He Took Off His Hearing Aid To Ignore My Screams Chapter 06

He Took Off His Hearing Aid To Ignore My Screams Chapter 06

“I’m sorry.”

“Does sorry fix anything?”

I stared at him. “Can it bring my baby back?”

His body swayed visibly.

“I was carrying your child, Vaughn. I’d just gotten a positive test that morning. I was scared it might be a false positive, that’s why I told you I wanted a checkup.”

“I’d planned… to surprise you.”

“But you chose to alter medical records for Sorrel. You’d already made your call. You picked her over me and our baby.”

The words hung heavy in the air.

Vaughn stumbled backward a few steps, his voice raw as he scrambled to defend himself.

“I didn’t know… I truly didn’t know…”

I tilted my chin to look down at him.

“Yeah, you didn’t know. You had no idea how much blood I spilled in the bathroom that night. You never thought about how terrified I was signing hospital consent forms all alone. You weren’t there for my D&C, not a single person stood by my side.”

“You’ll never know all the things you missed, not for the rest of your life.”

“We’re already divorced. From this moment on, we mean nothing to each other.”

After that words, I turned to leave.

He shot upright off the ground in an instant and wrapped his arms tight around me from behind.

“Elara, don’t go, please.”

His voice shook uncontrollably.

“I know I messed up, I really do. I’ll never take my hearing aids off again. I’ll listen to every word you say, I’ll never get annoyed with you anymore.”

“Hit me, yell at me—anything, just don’t walk away. I’m begging you…”

Scalding hot tears splashed down onto the back of my neck.

I stood rigid, not pushing him away, not turning around.

“Vaughn, do you remember what I told you our first year of marriage?”

His hold on me tightened.

“I said what I feared most wasn’t you not loving me. It was that you wouldn’t even bother to listen to me.”

“What did you say back then? You promised you’d change.”

“And look how that turned out. Nothing shifted the second year, and nothing changed the third.”

“Everyone’s patience runs thin eventually, Vaughn. Mine’s been worn completely away by you.”

I pried his fingers off mine one by one.

His hands were ice cold, gripping me with desperate force like he wanted to fuse my body to his own, but I kept pulling them apart.

“Elara!”

His voice cracked, rising into a broken, desperate shout.

I didn’t stop.

I stepped into the apartment stairwell, and his cries of my name echoed after me, one after another.

I leaned against the frigid wall, tilted my head back, and forced my tears back down.

Don’t look back.

Elara Macy.

If you turn around even once, you’ll have failed yourself completely.