His Childhood Sweetheart Erased Our Wedding-So I Married Someone Else Chapter 06

His Childhood Sweetheart Erased Our Wedding-So I Married Someone Else Chapter 06

An hour after Gavin left, the doorbell rang.

Lila stood outside with swollen, red-rimmed eyes, clutching half an eraser.

“Erin, I’m sorry to bother you. Gavin isn’t answering his phone, and I’m afraid something happened to him.”

I did not let her inside. “He’s not here.”

Her gaze fell on the packed suitcase beside me, and she paused. “Are you moving out?”

I did not answer.

She gripped the doorframe, her voice breaking. “This is my fault, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have come back. But I really, truly only wanted to say goodbye.”

I stopped what I was doing and looked at her.

“Your idea of goodbye required Gavin to travel the scenic mountain highway out West with you for twenty-three days and abandon me on the day we were supposed to get married. You still want to call that goodbye?”

Her expression changed.

For the first time, the performance vanished from her face.

I pulled the red woven bracelet from my pocket. When I found it in Gavin’s luggage, I had seen two letters

woven into the back.

G&L.

“You made this, didn’t you?” She said nothing.

“Five years ago, you said you were moving overseas for your career. But was that really the only reason? I think you were betting Gavin would chase you to the airport. He didn’t. Five years passed, and he still never followed you. You lost that bet. Then, the moment he was about to marry me, you panicked.”

She bit her lower lip, her nails digging into the paint on the doorframe.

The fragility she had so carefully maintained disappeared completely. Her eyes were no longer wet, and she stopped pausing between words as if every sentence hurt

She simply stood there, knowing I had exposed the real reason she had come back.

“You didn’t return to say goodbye. You came back to take him from me. You just gave it a more respectable

name.”

She lowered her eyes to the half eraser in her hand.

“He actually kept it all these years,” she murmured, satisfaction flickering across her face.

I gave a quiet laugh. “That was trash I swept out of a drawer when we moved. I threw it away. He probably picked it out of the garbage while searching for his keys.”

Her fingers clenched. The old eraser crumbled in her palm.

“Erin, you don’t have to pretend you don’t care. I know you hate me.”

I shook my head. “I don’t hate you, Lila. I pity you. You watched every update he posted and waited until he was about to marry me before you appeared. You think this is a romantic story about two old flames finding their way back to each other. In reality, you wedged yourself between us before our relationship was even

over.”

“If he doesn’t have feelings for me, why did he abandon you on your wedding day to come to me?” she shot

back.

“Because he thinks he owes you something, and because he can’t bring himself to say no to you,” I answered. “He didn’t go because he loves you. He went because he likes believing he can fix every problem in your life. The keys are on the table. You can have the apartment and the man who can never make up his mind. I’m leaving both of them to you.”

She stared at me, clearly unable to believe I was actually walking away.

She had probably expected me to cry, scream, or slap her.

I did none of those things.

Without my anger, she could no longer cast herself as the victim.

“You really don’t want him anymore?” Her voice trembled.

“A man who couldn’t even show up for his own wedding is trash to me now.” I smiled at her. “I hope the two

of you get exactly what you want. Just try not to drag anyone else into your mess.”

The hallway went silent except for the elevator rising toward our floor.

Lila did not move

At last, she understood that I would not fight her for him or stay trapped in this relationship.

From the moment I decided to leave, whatever happened between them was no longer my problem.

I pulled my suitcase past her.

Then she spoke behind me, her voice suddenly calm.

“Erin, you think leaving him means you’ll be able to let go? You won’t. Four years together don’t disappear just because you decide they’re over.”

I pressed the elevator button.

While I waited, I answered without turning around. “Gavin didn’t chase you to the airport five years ago. Why wouldn’t I be able to walk away now?”

The doors opened.

I stepped inside and turned to face her.

For the first time, she was not crying, but her face looked even worse than before.

The elevator doors slid shut.

Only then did I release the breath I had been holding.

My palms were soaked with sweat.

When he added milk, I slipped two bottles of stomach medicine into the cart.

He noticed but said nothing. When we reached the pharmacy aisle, he quietly added a bottle of probiotics.

On the drive home, he kept one hand on the wheel and took mine with the other, resting our joined hands on

the center armrest.

The gesture felt effortless, as if holding my hand had always been the most natural thing in the world.

I turned to study his profile.

When I first met Gavin four years earlier, I thought he was the kind of man who drew every eye the moment

he entered a room.

Noah was not that kind of man.

But with him, I never had to wonder whether he might suddenly leave me one day.

That evening, I took a brand-new eraser from my bag.

It was whole, untouched, and had never been cut in half.

I placed it in the desk drawer.

I did not have to force myself to forget the past. If I kept living, it would slowly lose its hold on me.

Six months later, Noah and I drove to a city out West for a business trip.

As we passed a rest stop on the interstate, an electronic sign flashed, “Scenic Byway Entrance Ahead.”

Noah glanced at me.

I shook my head and smiled. “No. It’s too far. Let’s stay on our original route.”

“Okay.” He turned up the heat in the car.

After we arrived, we went to a steakhouse.

I was cutting into my steak when my phone buzzed. A mutual friend had sent me a link

Lila had posted a series of photographs from overseas.

Her head was shaved, and she stood in a hospital hallway, holding up a victory sign for the camera.

Her caption read, “Round three of chemo is done. Two more to go. My hair will grow back. I’ll keep fighting.”

She wore no makeup and had lost a great deal of weight, but her smile looked real.