I Dumped My Poor Boyfriend, Became Rich—He Said Regrets Chapter 15

I Dumped My Poor Boyfriend, Became Rich—He Said Regrets Chapter 15

“The first day of freshman orientation, you walked down the hall and introduced yourself as Veronica Vance. I wrote your name down in the front of my notebook…”

Ethan’s story completely dismantled the memory I had of my college self. He had fallen first. I was just the one who made the first move. But the execution of my affection had been entirely toxic from day one. I had used the one thing he lacked-money-as a weapon to bribe him into my life, making it impossible for him to ever speak his true feelings.

He had actually tried to tell me he loved me dozens of times. But the bubble we lived in made the words sound like cheap flattery, a poor boy singing for his supper. Eventually, the entire campus started laughing, and the lie became the only truth we knew.

Did he love Veronica Vance, or did he just love his grandfather’s ICU fund?

Under the weight of constant class-shaming and the staggering reality of our financial divide, Ethan had lost his bearings. He had spent four years twisting himself into knots, torturing his own soul. Anyone in the world could have thrown money at his problems. Except me. Because my money poisoned the purity of his love.

If Ethan Hayes had been just an inch less proud, he could have quietly laid down and let me fund his entire life. But he didn’t. And that stubborn, unyielding pride was exactly why I fell for him in the first place.

Ethan picked up an orange, his long fingers methodically peeling the skin. I looked at his hands, a sudden thought striking me. “On the night we crossed paths at the lounge… what did you mean by those questions?”

“You’re allowed to throw angry lies at me, but I’m not allowed to be bitter?” he grunted, not looking up from the fruit. “I thought you got bored of your toy, cut the line, and spent four years actively running away from me. Was I not supposed to be furious?”

I guess he had a point.

“But Chloe said you hated me.”

“I’m sorry,” Ethan murmured, his voice dropping. “That was my fault. I should’ve shut her down immediately.” He sliced the final piece of orange with perfect, mathematical symmetry, letting out a soft sigh. “But… I truly thought you didn’t want me anymore.”

Outside the window, the snow continued to fall, making the penthouse feel incredibly warm and safe. In the quiet rhythm of the afternoon, I finally knew the truth: across the stagnant river of time, my boy had fought

his way back to me.

A month later, Crestview University celebrated its centennial alumni weekend, and Ethan and I drove down together. He was slated to speak as the keynote alumnus for the computer science department.

The campus hadn’t changed, but the faces in the quad were completely new-young, bright, and full of reckless ambition. As we walked toward the auditorium, my old alumni badge slipped from my coat pocket.

A senior student scrambled to pick it up, his eyes widening when he read the text. “Wait… are you Veronica

Vance?”

“Yeah. Do I know you?”

“I’m currently interning at Mr. Hayes’s firm. You’re literally a legend in our department.”

“Really?”

I had only visited Ethan’s corporate headquarters once, waiting quietly at the reception desk. When the

receptionist had read my ID, she’d had the exact same reaction. I had never understood why, until today.

“The core tracking architecture of the firm’s system has a master algorithm that Mr. Hayes wrote back when

he first started the project,” the student explained, his face lighting up with excitement. “He embedded a

permanent string of metadata into the source code. It’s a system-wide developer note: If you ever parse the

data and find Veronica Vance, tell her I love her. Every single engineer who touches the backend architecture

sees that line.”

I stood frozen, the world fading into pure static around me, until the student grinned. “It’s so awesome. Mr.

Hayes finally found the person he built the entire system for.”

Once the lecture ended, Ethan and I retraced our old steps through the campus, walking slowly under the

winter sky. We stopped right in front of the central quad, right beneath the massive, ancient oak tree outside

the library.

Ethan stared at the frozen grass. “This is the exact spot where you grabbed my hand freshman year.”

“Yeah. God, I was so reckless back then.”

He went still, his dark eyes looking into the distance as if watching the ghosts of our younger selves.

“Ethan… were you happy during college?”

He had broken his back working, endured systemic class-shaming, and lived in constant isolation. I assumed

the answer was a definite no.

But Ethan turned to me, his thin eyelids drooping gently as he locked his gaze onto mine. “I was incredibly

happy. Because you were there. You turned all the misery into something beautiful.”

He stepped closer, the sharp wind catching his hair. “Veronica, it’s my turn to say it now. My ninth year of

loving you is about to start. Give me a chance to get it right this time, okay?”

The snow started to fall again, dusting his shoulders with white. I let out a soft laugh, reaching out to brush

the flakes from his coat.

“Happy New Year, Ethan. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Happy New Year, my boy. Happy New Year to the youth we lost. The scars remained, but standing here in the

snow, we were exactly where we belonged.