I Helped Him Get Into an Elite University—Then He Dumped Me Before Day One Chapter 02

I Helped Him Get Into an Elite University—Then He Dumped Me Before Day One Chapter 02

As the plane lifted into the sky, it left my old life behind.

Later, one of my close friends told me Adrian had left comments under my accounts on every platform he could find.

They were all more or less the same.

[Are you done yet?]

[So what if I’m dating someone? Are you really this mad about it?]

[Hurry up and add me back.]

She told me, “At first Adrian was completely convinced you’d come back to him. When you didn’t, he started getting more and more irritated. Sometimes just hearing your name was enough to make his face go dark.”

I listened as if she were talking about someone else’s life. It did not stir even the slightest ripple in me.

With the fifty million Mrs. Sterling had given me, I started over in Paris.

I chose one of the best design schools in the city, and everything was a challenge at first: the language, the culture, the crushing workload.

But there was no Adrian left to appease, no suffocating family to survive, only sketchbooks, drafting paper, and a future opening up in front of me.

The years slipped by in a blur.

With equal parts hard work and talent, the jewelry I designed began appearing at major fashion weeks, and before long, I had won several prestigious international awards.

I was eventually promoted to chief designer at Lumina and sent back to help spearhead the brand’s North American expansion.

On my first day back, I was having lunch at the restaurant downstairs from the branch office when a hesitant voice called out behind me.

“Claire? Is that you?”

I turned and saw a girl who looked vaguely familiar. After a second, I remembered her. It was Emily Parker, the girl who used to sit in front of me in high school.

Her eyes widened as she looked me up and down, openly stunned and admiring.

“Oh my God, it really is you. You’ve changed so much.”

The timid, eager-to-please girl I had once been was long gone. Time and experience had given me a quiet, unshakable composure.

“Long time no see.”

“It really is you. What are the odds?” Emily looked thrilled.

“There’s actually a class reunion tonight at the Cloudcrest upstairs. A bunch of people are coming, and Adrian will be there too. You have to come. I swear nobody’s going to recognize you.”

Adrian. By then, his name felt more like a distant symbol than a real person, something that had not crossed my mind in a very long time.

I had been about to decline, but then I changed my mind. Some things did not need to be avoided on purpose.

“Sure.”

I spent the rest of the day buried in transition work at the new office and barely had a second to breathe.

By the time I remembered the reunion, it was already close to starting.

I could not be bothered to go back to the hotel and change, so I went upstairs to the private room at Cloudcrest in the same clothes I had worn all day.

The moment I pushed open the heavy door, a wave of noise hit me.

The room was large, and the giant round table inside was already full.

My eyes swept across the crowd on instinct and stopped almost immediately on the man seated at the center of it all.

Adrian had grown into his looks since high school. His features were sharper now, and he wore an expensive casual suit with the same lazy ease that always made him the center of attention.

Beside him sat a young, beautiful woman in bold designer clothes and immaculate makeup.

It was not Hannah.

Apparently, the girlfriends had changed too.

After a brief hush, one of the drunk guys was the first to recognize me.

“Holy hell, look. Adrian, your little lapdog Claire’s here.”

That one line detonated the entire room.

Every eye turned toward me at once, full of surprise, anticipation, and barely concealed amusement.

Adrian looked up sharply, and the instant he saw me standing in the doorway, his pupils tightened.

The easy, practiced laziness vanished from his face and was replaced by something far harder to read: shock, and something complicated underneath it.