His Secret Wife Was My Best Friend Chapter 17

His Secret Wife Was My Best Friend Chapter 17 Every Memory

Here, trespassing in someone’s home was taken seriously.

As the three of them faced off, Gareth’s friend hurried over. Seeing the situation, he hastily tried to make peace, easing Benedict’s anger a little.

He pleaded with Gareth to leave, but Gareth wouldn’t stop staring at Cecily or move an inch. In the end, his friend practically dragged him out.

Once he was gone, Cecily visibly relaxed.

“Are you all right?” Benedict asked, holding her wrist as he checked her anxiously.

“I’m fine.”

She shook her head and picked up her coffee, trying to seem calm. Only then did she notice her hand was trembling.

She was beginning to understand that the pain Gareth had caused wouldn’t disappear overnight.

The wounds remained buried in her memory, ready to surface and hurt her when she least expected it.

Benedict saw the grief she couldn’t put into words. He reached toward her shaking fingers, hesitated, then gently patted her shoulder instead.

“This is Greyhaven, not Northcote. It’s not Hollis territory. I won’t let Gareth hurt you again.”

Cecily turned and met his dark, steady eyes. After a moment, she nodded.

Gareth was still in a daze when his friend took him back to the hotel.

The man scolded him the whole way.

“If I’d known you were going to make a scene, I wouldn’t have brought you tonight. Benedict doesn’t tolerate that kind of thing. You caused trouble in his house and harassed his guest. Who knows what he’ll have to say to me later?”

Gareth said nothing. He gripped the diamond ring from their engagement, full of resentment and regret.

He kept thinking that if Daphne hadn’t led him astray, he and Cecily would be enjoying an island honeymoon. Instead, they were fighting in this rain–soaked city, and she was saying things he couldn’t bear to hear.

After that, Gareth stayed in Greyhaven.

Each day, he hid on a street corner near Benedict’s office and watched Cecily arrive and leave from a distance.

One day, while buying coffee downstairs, she spotted him.

The sight frightened her. From then on, she was careful. Benedict accompanied her in and out of the building, or another colleague did when he wasn’t available.

At last, when she went out alone to buy concert tickets, Gareth managed to block her at a street corner.

“Please don’t do this, Cecily. I know you’re still angry with me. Can we stop hurting each other?”

She had no desire to talk to him.

“I told you we’re over. Why won’t you leave me alone?”

He seemed to have been waiting in the rain for a long time. One shoulder was soaked, and the fingers around her wrist were cold. He looked wretched.

“She set me up. The first time, she was wearing perfume that made me want her. That’s how it happened…”

Skipping over the uglier details, he pressed on through clenched teeth. “There won’t be any Daphne. No baby. Just you and me. Please don’t leave me.”

The mockery in Cecily’s smile turned bitter.

“Suppose the first time was an accident. What about all the times after that? You remembered her allergies. Whatever bag you bought me, you bought her, too. Even our secret bakery wasn’t just ours anymore. When I was in the hospital with pneumonia, you were with her in the car…”

Nausea rose in her throat.

Under the hatred and contempt in her gaze, Gareth slowly lost all color.

Cecily spoke carefully, holding her anger in check.

“Every memory I have of us has another woman in it. Do you understand how sick that makes me?

“After everything you’ve told me, can you even tell your own lies from the truth anymore?”