Too Late to Beg: I’m No Longer Yours Chapter 12

Too Late to Beg: I’m No Longer Yours Chapter 12

Hayes’s voice was unspeakably ragged.

“I hired people. We tore that beach house apart. Searched for seven straight days.”

“We finally found it in the shallows off the boardwalk.”

“The photo inside was ruined by the water. I hired a restorer, but they haven’t finished yet.”

I clutched the necklace to my chest.

The cold silver dug painfully into my palm.

“So what?”

He froze.

“Nova…”

I looked up at him.

“Did you think returning this would buy my forgiveness?”

All the color drained from his face.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I just wanted to make it up to you. I know I was wrong.”

Snowflakes landed on his eyelashes, melting instantly.

He used to be such a proud man.

An academic star in college.

A startup boss surrounded by yes–men.

Yet right now, standing in front of me, he looked utterly pathetic, stripped of his spine.

“Laney and I are done. And I don’t care about the company anymore.”

“I can stay in Toronto with you.”

“I’ll do whatever you want”

I stared at him. It was almost laughable.

“Hayes. It’s not that you don’t care about those things. You just lost them.”

“You only came crawling back to me because you have absolutely nothing left.”

Pure agony flickered in his eyes.

“That’s not true.”

“You were always the one I wanted to marry.”

A hollow laugh escaped my lips.

“You’re the only man in the world who treats his future wife like this.”

“Humiliating me on my birthday. Giving my gifts to Laney. Falsifying my texts. Filing academic complaints against

me.”

“Your love is too heavy. I don’t want it.”

His lips trembled. He couldn’t force a single word out.

I tightened my grip on the necklace.

“Hayes. Stop making me sick with these pathetic lies.”

His tears finally spilled.

“I’m sorry.”

“I just got used to you always being quiet. Always cleaning up my messes.”

The winter air went dead silent.

I nodded.

“Right.”

“But I changed.”

“So you don’t have to love me anymore.”

I bypassed him and kept walking.

Suddenly, he collapsed onto his knees in the snow behind me. He grabbed my coat.

A heavy thud echoed against the frozen ground.

“Nova, please don’t go.”

“I really can’t live without you.”

I looked down at his hands.

Those same hands had once warmed my stomach on winter nights. Those same hands had fastened my mother’s

necklace around Delaney’s neck.

I peeled his fingers off my coat, one by one.

“Don’t come looking for me ever again.”

“Every time I look at you, I remember how incredibly cheap my love used to be.”