When I Repeated My Parents’ Love Story Chapter 07

When I Repeated My Parents’ Love Story Chapter 07

The drive home was a suffocating silence.

I curled up in the back seat, watching the neon lights streak backward outside the window. My mind was a

tangled mess.

The spot on my wrist where my mom had grabbed me still ached, but it was nothing compared to the

pounding in my chest.

Even after we walked through the front door, that heavy, stifling quiet clung to every corner of the house.

My dad ripped off his suit jacket and hurled it onto the couch. He yanked his tie loose and stood there

heaving, still not cooled down from the fury at the party.

My mom sank into the other end of the couch, exhausted, pressing her fingers to her temples with her eyes

shut.

I stood in the middle of the living room like a criminal waiting for sentencing.

After a long stretch, my mom spoke first. Her voice scraped out, hoarse and drained.

“Chloe. Come sit.”

I shuffled over and dropped into the armchair beside her, head down, unable to look at either of them.

“About what happened tonight…”

My mom paused, searching for the right words. Then she sighed and just went straight at it.

“You saw everything. And now you know why we did what we did.”

My dad looked at me too, his eyes heavy with something complicated.

“Chloe… we owe you an apology.”

My head jerked up. Tears surged back into my eyes.

“When

when did you find out? That I’ve been… throwing myself at Lucas.”

Those last few words scraped my throat raw coming out.

“The day your midterm scores came in.”

My dad’s voice was leaden.

I cringed, remembering their strange tenderness that day, the way they kept swallowing words they wanted to

say

It was never about the grades It was about stumbling onto something they found so much harder to accept.

Then a more terrible thought hit me and turned my blood to ice.

I looked up at them, my voice shaking, barely able to push the words out.

“So… everything after that. All the lovey-dovey stuff. Cooking together. Picking me up from school together.

The strawberry smoothies every morning… was it all… was it all just an act? A show you put on for me?”

A performance designed to prove that being a simp gets you nowhere and that their fake ‘happy marriage’

was the real way to live?

My dad went silent.

My mom dropped her eyes and wouldn’t meet mine.

That silence was as good as a confession.

That tiny flicker of light I’d been nursing inside me, that warmth of finally having a real family, snuffed out in

an instant. Nothing left but endless, freezing disappointment.

I had thought they finally saw me, finally cared about this household. It was all just a carefully scripted

intervention to correct my “defective” behavior.

A tsunami of hurt and betrayal crashed through me. I shot to my feet, tears spilling over.

“You lied to me! You’ve been lying to me this whole time! Before, you told me arranged marriages don’t matter and chasing whoever you want is cool! Now you’re telling me you’re so in love! What am I to you?

Some error code that needed debugging?”