He Wanted an Open Relationship, So I Accepted Another Proposal Chapter 12

He Wanted an Open Relationship, So I Accepted Another Proposal Chapter 12

I went straight home.

After I told my parents everything, they immediately called the Prescotts.

“No daughter of the Carters gets treated like this.”

The next morning, Whitmore Group’s stock tanked at the opening bell.

For three days straight, it couldn’t recover.

Mr. Whitmore Sr. personally visited the Carter and Prescott homes.

I didn’t know what the adults discussed.

But that afternoon, Grant was released from the holding cell.

Right after that, my father had someone cut all business ties with Whitmore Group.

My mother had coffee with Mrs. Prescott.

On the other end, Mrs. Prescott smiled and said,

“They can handle the relationship. We’ll handle the fallout.”

Grant’s heir status became shaky overnight.

The friends who once swore loyalty to him avoided him on sight.

They acted like bad luck would rub off if they got too close.

Maddie caused the biggest scene.

First, she blocked me outside the academic building.

She accused me of stealing her boyfriend.

Then she went to Whitmore Group headquarters and made a scene.

She said Grant had used her and dumped her.

When security dragged her out, one heel was missing.

Her tights were torn, exposing a bleeding ankle.

Her fast-track graduate admission was revoked.

Her senior thesis was plagiarized from an overseas journal.

The plagiarism report came back at eighty percent.

The thesis committee failed her outright.

In the end, she didn’t even get her diploma.

She took the breakup money Grant gave her and went back to her hometown

I heard that, after she returned, she bragged everywhere:

She claimed she had almost become the future Mrs. Whitmore.

Her relatives tore her apart behind her back.

In late fall, Grant came to see me.

“Harper…”

His voice was hoarse as he opened the cardboard box he had brought.

Inside were things I had given him before.

A gray scarf I had knitted crookedly.

The stitches were messy, with loose threads still showing.

There was a pen I bought with my first scholarship.

His name was engraved on the cap.

There was the pep note I wrote for him during a high school track meet.

His fingers brushed over the stitches in the scarf.

Tears fell onto it, spreading into a small dark patch.

“I’ve liked you since we were kids. I went crazy with jealousy whenever you got close to Adrian. So I threw away your gift on purpose.”

“I talked badly about him in front of you. I thought if I trapped you by my side, you would only look at me.”

“I was wrong, Harper. I was so wrong I disgust myself. Can you… give me one more chance?”

I felt nothing.

The tears I had cried for him in the past.

The hurt I had suffered for him.

When I thought of them now, I couldn’t remember how they felt.

I lifted my hand and showed hun my finger.

Adrian had proposed last month.

The diamond wasn’t huge, but the cut was perfect, sparkling beautifully whenever sunlight hit it.

“Grant, I’m getting married.”

He stared at the ring on my hand.

At last, tears fell from his eyes.

Our circle wasn’t big, but after that, we truly never saw each other again.

Later, I heard Grant drank himself numb for more than half a year.

The Whitmores finally gave up on him.

They sent him to run a dead-end ranch in Wyoming.

On the day he left, he didn’t see anyone.

He only had someone bring me a box of lemon bars.

They were the kind I had loved as a kid.

I forgot about them.

By the time I remembered, they had long expired.

I threw the whole box into the trash.