He Chose Her Over Me So I Chose Myself Chapter 01
At my engagement dinner, I pushed both passes across the table to my sister.
I kept neither.
One was a VIP pass that granted access to the main hall.
The other was a plastic wristband that only got you into the side room to watch a livestream.
When my fiancé laid them out, he’d told me to choose.
I really did choose the VIP pass.
He took it from me at once and hung it around my sister’s neck with his own hands.
“She’s representing the young scholars. She has to be at the main table.”
“You like quiet,” he’d added, turning to me. “The wristband suits you better.”
I looked at my now-empty hand and suddenly found the whole thing ridiculous.
If the outcome was already decided, why ask me to choose at all?
Because they liked watching me reach for the better thing.
Then watching it be given to my sister.
And in the end, I was supposed to take the lesser option and say it was fine.
I’d been through that kind of choice too many times.
When we were kids, they put two summer camp brochures in front of us.
My sister chose Switzerland, so I had to stay at a camp nearby.
When it was time to apply to college, everyone encouraged her to aim for the best school she could get into.
The moment I mentioned my dream school, they persuaded me to choose a safer state university instead.
Even love had worked the same way.
My fiancé had always been close to my sister.
It was only after she left for Oxford that he started seeking me out.
When he proposed, he told me the past was over.
I believed him.
I even thought that getting engaged meant that, for once, I had finally been chosen without hesitation.
But here we were at my own engagement dinner, and he was still thinking first about where my sister should sit.
As for me, the fiancée, I was only fit to watch my own engagement party on a screen in the overflow room.
My sister held the VIP pass and said softly that she really needed it.
I didn’t fight her for it.
But I didn’t take the wristband the way I always had before.
I pushed both items toward her.
“You can have them both.”
“I’m not choosing anymore.”
Maybe they thought I was being mature again, stepping aside with grace.
Only I knew the truth.
What I shoved away this time wasn’t just two passes.
…
Grant’s face darkened.
“June, don’t make a scene.”
He pushed the plastic wristband back toward me.
“Camille needs to meet her advisors tonight. Of course she can’t be in the overflow room. You’re different.”
“You’re not good with all those people anyway,” he continued. “A quiet room suits you better. Besides, everyone knows you’re our family’s lucky charm. Even if you’re not in the main hall, no one will mind.”
Lucky charm.
That name again.
Every year before the Mercer family filmed one of their adoption-charity videos, my mother would hand me the same line.
“Being chosen by the Mercer family is the greatest blessing of my life.”
I said it from the age of eight into my twenties. Smile for the camera. Stay quiet at banquets. When people praised my adoptive parents for their kindness, I made sure my eyes welled with tears at just the right moment before I thanked them.
I was not a daughter.
I was a prop used to prove their goodness.
Grant knew perfectly well how much I hated that name. I’d told him more than once, and every time he promised he’d remember.
But the moment he needed me to give way, I became that “lucky charm” all over again.
I looked up at him, my voice unnaturally calm.
“Grant, we need to reconsider this engagement.”
He froze for a second, then smiled with a kind of helpless amusement.
“Over a pass?”
“You’re just in a bad mood. Tomorrow, I’ll take you shopping in New York. Buy whatever you want. Don’t talk about ending the engagement just to scare me.”
As if my dignity had a price tag. As if a new handbag could smooth this all over.
Camille looked at me, then at the eyes turning toward us from around the room, and finally took the pass from her neck.
“Here, June. You take it. This is your engagement dinner. Don’t be childish.”
She held it out to me.
I hadn’t even reached for it before Grant caught her wrist.
“No.”
He moved so fast there wasn’t a trace of hesitation.
He put the pass back around Camille’s neck himself, even smoothing the strap for her.
“That pass was always meant to help her meet her advisors tonight. You don’t need it, June. It would be pointless to give it to you.”
The space around our table went suddenly quiet.
I looked at the pass that had never belonged to me in the first place, and the last sliver of doubt I had vanished.
He had never meant for me to choose.
He had only wanted me to pick it up with my own hand—
and then watch it be given to Camille.
…
The next afternoon, Grant took me to Beacon Hill as if nothing had happened.
“The house is ready,” he said. “Once you see it, you’ll stop talking about breaking up.”
The moment the car stopped, Camille called.
“I want to get some ideas for interior design. Can I see it?”
Grant immediately had the driver set up a video call on the tablet and spent the entire tour holding it up for her.
The house was divided into two units. The main floor had wall-to-wall windows, sunlight spilling across the living room. The garden-level apartment downstairs had only a few small, street-facing windows.
Grant spread two keys across his palm.
“June, you choose.”
I picked up the one marked Main Floor.
On the screen, Camille hesitated. “Actually, the study upstairs would suit me really well. If I come back to Boston, I might need somewhere quiet to write.”
Grant took the key straight from my hand.
“Then the main floor is yours,” he said to the screen.
He turned and offered me the key to the downstairs apartment.
“You do stained glass. The lower level is more practical. You won’t have to worry about damaging the floors.”
Again.
He only let me choose so I could see exactly what Camille was taking from me.
I didn’t take the key.
“Tonight, I’m moving my things out of your apartment.”
Grant’s face went completely cold.
“You’re still not done with this?”
That evening, he called my adoptive parents over.
The moment my mother walked in, she slammed her handbag onto the coffee table.
“June, have you lost your mind? You want to break off an engagement over a room and a pass? How old are you?”
She stared at me, her voice rising with every word.
“Everything you have—what part of it didn’t come from us? Don’t forget your place.”
“The fact that Grant was willing to get engaged to you is your good fortune. If you weren’t riding on Camille’s coattails, you wouldn’t even have access to this world.”
My father didn’t stop her. He only said grimly, “Don’t embarrass the Mercer family.”
At that, Grant stepped in front of me.
“Mrs. Mercer, please. Don’t be like this. June is wonderful. I’ve never thought she wasn’t good enough for me. She’s just been under a lot of pressure lately.”
My mother’s expression softened at once.
“You hear that? Grant is still speaking up for you. Where are you ever going to find someone so tolerant?”
The three of them looked at me, waiting for me to admit I was wrong.
I lowered my eyes and said only one word.
“Fine.”
Grant’s shoulders relaxed. My mother picked up her bag with satisfaction, and my father took it as settled.
They all thought I had once again learned to be grateful.
Back in my room, I locked the door, opened my laptop, and let tears fall one by one onto the keyboard without a sound.
After finding a family lawyer, I opened a new email and typed the first line:
“Hello, I need legal advice on the process for revoking the release for my image, and on how to lawfully rescind my intent to marry before the wedding day.”