My Fiance Married His Childhood Sweetheart Before Our Engagement Party Chapter 11

My Fiance Married His Childhood Sweetheart Before Our Engagement Party Chapter 11

“Evelyn? Welcome aboard.”

My new colleagues were warm.

No one knew my past.

No one called me a fool.

Work was busy.

Busy enough that there was no room to think about anything else.

Every morning, I left at seven.

Every night, I returned to the temporary hotel at nine and fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

In the third week, late at night, Olivia sent me a message.

[Your ex went to your parents’ house.]

[How did he get the address?]

[You left an old ID at his place. He used the address.]

[And?]

[Your dad chased him out with a broom.]

My father was a retired veteran.

He was sixty, but his temper had only grown sharper with age.

Olivia sent me a voice message. James had forwarded.

It was a retelling of what happened.

“You humiliated my daughter in front of two hundred people. You made her cut herself off from her family. And now you have the nerve to come to my door? Get out.”

I listened twice.

Every sentence was harsher than the last.

Every word was something I had not said for myself in three years.

“Your mom came out at the end,” Olivia wrote.

[What did she say?]

[She said, “Leave. She isn’t here. We won’t tell you where she went.”]

[What did he say?]

[He said, “Auntie, please. Let me say two words to her. That’s all.”]

[Your mom said, “She waited three hours for you, and you didn’t come. Now you stand here for two hours and feel wronged?”]

[Then she closed the door.]

I put the phone down and stared at the hotel ceiling.

Olivia sent another message.

[He stood in the rain outside your parents’ house.]

[How long?]

[About two hours. Your mom saw from the window. She didn’t open

the door.]

Two hours.

He thought two hours was enough.

Not even close.

A few days later, Olivia sent more news.

[Sophia spent eight thousand dollars in half a month. Clothes, bags, all luxury.]

[When you handled his money, how much was his startup pulling in per month again?]

[Don’t calculate it.]

[One more thing.]

[What?]

[He found out about the investment.]

My hand paused.

[What investment?]

[The fifty-thousand-dollar angel round he bragged about for six months. Said he landed it himself.]

[Yeah.]

[Last week, the investor met him and asked how Evelyn was doing.]

I went silent.

That investment had been the connection I brought him privately.

I wrote the business plan after three sleepless nights.

I never told him because he disliked women interfering with his career.

I never did things he disliked.

I never spoke about things he did not want to know.

[What was his reaction?]

Olivia paused.

[James said he went home, locked himself in the room, and called your old number thirty-seven times.]

[Every time, the line said the number no longer existed.]

Thirty-seven times.

Just like the thirty-seven missed calls he had left me after I disappeared.

He seemed to like that number.

But what numbers I liked, he had never asked.

My phone rang again.

Not Olivia.

A Silicon Valley local number.

*May I speak with Ms. Evelyn Hart? This is Daniel Chen from Yi & Hall

LLP. A client has authorized me to contact you regarding a financial dispute settlement.”

“What is the client’s name?”

“Mr. Adrian Wentworth. He says he owes you several amounts and would like to discuss repayment.”

He had started paying me back.

Not because his conscience had awakened.

Because he finally realized I was not coming back.

And someone who was not coming back could really sue.

“Please tell him I still have the twenty-thousand-dollar promissory note and the five-thousand-dollar transfer record.”

“No meeting is needed. We can proceed legally.”

At the end of my first quarter, my director praised me during a team meeting.

“Evelyn, your proposal received the best client feedback this quarter. Next month, you’ll independently lead a product line.”

Everyone applauded.

The young woman sitting beside me patted my arm and whispered, “That’s huge.”

I stood at the whiteboard and smiled.

My fingers tightened slightly around the marker cap.

No one knew three months ago, I had crouched outside a ballroom with only two hundred dollars left in my bank account.

No one knew that in the guest room of a New York apartment, I hadn’t even had a full blanket to myself.

After the meeting, the director asked me to stay behind for two minutes.

“There’s a three-year gap in your resume before you joined us. Do you mind telling me about it?”

“I took care of family.”

He nodded and did not pry.

Three years.

On a resume, it was a light little phrase.

Those who lived through it knew how heavy those years could be.

The night my first full paycheck arrived, I went to the grocery store downstairs alone.

I stood in front of the shelves for a long time.

I bought yogurt, strawberries, and a bag of spicy chips I liked.

I never dared buy them before.

Adrian said that kind of thing was unhealthy.

Every time I placed snacks into the cart, he frowned and silently put them back on the shelf.

Eventually, I stopped putting them in.

His idea of unhealthy only applied to me.

Sophia’s posts were full of fried chicken and pizza with him.

He even held skewers for her while taking photos.

Back at the hotel, I sat on the edge of the bed, opened the chips, and ate them one by one.

They were so spicy my lips went numb.

But my stomach felt warm.

What was that feeling called?

It was called deciding for myself.