On My Wedding Day, I Married Someone Else Chapter 22

On My Wedding Day, I Married Someone Else Chapter 22

“Karma. It’s all karma.”

Tiffany pulled open the visitation room door. Desperate to escape the suffocating space.

“Derek. Rehabilitate yourself. We won’t be seeing each other again. I’ll delete all your contact info.”

“Get out.”

Derek’s voice was eerily calm. Terrifyingly calm.

Tiffany’s eyes reddened. Deeply wronged.

“Don’t be like that… I don’t have a choice. I have to think about my own future.”

Derek grabbed the cheap plastic cup from the table and hurled it at the glass.

“Get the hell out! Out of my sight! Now!”

The cup shattered against the reinforced glass. A loud, violent crack.

Tiffany screamed. Fled. Didn’t look back. Her heels echoed down the hallway. She never turned around.

Derek’s tears finally fell. He slammed his forehead against the cold glass partition. Again. And again.

Two years later.

Nashville Department of Health. I was with Ethan. Filing the birth certificate for our newborn daughter. Sophia.

I caught a glimpse of a figure. Familiar. Utterly foreign. Walking out of the release corridor.

He’d lost weight. His broad shoulders caved inward. Gray already streaked his temples.

He saw me. Holding a sleeping baby. Face glowing with quiet joy. And he flinched. Scrambled into the shadow of a concrete pillar. Didn’t want me to see him like this.

Some people. Better to remember than to see again. Some stories. Better to close for good.

I looked at the fresh birth certificate. The elegant new name just added. Sophia Mae Hunter.

Ethan pulled me tight against his chest. Pressed a kiss to my forehead. Smiled like a man who’d just been given the whole world.

Derek slumped in the vast shadow. Watching us. A family of three. Bathed in sunlight.

He knew with perfect clarity. The woman who had once loved him with everything she had. She was gone from his life. Completely. Permanently.

He had lost her.

And he knew. He had no one to blame. No one but himself.

[The End]