He Put My Ring On Her Finger At 3 AM Chapter 08

He Put My Ring On Her Finger At 3 AM Chapter 08

He stood frozen where he was, the cake in his hands tilting crooked in the wind.

“Nora-I know I was wrong.”

This was the first time in eight years I’d heard him admit a mistake. Yet in my heart, there wasn’t the slightest ripple.

He stepped forward urgently. “I got the ring back. The shawl, I had someone bring it to you. The earring… I’ll find the earring. I’ll deal with Iris’s side. I can go public. I’ll go public right now.”

He pulled out his phone, his fingers stiff with cold, but still he opened his social media. “I’ll post Nora, I’ll tell everyone right now-you’re my wife.”

I pressed my hand over his phone. A thread of hope rose in Julian’s eyes. “You don’t want me to post

it?”

“No,” I said. “It’s just not necessary.”

His face paled another shade.

I pushed the phone back toward him. “You see, Julian, you still don’t understand even now. I didn’t leave because you wouldn’t go public.”

“Then why?” His voice was wrecked, hoarse.

I looked at him. “It’s because you knew how much that wedding ring meant to me–and you put it on someone else’s hand. You knew how much my mother’s keepsakes meant to me-and you took them to use as props for someone else. You knew what I fear most is being misunderstood-and you made me stand in public and admit I was just a former colleague. It’s not that you don’t know how to love someone.” I smiled faintly. “It’s just that you spent all the skill of loving on someone

else.”

Julian’s lips trembled. “That’s not true.”

“It is.” My voice was soft. “When you comfort Iris, you crouch down to listen to her cry. When her hand hurt, you rushed over in the dead of night. When she got criticized, you took my things to prop up her image. When she was embarrassed, you made me step forward to clean up for her.” I paused.

“But what about me?”

Snow and wind settled on his brow. His eyes were terribly red, but he couldn’t force out a single

word.

I answered for him. “I was mature.”

As if those words had pierced straight through him, Julian suddenly reached out and seized my wrist. “Don’t say any more.” His grip was fierce-but just as quickly, as if terrified of hurting me,

he frantically let go. “Nora. Don’t talk to me like this. I can’t take it.”

I looked at him and suddenly felt how absurd it was. So he couldn’t take it, either. But when I couldn’t take it, he’d been up on that stage wiping away someone else’s tears.

“Julian.” I asked him, “When I read that line about being an old colleague on the livestream-didit

hurt?”

His throat moved. Tears fell without a single warning. “It hurt.”

I nodded. “But when I read it-it hurt ten thousand times more than what you’re feeling now.”

At last, he sank down to the ground. Julian Pierce, so proud that even when the whole internet had cursed him he’d never bowed his head in front of anyone-right now, he was crouched at the entrance of a foreign hotel, holding that ruined, frozen cake, his shoulders shaking with sobs.

“Nora, I was wrong. I was really wrong. Give me one more chance-please?”

I didn’t answer. I only smoothed flat, little by little, the cuffs he’d crumpled. Then I pulled a document from my bag and handed it to him.

The moment he saw the cover clearly, his entire body went rigid. Divorce Agreement.