After Five Years of Lies, I Left the Family and Made Them Regret It Chapter 08

After Five Years of Lies, I Left the Family and Made Them Regret It Chapter 08

When I started learning to walk again after the operation, I still fell, and the pain still kept me awake

all night.

But here, no one looked down on me because I had no powerful family behind me, and no one

treated every act of help as though it were charity.

The elderly woman, sharing my hospital room would move my water closer whenever she saw I

couldn’t reach it.

Every time my physiotherapist at the rehabilitation centre helped me back to my feet, they would

stop and ask whether I wanted to carry on.

That was when I finally understood that accepting help didn’t mean I owed anyone my life, and it certainly didn’t mean I had to trade obedience for the right to belong.

The first day I managed to walk the entire rehabilitation corridor by myself, I saw Adrian standing

at the far end.

He had lost a lot of weight, and dark circles shadowed his eyes.

I nearly lost my balance, and he immediately reached out to steady me.

But my physiotherapist got there first.

Adrian’s hand stopped in mid–air.

Perhaps, in that moment, he remembered what had happened five years earlier.

I had cried and begged him to come and stay with me while I finished that walk down the

rehabilitation corridor.

He had told me he couldn’t spend the rest of his life beside me, holding me up.

Now he had come all the way from New York to Toronto.

But I had already learnt not to reach for him anymore.

After my session, he stopped me outside the rehabilitation centre.

“Evelyn, come home with me

I looked at him.

“What home?”

His lips parted, but not a single word came out.

The Bennett family had thrown me out.

My husband had taken everything that once belonged to our child and our marriage, even his place

as a father, and handed it to the child my sister had borne him.

And among all those so–called families in New York not a single door had ever truly opened for me

simply because I was Evelyn.

Adrian lowered his head.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s far too late, but I did love you. That wasn’t a lie. When you were ill, I sat up with you all night. When storms frightened you, I drove for hours from the family’s compound out of state just to get back to you. And when you said you wanted a home, I bought the apartment on the Upper East Side. All of that was real.”

I looked at him calmly.

“And then?”

Adrian’s eyes slowly reddened.

“Then I did something unforgivable. I was too much of a coward to admit I could love you and still destroy you. Every time I looked at your leg, I saw what I’d done to you and how despicable I’d

been.”

“Bit by bit, I started buying into the way our families thought. I told myself you had no bloodline, no inheritance, no one powerful behind you, and that as long as I stayed married to you, you ought to

be grateful for the protection.”

“That’s why I kept going back to Serena and Noah. told myself what I had with her was love, and that staying married to you meant I was looking after you.”

“I told myself that as long as I didn’t divorce you, as long as I still massaged your leg and went to physio with you, I hadn’t really abandoned you. But was only trying to prove to myself I wasn’t

completely rotten.”

For the first time in five years, Adrian admitted exactly what he had chosen to do.

He didn’t blame Serena or hide behind the Bennett family.

But after hearing all of it, I felt only calm.

“Adrian, I never doubted that you loved me once. That was what hurt most. You loved me, and you

still chose to hurt me over and over again. If you’d never loved me at all, perhaps I wouldn’t have

spent five years clinging to those memories and making excuses for you.”

He reached out to touch me, but froze when I stepped back.

“Please, give me one more chance. I’ll end things with Serena, deal with the family council, sort out all of it. I swear I’ll put it right.”

I shook my head.

“You can’t bring our baby back. You can’t change the fact that I signed three surgical consent

forms on my own. When I needed you, you chose them. Now I don’t need you, and at last you’ve

turned up.”

Adrian finally broke down and cried.

He didn’t press me any further.

He simply took the signed divorce papers from his pocket.

“I understand. I won’t ask you to come back again.”

Adrian didn’t return to New York straight away.

He stayed near the rehabilitation centre in Toronto for a month.

At first, he waited outside every day.

When it rained, he left an umbrella for me, and when the temperature dropped, he asked the front

desk to leave a coat for me.

I never accepted a single thing.

Eventually, I had my lawyer tell him not to come again.