My Best Friend’s Secret Plan, My Dead Husband’s Watching Eyes Chapter 08

My Best Friend’s Secret Plan, My Dead Husband’s Watching Eyes Chapter 08

“I believe you”

Three words Everything inside me unclenched.

My legs gave out. I caught myself against the wall, gasping like someone who’d just broken the surface of

the water

Vanessa and Miles knew it was over

They tried to argue Graham didn’t let them

“Take them out to the wilderness Leave them there”

Miles went white He dropped to his knees in front of Graham, crawling the last few feet

“Mr. Ashford, it was all Vanessa She told me to do everything the setup, the frame job, all of it. I just did

what she said!”

Vanessa screamed and tore at him.

“Shut up! I didn’t do anything!”

When it came down to saving his own skin, Miles threw Vanessa under the bus without blinking.

He told Graham everything Every detail, start to finish.

“Mr. Ashford, please let me go. Please let me go!”

Graham didn’t move. So Miles turned to me and threw himself at my feet, his head cracking against the floor

in his panic

“Maren, please I was there for you for three months. Ask him to let me go. I’ll never come near you again. I

swear

Blood ran down his forehead. I felt nothing.

If they had succeeded, I would be the one dead today.

Security dragged Miles away, screaming.

Vanessa’s face was streaked with tears.

She made one last play.

“Maren, after everything we’ve been through, you’re really going to let them…”

I cut her off

Exactly After all those years of friendship, how could you treat me this way?”

“I bought you bags, sent you money, got your whole family jobs. What more did you want?”

“I was nothing but a friend to you. Why did you want me dead?”

Her lips trembled. She had nothing left to say.

I was done with her. I turned my back, and security dragged her away too.

Graham didn’t kill them.

He stripped them of everything and dumped them deep in the wilderness, miles from civilization.

Whether they made it out alive was no longer my problem.

After everything, I finally understood one thing.

I couldn’t build my life on someone else’s strength.

If I’d been stronger, Miles and Vanessa never could have gotten to me.

So, I gave the inheritance back to Graham.

I sold my jewelry, taught myself finance, and started my own company.

The next time I saw Miles and Vanessa, they were barely recognizable.

Miles was dying of rabies. His whole body shook with constant, uncontrollable tremors.

“Maren, those three months with you, there were times I actually cared. More than I should have.”

“You were so easy to break. Sometimes I wondered what would’ve happened if I’d told you the truth. Come clean Walked away from Vanessa. Would you have loved me for real?”

“No.”

Graham was everything. He always had been.

What I felt for Miles was never love. It was just needing someone to lean on.

He tried to smile.

“I get it. When it came down to it, I didn’t choose you either. Fair’s fair.”

Vanessa was worse off.

She’d suffered a miscarriage, and she couldn’t stop bleeding.

A volunteer wanted to take her to the hospital, but she refused.

“Maren, I’m sorry. I was jealous of you. I was always jealous of you.”

“Your whole life, everything just worked for you. Mine never did. I wanted out so badly. If I’d never been given

the chance, maybe I could’ve lived with that.”

“But then the system found me.”

I didn’t say anything. I paid a nurse to give her morphine for the pain.

She didn’t make it.

Miles lasted three days in the hospital before he was gone, too.

The day I came home from work and found Graham in the kitchen, I knew something was different.

Things between us had been strained. The trust wasn’t all the way back.

I kept long hours. Left before he woke up, came home after dark.

He’d stopped asking where I’d been, what I’d done–all the questions he used to fire at me the second I

walked through the door.

“I didn’t trust you. I’m sorry.”

His eyes were red, his voice low.

“The second I died, all I could think about was you. You were alone. I couldn’t stand it. I did everything I could

to get back to you.”

“But then I saw you with him. And I couldn’t handle it.”

“I kept thinking, why did I have to die? Why did he get to be the one standing next to you?”

“Even now, it hurts. You’re different with me. There’s a wall that wasn’t there before.”

“You don’t need me the way you used to.”

“I can’t hold on to you the way I used to. I know that. And I can see how much you love what you’re doing

now.”

“So, I let go.”

“Maren, forgive me.”

I looked at the blueberry hand pies he’d made, each one neat and precise, and I was sixteen again.

Back then, his hovering drove me crazy. Whenever I gave him the silent treatment, he’d make these.

Because he knew I loved blueberries.

I took a bite. “It’s perfect,” I said. “I love it.”

Graham’s eyes filled with tears. He pulled me into his arms and held on.

Our story wasn’t over. It was just starting. And everything that came before, I let it go.