First Love or Husband? I Choose Neither Chapter 10

First Love or Husband? I Choose Neither Chapter 10

Declan sensed me moving and woke up immediately.

“You’re awake.” He pushed himself forward, the legs of his chair barking against the linoleum. “Are you hurting anywhere? I’ll get the doctor.”

I caught his hand before he could go.

“Declan, let’s talk.”

He stopped.

“I know everything,” I said. “Adrian told you. He told you all of it.”

A flicker of surprise went through me even as I said it. I hadn’t expected Adrian to tell him any of those

things.

Still, I nodded and gave Declan the apology I should have given him years ago.

“If I had closed the door on us with a shred of honesty, we wouldn’t be in this hospital room.” My voice

stayed calm, almost detached.

“Sienna never would’ve gone after Adrian for your sake. She never would’ve fallen for him and ended up

wrecking herself in the process.”

I looked at him steadily. “And you wouldn’t have had to come back into my life because of her.”

I paused, then said softly, “All of this started with me.”

The words came out flat and clean.

“Don’t worry. I’m not pressing charges against Sienna.”

I let out a slow breath. “And I’m divorcing Adrian.”

Declan closed his hand around mine. The pain in his eyes was almost too much to look at.

“I’m sorry,” he said, then shook his head, as if apology alone couldn’t carry the weight of it.

“But I didn’t take your case because of Sienna. I really did want another chance with you.”

His grip tightened slightly.

“And what I did with the Mercer assets… that was because I didn’t think the money mattered. Whatever

Adrian could give you, I could too.”

His voice dropped. “Celeste, I never forgot you.”

I knew he meant every word.

That was the strangest part.

Because inside me, there was nothing violent left. No ache, no surge, no desperate hope. My heart was as

still as a frozen lake.

“Declan, we’re not kids anymore.”

I looked at our joined hands, then back at him.

“Second chances like that belong in TV dramas. In real life, once a mirror breaks, it’s broken.”

A faint smile touched my mouth, but there was no warmth in it.

“You can glue it back together, sure. But the cracks are still there.”

I withdrew my hand gently.

“Let the past be a ghost,” I said. “Let the past stay where it belongs.”

Once I made up my mind, no one had ever been able to change it.

That included the divorce.

The day after I was discharged, Adrian and I signed the divorce agreement.

Out of the Mercer fortune, I took ten percent of the real number.

That was more than enough to support my mother and me for the rest of our lives.

“Celeste…” Adrian stood there holding the signed papers, looking like he still had something left to say.

I patted him lightly on the shoulder.

“Take better care of the person in front of you,” I said.

The truth was, I had imagined once or twice what it might look like if I stayed with Adrian for the rest of my

life.

But every time I followed that thought to the end, it never fit.

He wasn’t irredeemable. In his own way, he had been the bridge that didn’t let my family drown.

He deserved a woman who truly loved him.

That woman just wasn’t me.

“There’s something else,” he said after a moment. “I remembered it later.”

He looked down at the papers in his hand. “Declan came to our wedding.”

My eyes lifted.

“He was stopped by security before he could get inside.” Adrian swallowed once. “He kept calling your

name.”

Then he looked at me with a tired kind of honesty.

“Celeste, he really did love you.”

A beat passed.

“So did I.”

I just waved a hand, took my copy of the divorce papers, and walked out of his office.

Later, I took the money from the settlement, brought my mother with me, and rented a sun-drenched cottage

on the coast.

She spent her days line dancing with women from the neighborhood community center, trying out new

recipes, and living more easily than she had in years.

I found work teaching the local kids piano. The pay was good enough.

More than good enough, really. Enough for the two of us to live quietly and comfortably.

Far away from the jagged skyline of Halewick, life became simple.

Peaceful.

Everything loud and vicious and glittering about my old life felt impossibly far away, like it belonged in

another galaxy.

A year later, I received a wedding invitation from Adrian.

The bride was Sienna.

As for Declan, all I knew was that he had left Halewick too.

He went back to his hometown and traded corporate warfare for the quiet dignity of legal aid.

People in the old class group chat mentioned him sometimes.

A few of them said it was a waste, that someone with his talent shouldn’t have settled for such an ordinary

life.

But Declan never appeared there himself.

It was as if he had really vanished.

Vanished from my world, from my sightline, from the part of life where I could still reach him.

Some people love deeply.

But love alone isn’t enough when fate runs shallow.

That was what Declan and I were.

He was like that wash of orange at sunset, spreading across the sky in one breathtaking moment, beautiful

enough to make you think it might last.

But it never did.

Morning always came.

And when it did, my life moved forward again.

That color stayed behind, where it belonged, folded into memory as the most beautiful thing I ever had to

lose.