I Waited To Settle Our Wedding Date, Only To Find Him Acting As Her Fake Partner Chapter 08

I Waited To Settle Our Wedding Date, Only To Find Him Acting As Her Fake Partner Chapter 08

“Ethan Parker! You’ve been hiding for two weeks, skipping work, and this whole time you’ve been

own here chasing your ex?”

Maddie’s mother, Sharon, rushed up and grabbed Ethan by the collar. Her sharp voice immediately drew stares from people nearby.

Ethan stumbled, and the chestnut cake slipped from his hand into the muddy water.

He stared at Maddie and her parents in shock.

“Mrs. Reed? You… you followed me?”

“So what if we did? You threw that huge wedding with Maddie, and every relative we have thinks you two are married. What exactly do you think you’re doing, disappearing now?”

Greg Reed jabbed a finger in Ethan’s face and shouted,

“Debt collectors call Maddie every single day. You buried yourself in debt, and now you think you can just walk away? Not a chance.”

Maddie stood beside them, staring at me with open resentment and jealousy.

Ethan looked miserable as they pulled at him in the rain.

Then he saw me standing on the steps, watching coldly, and panic flashed across his face.

He tore Sharon’s hand from his collar and shouted,

“Mrs. Reed, this is insane. Maddie and I were never really married.”

“She begged me to play the groom so she wouldn’t be humiliated in front of her family. I only took

out that loan because I was helping a friend. Nothing ever happened between us.”

“Helping a friend?”

Sharon gave a cold laugh, as if he’d just told the funniest joke in the world.

“Ethan, maybe you can sell that story to your poor ex–girlfriend, but are you really stupid enough to sell it to yourself?”

Ethan went rigid.

“You think everyone else is blind?”

“What normal friend willingly takes out a high–interest loan just to throw a

forty–five–thousand–dollar wedding for another woman?”

“What normal friend ignores his girlfriend of seven years and comes running every single time…

another woman calls?”

You keep saying Maddie begged you. If you didn’t want to do it, if you didn’t have feelings for her, would you really have bent over backward to be that much of a sucker?”

“Would you really have thrown tens of thousands of dollars at another woman like some desperate-

fool?”

Every word Sharon threw at him landed like a hammer.

“Stop pretending you’re some loyal, self–sacrificing good guy. You wanted Maddie a long time ago.

You’re the one whose feelings changed.”

“And you hid behind ‘helping a friend‘ so you could keep telling yourself you were a decent person Now your girlfriend is gone and you’re broke, so you want to dump Maddie too? Dream on.”

Ethan stood frozen in the pouring rain, as if all the blood in his body had turned to ice.

For years, he’d numbed himself with the same excuse: Maddie was my best friend, and she was his friend too. He’d repeated it to himself and fed it to me.

But if it had really been simple friendship, why had his heart raced when he saw Maddie in a white wedding dress?

Why had he been able to stand there while everyone made a fool of me,

yet fought like hell to protect Maddie’s pride?

Maddie hadn’t fooled him. He’d fooled himself with his own hypocrisy.

He’d been choosing her for years without ever admitting it.

He was addicted to the ego rush of being desperately needed by Maddie while greedily enjoying the unconditional care and security I gave him.

He had shattered the most genuine love he’d ever been given with his own hands.

Ethan began to shake as he slowly turned toward me.

“Claire… listen to me. It wasn’t like that. You’re the only person I’ve ever loved.”

He stumbled toward me, terror and despair filling his eyes as everything he’d believed about

himself came apart.

I stood on the steps beneath my umbrella and looked down at him in silence.

“Ethan, you two really are perfect for each other.”

I couldn’t even be bothered to give him another scrap of emotion. I turned away.

‘Nope you make each other miserable for the rest of your lives.”

“Claire, I’ll change. I swear I’ll change.”

Ethan’s tears finally fell as he reached for my sleeve.

“Seven years, Claire. Seven years. How many times in a lifetime do you get’seven years with someone? Can you really throw all of it away?”

“Throwing away those seven years is the only way I get to live the next few decades.”

I stepped aside before he could touch me and lowered the edge of my umbrella.

“Ethan, stop coming here and making me sick. You’re not even a memory worth keeping anymore.”

I turned and walked into the rain without looking back.

Behind me, Ethan’s sobs and pleas slowly disappeared into the steady sound of the rain.