He Let Another Woman Play My Wife, So I Walked Away as His Real Wife Chapter 08

He Let Another Woman Play My Wife, So I Walked Away as His Real Wife Chapter 08

Gavin waited outside my office building for three hours. By the time I finished work, he had been standing in the cold night air so long that his face looked drawn and pale.

The moment he saw me, he hurried over.

“Erin, please. We need to talk.”

“Work hours are over. I don’t have any business to discuss with Mr. Whitmore.”

The words “Mr. Whitmore” stopped him in his tracks. In seven years, I had never called him that.

He stepped in front of me and held out a document. It was a newly revised company history booklet, with my name restored to the list of co–founders. Attached to it were a proposed equity package and a contract offering me my position back.

“The company needs you.”

Then his voice lowered. “And so do I.”

I didn’t take the papers.

“If the company needs someone in charge, hire someone else. As for whatever you need, sort it out

yourself.”

Those were the words Gavin had said to me more times than I could count. Hearing them thrown back at

him made his expression stiffen.

“I know I was wrong. I was just too sure you loved me.

“My parents never had a good marriage. I grew up believing love could disappear at any moment, so I kept

trying to prove how much you cared about me. I never meant to hurt you.”

I looked at him and suddenly found the explanation almost laughable.

“Gavin, if you wanted reassurance, there were plenty of ways to get it. You could have asked me. You could

have held me. You could have taken our anniversary seriously for once.”

“But you chose to humiliate me instead, because watching me break down made you feel like you had

control over me.”

His lips parted, but he had no answer,

“I won’t do it again. I’ve already made Claire move out, and I’ve left that group chat. I’ll get the Whitmore family signet ring back, and your name will be restored everywhere in the company.”

“Can we start over?”

I shook my head.

“If you truly change, maybe someone else will benefit from the man you become. But it won’t be me.”

Rain began to fall. Gavin hadn’t brought an umbrella.

In the past, whenever the forecast said it might rain, I would make sure there was one waiting in his car. Now he stood in the rain and watched me open my own umbrella.

“Erin, it’s been seven years. Is there really nothing left that makes you want to stay?”

I stopped.

“That’s exactly why I stayed for three more years. I didn’t want to give up. But you took the fact that I wouldn’t leave as proof that you could hurt me again and again and I’d still be there.”

Then I walked past him beneath my umbrella.

This time, he didn’t try to stop me.

The next day, Gavin released a public statement in both his own name and the company’s. He acknowledged that I had been involved throughout the entire founding process and admitted that removing my name from the anniversary video had been his decision.

At the end, for the first time, he publicly wrote:

[Erin Carter is a true co–founder of this company.]

[And she is also the ex–wife I have already lost.]

I didn’t repost it.

Restoring my name could correct the record. It couldn’t bring back what I had once felt for him.