First Love or Husband? I Choose Neither Chapter 07

First Love or Husband? I Choose Neither Chapter 07

After that stormy night, Declan and I went our separate ways again.

When I got home, I collapsed onto the bed, letting the ghosts of our college years flood the room until my vision blurred with silent, unbidden tears.

When I said we didn’t have enough fate between us, I had meant it.

The truth was, I didn’t even mind that Declan had played his part for Sienna. What hurt was realizing that five years later, I could still be shaken by him.

That was dangerous.

I heard the keypad lock at the front door beep, then the door opened.

I pushed myself up on one elbow and looked toward the entryway, where Adrian stood a dark silhouette framed by the sterile glow of the corridor.

“Mr. Mercer,” I said coolly, “wrong apartment.”

I looked him up and down. “Yours with your mistress is across the hall.”

He looked drunk. His steps were unsteady, his body swaying slightly as he came inside.

“Celeste,” he said.

Then, more quietly, “I was wrong.”

His voice cracked. “I know it was my fault. If it weren’t for me, that baby wouldn’t have died…”

The baby.

Right.

Adrian and I had had a child once.

Sienna’s pregnancy had been fake.

Mine had been real.

When Sienna first told me she was pregnant, I had panicked, because I was carrying his child as well.

Just one month along.

I hadn’t decided whether I wanted to keep it.

If I did, it might have helped me later when it came to the divorce and the money, but it also would have tied me down in ways I wasn’t sure I could survive.

If I didn’t, maybe one day I could still walk away completely free.

In the end, Adrian never gave me the chance to choose.

The night he came home after Sienna’s suicide attempt and wrapped his hands around my throat, he had

looked like he meant to kill me.

“Let go,” I had choked out. “You… let go.”

But Adrian had lost his mind by then. He couldn’t hear anything.

One hand was locked around my neck while he pinned me to the floorboards, his weight crushing the air from my lungs.

The more I fought, the harder he pressed.

Then the pain came.

A sharp, twisting pain low in my abdomen, followed by a sudden rush of warmth down the insides of my

thighs.

And just like that, the light went out of my world.

That day, the sound of the ambulance tore through the whole neighborhood. Adrian ran after it barefoot, his

frantic, shoeless footsteps echoing in the ER.

“The pregnancy was too early,” the doctor said. “There was nothing we could do to save it.”

Adrian lost his mind in the hospital, screaming at everyone to save me, to save the baby, to do something.

But no one could promise a miracle.

Because no one could perform one.

He stayed by my bedside for three straight days and nights without changing clothes, without leaving,

without sleeping.

And when I finally opened my eyes, the first thing I said was, “Adrian, I want a divorce.”

Once the life inside me was snuffed out, asking for the divorce became very simple.

Adrian refused.

He clutched at my sleeve and apologized over and over, saying he was wrong, saying he hadn’t meant any of

“Celeste, I’m not divorcing you.”

His voice had turned frantic. “You know I never cared about Sienna like that… I was only using her to make

you look at me.”

Then, almost pleading, “Celeste, please. Don’t divorce me. Please.”

I transferred hospitals without telling him and spent a month disappearing into the quiet anonymity of a rural

clinic.

During that month, the calls and texts from Adrian never stopped.

Neither did Sienna’s.

She sent me photos of Adrian cooking for her, bathing her, buying her cars and designer bags, doing everything a devoted man could do for a woman.

She even sent me a copy of a divorce agreement with his signature scrawled at the bottom.

Sienna: [Adrian signed this himself.]

Sienna replied: [He said once you come back, he’ll divorce you.]

I had seen all the pictures she sent.

In every single one, Adrian’s eyes seemed to drift toward the camera. Sienna probably thought he was

looking at her.

He wasn’t.

He was looking at me.

He knew the bread crumbs would end up in my hands. Childish as ever, he wanted me jealous. He wanted me

angry. He wanted me to reclaim him.

But I never did.

When that month of recovery ended, Adrian and I officially started the divorce case.

The case neither of us could truly win.

And neither of us could fully lose.