Six Rigged Reviews for Your Assistant? Congrats, You Lost Your Fiancée Chapter 02

Six Rigged Reviews for Your Assistant? Congrats, You Lost Your Fiancée Chapter 02

I turned away and poured myself a glass of water in the kitchen.

When I returned, Nolan was laughing into his phone.

“You lost. Don’t forget what you promised.”

I had not seen him smile like that in years.

He used to say he needed to become mature and dependable so he could earn enough to give me a better life.

He never understood that I had not wanted more money. I had only wanted us to be happy together.

Sloane’s sugary voice came through the speaker.

“Maren is hopeless. I can’t believe she didn’t slap you after that.”

“Now I have to wear lace underwear to the office tomorrow. This is so unfair.”

Nolan chuckled. “Then I’ll be watching.”

At some point, even the details of our relationship had become material for his private games with Sloane.

When Nolan saw me, he ended the call and tossed his phone aside. He pulled me into a careless hug.

“It was only a joke. The food was untouched.”

“You’re always so serious and restrained. You could learn something from how sweet and easygoing Sloane is.”

Serious? Restrained?

He had once told me he loved my discipline and attention to detail.

When had he become shameless enough to make sexual wagers with his own assistant?

I studied the familiar face that had somehow become a stranger.

We had once been happy.

Nolan used to notice everything about me. He remembered when my period was due and every passing comment I made.

Then Sloane became his executive assistant, and our life changed one small piece at a time.

First, he complained that she was clumsy.

Later, those complaints became stories about how innocent and adorable she was.

Then he gave her the innovation award six years in a row.

Now he used our private life as entertainment and told her what underwear to wear at work.

The Nolan I had loved no longer existed.

I remembered the years when his attention never wandered.

He used to call between meetings just to ask whether I had eaten, and he once crossed town in a storm because I mentioned feeling sick.

Those memories made the man in front of me even harder to recognize.

I closed my eyes, and tears slipped down my face.

When I opened them again, I pushed him away.

“Nolan, we’re done.”

His expression froze before his brows drew together.

“Maren, do you even understand what you’re saying?”

“You’re ending an eight-year relationship over one joke?”

He had clearly never imagined I would leave. His anger erupted.

“You have no parents and no one else. You’ve depended on me for years, so what gives you the right to break up with me?”

“You aren’t as sweet as Sloane, and you’ve never been as considerate.”

My tears came faster.

“I depended on you? I had a career, and half the seed capital for this company came from me.”

“Wasn’t I considerate before? I gave you everything, and this was how you saw me?”

Whenever a client dinner ran late, I stayed awake with coffee and a hangover remedy waiting for him.

I chose his work clothes every morning, right down to his socks.

He had responded by asking why I did not put that energy into my job.

“Your writing gets worse every year,” he once said. “Stop arranging your whole life around me.

“Don’t you have friends of your own?”

I had actually believed I was the problem.

I became careful about everything and expected nothing. Even when I lost each annual review, I never blamed him.

I spent nights revising proposals after finishing his schedules, convinced that if I became useful enough, patient enough, and accomplished enough, he would finally keep his word.

Every rejection made me work harder while giving him another year of freedom.

Now I understood that the quality of my proposals had never mattered.

The review had only been Nolan’s excuse to avoid marrying me.