He Chose My Best Friend, Now He Wants Me Back Chapter 08

He Chose My Best Friend, Now He Wants Me Back Chapter 08

From that day on, Ben stopped sleeping.

He would sit alone in Sloane’s living room late at night, surrounded by piles of mail. Not love letters, but legal notices and final demands. The venue, the caterer, the photographer… Mara had methodically removed her name from every contract, leaving only his.

He tried turning off the lights, hoping the darkness would bring peace.

But the darkness only made the images sharper.

Mara’s bloodless face at the clerk’s office.

Her hand, sliced open and still bleeding.

And the moment at the boutique when he had shoved her in front of everyone.

He grabbed his phone like a lifeline and opened his photo album, desperate for proof that their life together hadn’t just been a series of wounds he’d inflicted.

The screen lit up.

Sloane and Ruby.

At Disney, on the beach, at Ruby’s birthday parties. Hundreds, thousands of photos documenting a family he had never truly claimed but had always enjoyed.

He scrolled down, his thumb going numb.

Finally, at the very bottom of the album, he found her.

Just a handful of photos.

One was a candid shot. She was in the kitchen of their old apartment, making spaghetti, her back to the camera, her hair twisted up with a pen.

Another was from when they first got together, taken on the campus lawn. She was smiling, unguarded, her whole body leaning into his as if he were her entire world.

The last one had been sent by Sloane, taken at the boutique just minutes before everything fell apart. In the photo, Mara was wearing her wedding dress, her face glowing with a happiness he’d never seen before—the look of someone about to touch her dream.

Before, he’d only thought she looked beautiful, like an asset he could show off.

Now, the photo was a white-hot poker in his chest. He finally realized he had personally extinguished the last light in her eyes.

Not long after, Sloane left with Ruby.

She packed their things without a single argument, her calmness unnerving.

Before she walked out the door, she placed her key on the entryway table.

“We both treated her like the one who could be sacrificed,” she said, her voice flat with a weary resignation. “Now we pay the price. Ben, let’s get a divorce.”

Ben didn’t try to stop her.

He knew, better than anyone, that his relationship with Sloane had been built on their shared betrayal of another woman.

That foundation had rotted long ago.