My Fiancé Played a Couple-Swap Game, I’m Done Being The Outsider Chapter 09

My Fiancé Played a Couple-Swap Game, I’m Done Being The Outsider Chapter 09

Three months later, Dorian finally found me.

I’d moved to a small coastal town in the north-Portland.

Joined a documentary team, filming lighthouses, shorelines, and the people who lived along the edge of the sea.

He found me by an old pier.

I was wearing a windbreaker.

My hair tangled by the salt air, camera raised toward an elderly fisherman weaving a net.

He watched from a distance.

It was the first time he’d seen me behind a lens-without them in the frame.

I was smiling.

Not to please anyone. Not because someone told me to lighten up.

A kind of lightness he hadn’t seen in years.

When I finished and turned, the smile faded.

“What are you doing here?”

His throat tightened.

The words he’d rehearsed fell apart.

“Come back with me.”

I shook my head. “This is my job.”

“Quit it.”

He said it fast-like he always did when making decisions for me.

“I’ll redo the wedding. I left the group chat.”

“Lilith won’t be in our lives anymore. From now on, it’s just us.”

I looked at him quietly.

“Dorian. You still don’t get it.”

His face stiffened.

“I didn’t leave to make you leave the group. Or to make you cut Lilith off.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I don’t want you anymore.”

The wind pushed between us. His eyes reddened.

“Over a game?”

I almost laughed.

“You think it was just a game?”

“Seven blank cards-a game. Sleeping on the couch-a game.”

“Being left alone on the boat-a game.”

“My ring on her finger, my dress on her body, my fiancé kissing her-all games.”

“Then what about the past seven years?”

“The way all five of you made sure I never really belonged.”

“Every time I brought it up, you told me I was being too sensitive.”

“I bent myself into shapes trying to fit.”

“And in the end, you called me the third wheel.”

“Dorian, it wasn’t the game that made me leave.”

“It was the game that finally let me see-for seven years, you never really chose me.”

His lips trembled. “I was going to marry you.”

“You were going to marry me. But you loved her.”

“You gave your time to your friends. All you gave me was the wedding.”

I asked, quietly, “Because I was the one who took care of you?”

His face went white.

He’d said it once on the terrace-drunk, but not wrong.

She was the one in his heart.

I was the one who made sense.

“I was drunk, Lyra.”

“You told the truth.”

I kept going. “You know how to take care of people, Dorian.”

“You just never did it for me. Because you knew I’d stay anyway.”

He stood there, shoulders sinking.

Finally, he pulled out the plain gold ring.

“I found it at the airport lost and found.”

“I asked around. They said you left it there on purpose.”

“We can start over.”

“I’ll redo everything-the ring, the wedding, all of it.”

I didn’t take it.

His voice broke. “Tell me what to do. Just tell me.”

“If you come back, I’ll change anything.”

I looked at him, and he knew.

I wasn’t coming back.