The Wedding Ring That Never Made It to My Finger Chapter 10

The Wedding Ring That Never Made It to My Finger Chapter 10

Eight years. Right. I’d already wasted eight of them on him.

How many times could you hand someone eight years of your life?

Ethan kept driving his fists into the ground, harder each time. As if he could absorb every hurt he’d caused me by inflicting it on himself.

A crowd was forming. People stopped, stared, whispered. Phones came out.

The man who used to obsess over what people thought of him didn’t seem to notice any of it. He just kept punching the pavement, mechanical, numb.

“Stand up.” He didn’t. The next slam was harder.

“What does this fix, Ethan?” “Everything’s already done. My mom’s in the ground. So what’s the point?”

“Clara.” His voice was shaking.

“I know I shouldn’t have come. I know you don’t want to see me.”

“I know sorry doesn’t mean anything anymore. Not after everything I’ve done.”

“But I can’t… I can’t lose you.”

His sincerity was so naked it almost made me laugh.

Every wound he’d never acknowledged – every single one

—

surged up in me at once.

I bent down and slapped him across the face. I didn’t hold back.

“A man like you doesn’t deserve forgiveness.”

“You want to make it right? Do me a favor and drop dead. That’s the only thing that would actually make me happy.”

The words landed like a blow. He went completely still.

His cheek was already swelling, the outline of my hand rising red against his skin.

By the time he looked up, I was already inside.

The security guards were closing in.

“Get up. Get out. Now. You don’t work here. Pull this again and we’re calling the cops.”

Through the glass doors, he watched me walk away. Then his body gave out.

He knew I wouldn’t forgive him. He knew it was over.

He stopped coming to my office. Instead, he started showing up outside my apartment.

He’d sit on the front steps and wait for me to come home.

Every time I came home, he’d reach for my hand. Apologizing, begging, tearing at his own hair.

One night, he broke down. His tears fell onto the back of my hand, one after another.

I had never seen him cry. Not once in eight years.

He was crying because he was losing me, and he finally understood what that meant.

I exhaled and decided to end this for good.

I called the police. Filed a harassment report and got a restraining order.

He spent a night in a holding cell.

This time, he didn’t come back.

Instead, he left an envelope tucked into my door frame.

Inside was a cashier’s check and a note.

“Everything I have. Take it as an apology, or as what I owe you either way, it’s yours.”

“You don’t have to use it. But please don’t send it back. It’s the only thing I have left to give.”

I read the note, felt nothing, and set it down.

I donated every cent to a scholarship fund for underprivileged girls.

After that, I poured everything I had into my work.

No more second–guessing. No more waiting for someone else to decide my worth. I put everything into myself.

Once I’d built up enough savings and the right connections, I left the firm and opened my own studio.

On opening day, I heard what had happened to Nina and Ethan.

Ethan’s desperate, very public search had raised questions back home. People who knew us started asking.

It all came out when someone walked in on Nina, on her knees, begging Ethan not to leave, hysterical.

After that, Nina’s name was poison.

People took my side. Family, old friends, everyone. They turned on her

–

called her every name in the book.

Nina couldn’t take it. She walked into the river one night and didn’t come back.

Her parents blamed Ethan for everything and came after him – demanding money, demanding answers.

During a confrontation on his apartment balcony, Nina’s father shoved him. Ethan went over the edge.

By the time the ambulance arrived, he was gone.

The two people who had once mattered most in my life were both dead in ways so absurd they barely felt real.

—

But something in my chest unclenched. For the first time in years, I could breathe.

I picked up the scissors and cut the ribbon.

The ribbon fell. The room applauded. And the life ahead of me, for the first time, was entirely my own.

THE END