After He Left Me Behind, My Wedding Ring Changed Hands Chapter 08

After He Left Me Behind, My Wedding Ring Changed Hands Chapter 08

But I didn’t like him anymore.

I was disgusted by him.

“What are you doing here?”

I pulled the door open wider.

“Please leave. This is my home. Can you stop harassing us?”

My coldness and obvious disgust sent panic through him.

The day before, Reid had come here straight from work, just as he always did.

He kept coming because he thought sooner or later he might run into Mara.

No matter how angry she had been when she left, surely she would come home eventually.

So he had kept showing up, day after day, for more than six hundred days.

Then yesterday, he finally overheard that Mara was coming home.

He lay awake all night.

He kept imagining the moment he saw her again. He would apologize properly. Maybe, somehow, they could still go back to the way things had been.

But now, seeing the disgust and distance in Mara’s eyes, Reid felt a fear unlike anything he had known before.

He was terrified that this really was the end of them.

He lowered his gaze, hiding the wet shine at the corners of his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mara.”

“I was wrong. Completely wrong. Can you forgive me? Can we get back together?”

For a second, I thought I’d misheard him.

Then the sheer absurdity of it hit me.

“Get back together?”

I made no attempt to hide my contempt.

“What makes you think that after everything that happened, I’d ever be able to be with you again as if none of it mattered?”

“Why would I ever get back together with a man who had a woman he kept around as more than just a friend?”

“And why would I ever choose to deal with that mean-spirited mother of yours again?”

I scoffed.

The contempt in my voice cut through the quiet room, sharp enough to hurt.

“Do you think I have that little self-respect—that I’d come crawling back to someone like you?”

Reid went rigid, looking as though he were barely holding himself together.

I didn’t care.

When he’d abandoned me somewhere unfamiliar and stood by while his mother humiliated me, he hadn’t cared either.

I took a deep breath and opened the door again.

“Get out.”

After Reid left, my parents exchanged a look and sighed heavily.

They couldn’t understand how the two of us had ended up like this.

His unexpected appearance had ruined most of my good mood, but the huge meal Mom had prepared helped ease some of the frustration.

I thought I had made myself perfectly clear.

Apparently not.

Reid still showed up like clockwork every single day.

He was like a fly I couldn’t get rid of.

By the third time the neighbors teased me that Reid was really carrying a torch for me, I’d had enough.

I walked over to him, exhaustion in my voice.

“What exactly do you want?”

His lips pressed into a tight line.

“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to pressure you or bother you. I just… got used to coming here after work. I don’t really know where else to go.”

I frowned.

“What about Elise? Why don’t you go find your precious childhood friend?”

Reid looked up and hurried to explain.

He was nothing like the man from two years ago, who wouldn’t even say that Elise was just a friend.

“There’s nothing between us. I swear.”

“Nothing ever happened before. Nothing happened while you were overseas, and nothing ever will.”

He spoke urgently, as if afraid I might get the wrong idea.

I only felt a strange sense of unreality.

So I asked, “Then why didn’t you say a single word when those people at the restaurant called me the side chick to my face?”

I had been his girlfriend—the woman he was supposed to marry.

Yet he and his entire family had stood there and said nothing.

Reid’s face went pale.

“I just didn’t think strangers mattered. As long as we knew what we were to each other, that was enough.”

I shook my head, still disappointed.

“And now? Do you still think we were fine?”

He lowered his eyes.

He looked almost painfully humble.

“I know I was wrong, Mara. I really do.”

I sighed.

“Just let it end here, Reid. Every time it came down to a choice between Elise and me, you left me for her. Once that kept happening, we were never going to have a future.”

“The problem isn’t that you should have chosen me. There never should have been this three-person dynamic in the first place.”

“We both know whether you two were really just friends or whether you hid behind that label because you liked the thrill of crossing the line.”

“We’re adults. Have some dignity.”

The regret in his eyes deepened.

I had just turned to leave when a wild-eyed woman suddenly charged toward us, screaming.

“Mara! I knew you came back, you bitch!”

“You left, so why did you come back and get between Reid and me? Why are you trying to take him from me?”

I froze.

I almost didn’t recognize the woman in front of me, with her sallow complexion and exhausted eyes, as the polished Elise I remembered from two years ago.