My Cheating Boyfriend Thought I Was Obedient—So I Married Someone Else Chapter 14

My Cheating Boyfriend Thought I Was Obedient—So I Married Someone Else Chapter 14

After that day, Kael didn’t leave.

He bought a move-in-ready apartment near my house without blinking. Spent every spare minute at our family diner.

Sometimes he’d run into Silas.

Silas didn’t have Kael’s brazen, unshakable confidence. After a few encounters, he stopped coming

The day Silas flew back to the UK, I took him out for dinner.

He drank a lot. Kept looking at me. “If I’d come back a little sooner. Or a little later. Either would’ve

been fine. But it had to be now.”

Yeah. It had to be now.

I hadn’t finished letting go. Still pulling myself out of the wreckage. The only way out was to save

myself.

I raised my glass. “Until fate brings us together again.”

Kael had always been good with words. After days of getting nothing from me, he turned his

attention to my mom.

A man born into gold and power. Now he was waiting tables. Counting change. Running orders.

Customers at a small diner could be impossible. More than once I caught him with a dark scowl,

barely choking back his temper.

Tall, broad, crammed into that tiny noodle shop. Couldn’t chase him off.

Under that kind of siege, my mom started wavering.

One day, she came to me. Asked if I might consider getting back together with Kael.

My hands paused what they were doing. My voice came out flat. “Mom. He cheated. It’s not like you don’t know.”

“But he admitted he was wrong. Look at him. All these days. Some rich family’s son, bowing and scraping, doing grunt work, begging you to forgive him.”

“Cheating. So what? He admitted it. He knows he messed up. He won’t do it again. That’s enough.”

“Besides. Name one man in this world who doesn’t cheat. The ones who don’t cheat before marriage? They cheat after. Your father. As honest as they come. Still cheated.”

“Any man you find will cheat just the same. If you ask me, pick the one with money and power. He cheats, you still end up with a fortune. Way better than some average guy-”

I asked her, calm. “And then what? Get married? Beg him the way you used to beg Dad? You know what, Mom? I learned it from you. I learned to beg men just like you did. That’s why I went back to him over and over. Forgave him over and over. And he kept cheating. Every time.”

“Is this what you want for me? Marry a man who isn’t faithful. Have a child nobody wants. Spend my whole life with people pointing fingers.”

My dad cheated when I was six. I was so little. But I watched my mom forgive him. Again and again

and again.

If he hadn’t gotten hit by a car on his way to his mistress, she’d probably still be forgiving him to this day.

I never said these things to her face. But now I drove the knife in without hesitation.

When I realized what I’d done, I wiped my eyes. “I’m sorry, Mom. I—”

She clutched her apron and looked at me. Then turned and walked into her bedroom.

That night, my bedroom door opened. A rough, calloused hand touched my face.

I heard her whisper through tears. “I’m sorry, Elara. Mom shouldn’t have said those things today.”

I didn’t answer. In the dark, tears soaked into my pillow.

The bond between mothers and daughters is like vines and trees. Dependency. Entanglement. Growing together. Mixed with the most extreme love and expectation. And a hidden edge of hate and resentment.

So often, it’s a knot that can’t be untied. Draining each other in silence.

But just as often, after words cut where they shouldn’t, the regret comes fast and sharp.