My Fiancé Said I Was the Homewrecker Between Him and My BFF? Screw Them Both! Chapter 03

My Fiancé Said I Was the Homewrecker Between Him and My BFF? Screw Them Both! Chapter 03

Phoebe turned the wedding ring on her finger and took her time.

“Do you know why Preston talked you out of going abroad?”

“Because I wanted you to hear it from me. I didn’t sneak in on you. Those six years you had with him? I handed them to you.”

I froze where I stood.

She smiled. “That letter Preston wrote when he asked you out? I got the exact same one.”

“I told him friendship was the safer thing, and that’s when he turned around and went for you.”

“And because I’m your best friend, he got to be good to me forever and nobody could say a word about it.”

I pressed my lips together, and I had nothing to say back.

For six years, Preston had used that exact reason on me more times than I could count.

Her project went badly, so Preston took her overseas for a month.

A breakup put her in a bad mood, so Preston took her through an entire mall.

The reason was always simple and always enough. “She’s your best friend. I’m looking after her for you.”

When it was my turn, a bad quarter at work got me “you’ll do better next time,” and a bad day got me “don’t cry, be strong.”

She looked at me with pity.

“You liked him so much that I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. But I’m having his baby now, so I don’t have a choice.”

I pulled my mouth into something like a smile.

“Fine. I’ll break up with him, and the two of you can have each other. Does that work?”

Footsteps stopped at the corner, and Preston’s face was very dark.

“What are you talking about? I told you I’d explain.”

He took out his phone, opened a video, and held it up in front of me.

“I was drunk that night and I thought she was you. Listen to it yourself. It’s your name I’m saying, the whole time.”

“Nobody wanted this to happen. Don’t accuse people before you know the truth.”

The camera looked down on two people tangled together.

My name came through in the middle of all those sounds, and my stomach turned over.

Preston didn’t notice a thing. He pulled me in tight.

“I kept it from you because I didn’t want to damage what we have. The wedding was a formality, something to give Phoebe what she wanted.”

“Your mom is still in that hospital room waiting to see us married. We’ll make it legal tomorrow, just like we planned. You’re the one I’m actually marrying.”

I grabbed the phone and threw it on the floor, and the video’s sound cut off.

Phoebe screamed and dropped to the ground with her hands over her stomach, crying out Preston’s name.

Preston shoved past me and picked her up.

The blisters on my leg were still untreated, and they broke open against the lamppost beside me, and the pain went straight through me.

Preston didn’t look at my face. His eyes were red, and he stared at me.

“Drop the act. The cream I bought kills the pain. Using an injury to get attention? When did you start competing with her like this?”

“Phoebe and that baby didn’t do anything to you. Stop taking it out on her!”

I watched him hurry away, and something from six years ago came back to me.

On a trip together, I had taken a falling sign for him, and he had carried me to the hospital in exactly that same panic.

The man who swore he’d never let me get hurt again had been gone a long time.

I checked my bag into storage and took a cab to the hospital.

The nurse dressed the burn, and the pain broke me out in a cold sweat. She frowned at it. “A burn like this, and nobody in your family brought you in sooner?”

I looked down at the photo my brother had posted in the group chat.

In it, he was holding flowers and pulling a face to make Phoebe laugh.

Preston sat on the edge of the bed, feeding her soup, and his sister was on the other side, showing off pictures from the wedding.

They looked like one big happy family.

I left the group chat and said it flatly.

“I don’t have a family.”