I Came Back And They All Chose Her Over Me Chapter 07

I Came Back And They All Chose Her Over Me Chapter 07

Three days after the welcome reception, New York society’s private forum quieted down almost overnight.

Most of the earlier sarcastic posts had been deleted, and the new posts had taken on an entirely different

tone.

[So Miss Ashbourne didn’t come back to steal anyone. She came back to get married.]

[Lucien Beaumont really is from that Beaumont family.]

[Do the people who kept comparing Elodie to Seraphina Ashbourne feel embarrassed now?]

When Blythe sent me the screenshots, she attached a string of laughing emojis.

[Serves them right.]

I glanced at them, barely paid attention, and lowered my head again.

What actually made my pen stop was the message Elodie sent that afternoon. She asked if we could meet.

We agreed on a small café downstairs from the Ashbourne Foundation.

Elodie arrived early and sat by the window with a file folder in her arms.

When she saw me, she stood almost by instinct, that familiar nervousness still on her face.

“Miss Ashbourne.”

I sat down across from her. “What is it?”

She pushed the folder toward me, her fingertips a little pale.

“I saw this today at the Laurel Scholars Program office.”

Her voice was very soft. “I only just found out that the scholarship for my last two years of school came

from a fund under your name.”

I lowered my eyes and looked at it.

Inside the folder was a project page from the foundation. In the sponsor column, it said Seraphina

Ashbourne.

I did not deny it. “The program has always been there. It wasn’t created especially for you.

“I know.” Elodie’s eyes reddened slightly. “But I still wanted to apologize to you.”

She tightened her hands together, as if she had to gather real courage before continuing.

“When people first said I looked like you, I didn’t correct them. Later, when they compared me to you, I didn’t stop them right away either. Because back then, I really needed that feeling of being chosen.”

She spoke slowly, each word sounding as if it had to be forced past something in her throat.

protect me, so I couldn’t bring myself to give it up.

I watched her without interrupting.

“But later, I slowly realized they didn’t really like me either.”

Elodie lowered her head, her voice trembling. “They liked someone who wouldn’t make them feel guilty.

Someone who wouldn’t make them feel as if they had done anything wrong.”

A soft piano piece played in the café. Sunlight fell through the window and turned her lashes almost pale.

For some reason, I thought of that night at The Ninth House, the way she had looked helpless while holding

the glass of The Siren.

From beginning to end, the person who had truly put us on opposite sides had never been her.

It had been the ones who kept pretending they were fair.

“You don’t need to apologize for them,” I said.

Elodie lifted her head and stared at me, stunned.

“And you don’t need to explain yourself to me either.”

I pushed the folder back to her. “If you still want to keep studying, the Laurel Scholars Program will have

new spots in the future. You can earn one yourself.’

>>

Her eyes grew even redder. After a long while, she finally whispered, “Thank you.”

When I came out of the café, my phone rang again.

e, it was Evander.

anding outside the Ashbourne estate with an old first-aid kit in his hand.

I got out of the car, he simply looked at me, his gaze so complicated I could not quite read it.

“You left this in my car years ago.” He handed me the first-aid kit. “Some of the supplies had expired, so I replaced them.”

I took it but said nothing.

Evander’s throat moved, and his voice dropped very low. “I only found out about the Laurel Scholars

Program today. Elodie’s scholarship for those years… you were the one signing off on it.”

“It was just foundation procedure.”

“But I still assumed the worst of you.”

The moment he said it, the restraint in his expression finally cracked a little.

“Sera, I used to think I knew you better than anyone.”

He looked at me, his voice rough. “Only later did I realize I had just grown used to believing you would never

leave.”

I was silent for a few seconds before I said softly, “Evander, the most painful thing between two people isn’t growing apart.”

“It’s that you stood right beside me and were still the first to believe I would hurt someone.”

His fingers tightened at once, as if that sentence had pinned him in place.

I did not say anything else and turned to go inside.

That night, Dashiell ordered a glass of The Siren again at The Ninth House.

When the bartender set it down, he glanced at him and suddenly said, “Mr. Kane, this drink has had its recipe changed twice over the years. After Miss Ashbourne stopped coming around, none of you ordered it much anymore”

Dashiell stared at the glass for a long time.

In the end, he did not take a single sip.

Cassian had his assistant remove the secretly taken photos and the related comments from the forum one by one. He even brought in a legal team to trace the source.

But the first thing that came back to haunt him was not any of the posters.

It was his own sentence.

“She can’t handle this kind of game.’

his assistant placed the organized screenshots on his desk, Cassian stared at the secretly taken rofile photo of me on the screen for a very long time. Long enough for his coffee to go cold.

he suddenly asked, “When did she start wearing that ring?”

No one could answer him.

Because no one had ever truly looked.

Soren moved more slowly.

He did not lose control the way Dashiell had, nor did he try to fix things at once the way Cassian did.

He simply printed out every public record of my past five years and laid the pages neatly across the conference table.

Graduation. Startups. Awards. Overseas interviews. Brand launches.

He even circled the first time Lucien’s name appeared in one of my interviews.

It had been so early that there was no room left for self-deception.

The cruelest irony was that on top of that entire stack of documents lay a copy of the Laurel Scholars Program schedule revision record.

In the revised by field, the signature was his own.

Soren stared at those three words for a very long time. In the end, he only turned the paper over and pressed his palm flat against it, remaining still for a long while.

Three days later, the four families received wedding invitations from the Ashbourne family at the same time.

My father had always handled things with perfect courtesy, so every proper courtesy had been observed.

But they all understood what it was: an invitation, not a ticket back into my life.