I Saved 10,000 Points For Our Wedding, He Deducted 500 For Her Chapter 06

I Saved 10,000 Points For Our Wedding, He Deducted 500 For Her Chapter 06

When Ethan left the mall, rain had started again.

He stood in it without an umbrella.

He wondered if Claire had been this cold the day she stood in the rain holding ninety-nine roses.

I had been in western Utah for twelve days.

Every morning, birds woke me. I would pull back the curtains to green slopes in the distance, and sometimes the first twenty-six years of my life felt like a dream left out in the rain until it fell apart.

On the eighth day, I finally found the courage to clean out my phone.

The album labeled “Ethan” held more than a thousand photos.

His profile as he drank water. His hand resting on the steering wheel. The way he tipped his chin toward the stands after sinking a three-pointer on the court.

There was another one from earlier that year. Snow had been falling hard while he stood on the balcony taking a call from Sienna, his shadow stretched long beneath a streetlight. I had taken the picture through the glass, thinking I had captured something tender.

Now, it only looked ridiculous.

I selected them one after another and hit delete.

One thousand three hundred twenty-seven photos. Gone in a minute.

That afternoon, I sat on the steps outside the B&B and watched the wind ruffle the thin sheet of water over the distant salt flats. I felt lighter than I had in years.

I opened a new Instagram account and started posting.

Sunrise over the salt flats. Wildflowers on the slopes. The innkeeper’s homemade yogurt. Ribbons fluttering along a fence at dusk.

Only a handful of people followed me.

By the fourth day, I noticed the same new like beneath every post.

The account followed me too. Its username was a string of random letters and numbers.

The profile was blank. Its picture was a solid black square.

But I knew who it was.

I blocked him.

Then I deactivated the new account.

The next day, my phone buzzed with a text from Ethan.

[Claire, are you done with this yet? Come home when you’ve calmed down.]

[I’ll come get you next week.]

Message after message followed, all in the same tone: impatient, certain, like my return was a given.

I stared at the screen for two seconds, then blocked him.

Three days later, someone knocked at the gate.

I opened it and found Ethan standing outside.

The high-desert sun beat down on him. He wore a light jacket, wind in his hair, a dark line of stubble along

his jaw.

His lips parted when he saw me.

“Claire…”

“Why are you here?”

My voice was flat as still water.

He stepped forward. I raised a hand, stopping him.

His hand hung in the air for a moment, then dropped.

“I talked to Sienna. I made it clear where things stand.”

His voice came out rough.

“Come back. We’ll get married. I’ll give you everything you wanted: the ring, the wedding, the honeymoon. You pick the place. Just stop this and come home.”

I looked into his eyes.

At eighteen, I had thought they held an entire summer: bright, warm, clean.

Later, I realized I had never been what they reflected. It had always been Sienna, and the promise he had built around her, the promise that she would always come first.

I raised my hand and slapped him across the face.

The slap cracked through the still desert air.

“Ethan, listen carefully.”

“I’m not coming back.”

I stepped back and closed the gate, leaving him alone outside.

As the gate closed, I heard him murmur something.

“Claire, I regret it…”

The wind carried the words away before they fully reached me.