I Aborted Our Baby The Day He Celebrated His Mistress Birthday Chapter 11

I Aborted Our Baby The Day He Celebrated His Mistress Birthday Chapter 11

Julian tried everything. I never thought a man with that much pride would let himself fall this far.

He camped out in the hallway outside my apartment. Just sat there on the floor, hoping to catch me

whenever I got home.

When he needed to shower, he’d run to a nearby hotel and rush back, terrified he’d miss me. He wiped out on

the sidewalk more than once. The cuts on his knees never got the chance to close.

“Don’t bother.” I waved off the breakfast he held out.

Julian barely had the energy to speak. He was wasting away – his clothes hung off him like they belonged to

someone twice as big. His wrists looked skeletal where his sleeves had ridden up. Every vein showing.

“Eleanor, just take it… please..” “Even if you don’t want it because it’s from me – just eat something, okay?”

“Just let me do this one thing… I’m begging you, Eleanor, I’m really… I’m falling apart…”

I knocked the whole thing out of his hands. The latte splashed over his shoes, and the muffins hit the floor,

rolling through the dirt.

“You always preached about not wasting food. So pick them up and eat them.”

Julian looked up at me. “If I eat them, will you talk to me?”

I said nothing. He dropped to his knees, picked up the muffins – dirt and all – and shoved them into his

mouth.

He crammed them in until his cheeks bulged. His throat bobbed heavily a few times before he managed to

force half of it down.

He kept chewing, jaw grinding, while his free hand caught the edge of my sleeve and held on – like a child

terrified of being left behind.

Watching him like this, I actually pitied him.

“Listen…” He swallowed the last of it. “If… Eleanor, if there’s anything I can do to make you let me stay, I’ll do

it. Anything…”
“Whatever you want. Name it. It’s yours…”

I smiled. “I want you to sign the divorce papers.”

“I want you to stop showing up. I want you out of my life – for good. No more of this.” “Can you do that?”

Every time Julian came back to me, he walked straight into his own humiliation. He knew how it would end.

He came anyway.

His grip on my sleeve tightened until it went rigid.

The color drained from Julian’s face. His lips moved, but nothing came out.

“I-” The word fell apart before it left his mouth. Every ounce of desperate certainty he’d carried here

collapsed in a single breath.

“I can’t… Eleanor, I can’t do that… If we divorce, there’ll be nothing left. I won’t even have an excuse to come

near you…”

“An excuse?” I raised an eyebrow. “Julian, you never had one.”

“Let me make this perfectly clear – I’m never going to forgive you.” “Not now. Not ever.”

“You say you know me. Then you already know how this ends. You just won’t admit it to yourself.”

Julian crumpled. His shoulders shook, his head sinking lower and lower until his forehead nearly touched his

knees. When he spoke again, his voice was destroyed.

“I know what I did. I know I treated you like garbage. What I did to you – what I did to our baby – I could

spend the rest of my life trying and never make it right…”

“But I can’t let you go… because I know the second I do, you’re gone forever…”

“Whether I ever saw you again stopped mattering to me a long time ago.” I pulled free of his grip. “Julian, you

still don’t get it.”

“What I wanted was never this – you groveling, you sitting outside my door like a stray, you choking down muffins off the ground for pity.”

“What I wanted was you – back when it mattered. A husband who showed up. A hand reaching for me when

I was drowning. You never gave me that.”

“Everything you’re offering now is everything I no longer need.”

“This isn’t love, Julian. This is you refusing to let go of me, and of yourself.”

“Don’t drag this out until there’s nothing left to salvage.” “Walk away. Let us both keep what little dignity we

have left.”