My Boyfriend Gave My House to His Three Childhood Friends Chapter 03

My Boyfriend Gave My House to His Three Childhood Friends Chapter 03

The photographer carried on taking pictures.

When we reached the living room, a design statement mounted on the wall caught my eye.

A thick portfolio lay beneath it.

The title on the cover read:

[THE SHARED HOME: AN IDEAL LIVING SPACE FOR FOUR CHILDHOOD FRIENDS]

I opened it to the first page.

It was Ethan’s submission for an award for emerging interior designers.

The project description read:

[Four friends who have known one another for twenty years set out to create a permanent home built around friendship and shared dreams.]

The owner’s details had been deliberately obscured.

But under “Design Clients”, four names were listed.

[Ethan Walker, Sophia Bennett, Claire Brooks, Megan Reed.]

Mine wasn’t there.

The house I’d bought with my father’s inheritance had somehow become, in Ethan’s competition entry, a home the four of them supposedly shared.

“What’s this?”

I held up the portfolio.

A flicker of discomfort crossed Ethan’s face.

“It’s just how I sold it to the judges. They like a project with a story, and the four of us made a better one.”

“And me?”

“You’re not even in the design world. What difference does it make if your name’s there or not?”

He said it as though none of it mattered, as though I were nothing more than the client who had supplied the house and paid every bill, someone who didn’t deserve a place in the story he was telling.

Sophia chimed in, trying to smooth things over.

“If Ethan wins, you benefit too. You can tell people your house was done by an award-winning designer. That’s something to brag about, isn’t it?”

I closed the portfolio.

“You entered my house into a competition without even asking me?”

“We’re getting married. Do we really need forms and signatures between us for every little thing?” Ethan was clearly losing patience. “Erin, why are you suddenly keeping score of everything?”

I laughed.

“You’re right. Let’s settle all of it properly, then.”

Sophia clearly took it as a personal attack and left not long afterwards.

While packing up my father’s belongings, I realised one of his model sets was missing.

It was a set of discontinued model steam locomotives.

My father had spent three full years building them by hand.

The final carriage was still unfinished when he died from his illness.

After buying the house, I’d deliberately set aside a climate-controlled storage room for the collection.

Ethan had complained that the models took up too much room and shoved most of them into a storage cupboard instead.

I opened the cupboard.

Only the empty boxes remained.

“Where are the models?”

No one answered.

I pulled up the indoor security footage and went back two weeks.

On the screen, Sophia was carrying the models into her streaming room.

“We’ve just hit a hundred thousand viewers, so I’m doing a giveaway for one of my longtime followers. This discontinued, hand-built model set is the prize.”

The comments flooded the screen.

Ethan was sitting just outside the camera frame.

He laughed.

“That set’s worth a fortune. You’re actually giving it away?”

Sophia waved him off.

“Doesn’t matter what it’s worth. My loyal followers mean more to me.”

For a moment, I thought I had to be seeing things.

I dragged the timeline forwards.

After the livestream ended, Ethan even praised her for knowing how to generate buzz.

Not one of them had stopped to ask who the model set actually belonged to.

I closed the video and called Sophia.

She answered quickly.

“Where are the models?”

There was silence on the other end for a few seconds.

“Erin, why are you asking about them all of a sudden?”

“I’ll ask you one more time. Where are the models?”

Sophia cleared her throat.

“The winner still hasn’t sent over an address, so I haven’t posted them yet. They’re right at the back of the storage room.”

When I found the models, the box had already been opened.

The coupling on one of the carriages had snapped.

It was a small part my father had shaped and polished by hand.

Someone had carelessly stuck it back together with clear tape.

Ethan saw me crouching on the floor and softened his tone slightly.

“It can be fixed. You know how to repair models yourself, don’t you?”

I looked up at him.

“My father left this to me.”

“I know.” He went quiet for a moment before adding, “But it was just sitting there. Sophia’s audience has been growing, and using it for a giveaway could’ve brought her even more attention.”

I stared at him for a long time.

We’d been together for five years.

He knew my father had been the only family I had, and he knew exactly what this model set meant to me.

Yet in his eyes, something my father had left me still mattered less than the attention Sophia could get from a single livestream.

“Ethan, if Sophia had taken something your dad left you and tried to give it away, would you still be saying that?”

His expression changed at once.

“Do you really have to compare it like that? The models are still here, aren’t they?”

I didn’t argue with him again.

I simply gathered every piece and put them all back into the box.

There was no point explaining myself any further, because no matter what I said, he would never admit why this hurt me.

All he cared about was whether any of it would get in Sophia’s way.