My Boyfriend Gave My House to His Three Childhood Friends Chapter 07

My Boyfriend Gave My House to His Three Childhood Friends Chapter 07

Not long after that, Megan contacted me and asked to meet alone.

At the café, she slid an old phone across the table.

“This is our old group chat. It was Sophia’s idea to register the studio at the house. Claire and I only stayed over a few times.”

She was clearly in a hurry to dump every bit of blame on the other three.

I didn’t call her out on it. I just opened the chat history.

The group was called:

[THE FOUR OF US, FOREVER]

The earliest message had been sent before the renovation even started.

Sophia asked:

[Erin’s really willing to spend that much on the renovation?]

Ethan replied:

[Her dad died, and she hasn’t got any other family. It’s not as if she’s got anything else to do with the inheritance.]

[We’re getting married anyway. Once we do, she’ll let me decide how the house is used.]

Claire sent a laughing emoji.

[Then make sure we each get our own room.]

—

Ethan replied:

[Don’t worry. I’m designing the whole place around the way the four of us live.]

[Erin works late all the time anyway. She’s hardly ever home.]

Further down were their messages about access to the smart lock.

Megan asked:

[You’re not adding Erin’s fingerprint?]

Ethan replied:

[I’ll let her use a temporary code for now.]

[The admin access is tied to my designer account. Adding another user is a pain.]

Sophia immediately replied:

[Then don’t add her. Saves us having her suddenly turn up while we’re livestreaming.]

Ethan sent a resigned emoji.

[I’ll get her to go along with it.]

I kept scrolling.

They had discussed every detail: the renovation commissions, the story Ethan used for the design competition, and Sophia registering her company at my address.

Whenever anyone worried that I might object, Ethan always gave

—

them the same answer.

[She hasn’t got any other family left. That’s why she cares so much about me.]

[As long as I keep telling her we’ll get married, she won’t leave me over any of this.]

I stared at those two messages, and all at once I remembered how, after my father died, Ethan had stayed beside me and helped me deal with everything.

Back then, I’d thought of him as the only family I had left.

That was exactly why I’d trusted him with the money my father left me, with my home, and with my entire future.

But Ethan had never seen that trust as proof of how much I loved him.

He’d only seen it as a guarantee that I would never leave.

Megan was still trying to explain herself.

“I’ll testify if you need me to. Most of this was decided by those two. Can’t you just leave me out of it?”

I closed the chat.

“Send the complete chat history to my lawyer. Whether you’re held responsible will depend on what the evidence shows.”

Her face tightened.

Before she left, though, she sent me the entire chat history.

—

For years, they had insisted that their twenty-year friendship would never change.

Yet when it came time to take responsibility, they couldn’t even sit together for an hour before they started blaming one another.