian saw that Caleb’s attention was entirely on me, her humiliation turned into rage.

She rushed over and planted herself in front of him, glaring at me viciously.

“You deserve to be the villain!”

“You’re the one who won’t stop hanging around Caleb and refusing to leave him alone!”

“If you hadn’t kept pressuring me and targeting me at every turn, I never would have needed to do any of this!”

“I was only trying to protect my relationship. What’s wrong with that?”

Morgan had heard enough.

He walked over, pulled the agitated Vivian away, and pointed at the acceptance letter in her hand.

—

“Protecting your relationship does not mean destroying someone else’s life.”

“Tampering with someone’s college applications is illegal. You may not know the law, but you should at least have a conscience.”

The others immediately agreed.

“No one with a 1580 SAT would be okay with being forced into community college.”

“That wannabe thug is terrifying. She withdrew his applications the second she didn’t get her way, after everything he did for her.”

“Caleb insisted on defending her. Now he knows what that cost him.”

The livestream comments were even more vicious.

As Vivian watched them flood down the screen, she finally lost control.

“I didn’t do anything wrong!”

She screamed and clutched Caleb’s arm with both hands.

“Caleb, tell them you don’t care where you go to college! Tell them all you need is me!”

“You said love could overcome anything! You can’t take it back now!”

Caleb pried her fingers from his arm one by one.

He drew a deep breath and said with finality, “I’m breaking up with you, Vivian.”

“I can’t accept what you did. It was unbelievably selfish.”

—

September arrived with the lingering heat of early fall.

Dragging my suitcase behind me, I walked through the gates of Harvard.

When I was little, Mom used to bring me to the campus every time we visited Boston.

“Sweetheart, would you like to go to school here someday?” she would ask.

“Yes!” I would answer brightly. “Caleb and I are both going to study here!”

I remembered the water and how I had imagined sitting beside it with Caleb someday, feeling the breeze while we watched the swans.

I remembered the enormous oak tree and how I had pictured the two of us relaxing together beneath its shade.

As a child, I had planted that dream deep inside my heart. I had watched it grow year after year and prayed it would become the paradise I had always longed for.

I had never imagined that Caleb would one day disappear from my side.

We had grown so accustomed to each other’s presence.

He had been like water or oxygen—nothing extraordinary because he had always been there, yet something I had once believed I could not live without.

I forced him out of my world.

—

After surviving a withdrawal so painful it felt as though I were being
skinned alive, I finally adjusted.

I could live without Caleb.