He Cheated With My Friend My Parents Helped Chapter 38
I had already carried that loss, and left it a long way behind me.
Thomas and Laura still inquired about me through my lawyer before Christmas each year.
The lawyer only ever told them that I was doing well.
They never came to Boston again.
After Sienna left Seattle, no one ever heard from her. She had tried to take my mother, my husband, and my family, and in the end, she was left with nothing that was ever truly hers.
They all paid a price for the choices they made.
And I no longer looked back to see what it was.
That spring, Julian took me back to our old college coffee shop.
He set a small box on the table between us and was so nervous he knocked over his glass of water.
I pulled out a handful of napkins and watched him clumsily mop up the spill.
“Did you forget everything you planned to say?”
“Half of it,” he admitted.
“And the other half?”
He stopped what he was doing and looked at me, his expression suddenly serious.
“Margot, I’m not going to promise to decide the rest of your life for you. I just want to ask if you’ll let me be a part of the future that you choose.”
I didn’t look at the ring box.
“What if I change my mind someday?”
“That will always be your right.”
I smiled and held out my hand.
“Then yes.”
As he slipped the ring onto my finger, his hand was shaking even more than mine had when I’d signed the divorce papers.
I lowered my eyes and looked at the ring for a moment before placing my hand in his.
When we walked out of the coffee shop, a light rain was falling.
Julian opened an umbrella and asked if I wanted to go home or go out and celebrate.
I looked at the streetlights just beginning to glow in the dusk.
“Let’s eat first. I’m hungry.”
Together, we walked into the evening crowd.
Gabriel’s regret, my parents’ apologies, and Sienna’s resentment all stayed behind us.
They had come too late, and they could no longer change my path.
This time, my life belonged only to me.
The End