I Saved 10,000 Points For Our Wedding, He Deducted 500 For Her Chapter 03

I Saved 10,000 Points For Our Wedding, He Deducted 500 For Her Chapter 03

When I left work the next day, Ethan was waiting outside my office.

He was holding ninety-nine red roses, the petals still beaded with water.

“Claire.”

He came over and pushed the bouquet into my arms.

The weight made my arms dip.

“Last night was on me.”

He looked away, his voice tight, like he was not used to backing down.

“I put the points back. Tomorrow, I’ll fix everything.”

The bouquet felt almost hot in my arms. I watched the tips of his ears turn faintly red.

He almost never apologized. Those few sentences were already as far as he knew how to go.

“Take care of what?”

He did not answer. He only brushed a raindrop from my cheek.

“You’ll see tomorrow. Just be ready.”

That look only appeared when he was planning a surprise, smug and gentle all at once.

He was going to propose.

For eight years, I’d wanted this day more than anything. Now that it seemed to be here, all I could think about was every point he’d taken because of Sienna, one after another, until I could barely breathe.

“If we get married, do we keep playing the points game?” I asked.

Ethan blinked, then laughed. “No. What would we be saving them for after we’re married?”

“What about Sienna?”

I looked at him calmly. Would all the nights she had taken from me, the dates canceled at the last minute, and the points docked because of her simply disappear after the wedding?

Or would it all just continue under a different name?

He was about to answer when his phone rang.

His tone changed the second he answered.

“Don’t worry. When have I ever bailed on you? I’m on my way.”

He hung up and looked at me.

“Sienna and I have a track session. She’ll be mad if I’m late.”

“Ethan.”

“Are you always going to choose her?”

He stopped with his back to me.

“Don’t start. Grab an umbrella from the convenience store. It’s going to rain.”

Then he opened the car door. The engine roared to life.

The rain came minutes later, cold enough to sting.

I stood there in it, still holding ninety-nine roses.

The paper wrap soaked through fast. Petals slipped loose one by one.

I looked down and saw a card tucked into the bouquet.

Gold script curled across it.

“To my princess, Sienna. Stay bright and beautiful forever.”

They were Sienna’s flowers.

That was the default message saved on his florist account.

He’d ordered flowers for her hundreds of times.

He’d never changed it.

My phone buzzed.

Sienna had sent me a screenshot of the admin dashboard for my points account.

She’d circled deduction after deduction.

[Claire, you thought Ethan made all those deductions? I logged into his account and did them myself.]

[And he only came to patch things up with you today because I talked him into it. Don’t read too much into it.]

One last message popped up.

[Claire, those deductions aren’t the only thing I left you.]

I stared at the screen until I suddenly doubled over laughing.

Eight years of earning points, swallowing every hurt, carefully keeping Ethan happy. And all along, she had been the one taking the points away.

The flowers. The card. The deductions…

Every one of them said the same thing: the last eight years had been a joke.

I threw the bouquet and the card into a trash can by the curb.