He Broke Me For The Girl Who Bullied Me Chapter 03
My phone kept ringing.
I turned it off.
While packing, I’d found a folder in his drawer with the deed to the apartment. I shoved it back where it was.
I used to marvel at how he’d found us such a cheap place, so close to my office.
I never once suspected he was the landlord.
The street was empty. The moon overhead was cold and bright. My suitcase wheels rattled against the sidewalk, obscenely loud in the silence.
Louder still — the screech of tires behind me.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Ethan was breathing hard. His fingers dug into my wrist.
“You’re a grown woman, and you’re throwing a tantrum? Grow up.”
“Come on. We’re going home.”
I turned my face away so I wouldn’t have to look at the red marks blooming on his neck. Yanked my wrist free.
“We don’t have a home anymore.”
He stared at me. I tried to walk around him. He grabbed me and pulled me back.
“Be reasonable. Okay?”
“Whatever happened between you and Celeste was a long time ago. How long are you going to keep dredging this up?”
“You have to move on. You know what these last five years have been like with me. You’ll never find another guy who treats you the way I do.”
The reason I kept dragging it up was because it hurt, you asshole. Because it had gutted me and I had never fully healed.
And he could shrink all of that — every sleepless night, every scar — down to the word whatever.
I looked at him carefully.
This face. The one that used to make my whole chest go warm just by turning toward me.
How had it become so unrecognizable?
My own fault. I’d never really seen him.
My head throbbed. I didn’t have it in me to argue anymore.
“The key’s under the doormat. I didn’t take anything you gave me. Except the clothes I’m wearing — you cut this shirt when the bowl broke.”
“I’ll pay you back. Whatever it costs.”
“You can’t afford it.”
He laughed like I’d told a joke.
“You think I bought this off the rack? It’s custom-made, sweetheart. How exactly are you planning to pay me back? With your forty-grand-a-year salary? Your pride?”
“If you’ve got any pride, why don’t you just take it off—”
He didn’t finish.
Because I was already undoing the buttons. One. Two.
“Fuck!”
He shoved his coat around my shoulders, teeth clenched.
“Audrey. You’ve actually lost your mind.”
He wrestled me into the car without a word. The engine roared.
We drove until we reached Ethan’s real home.
A mansion. The kind of place I’d only ever seen on television — a Lincoln Park estate.
“You’re sleeping here tonight.”
He led me to a bedroom.
The clothes hanging in the closet were all in my size. The toiletries on the vanity were all my brands.
And on the bed — the enormous plush teddy bear I’d once eyed at a store and put back on the shelf because it was too expensive.
What was this supposed to be?
Sugar-coated poison? A brief moment of soft light, so the next cruelty would land harder?
My stomach turned again.
I dry-heaved. Hair stuck to my wet face.
Ethan’s brow drew together. He hesitated, then spoke carefully.
“Audrey… are you preg—”
I saw a flicker of hope cross his face — quickly crushed by the sharp click of heels down the hall.
Celeste stormed in. Shot me a look of pure venom. And raised her hand.
An old terror surged through me. I flinched before I could stop myself. Squeezed my eyes shut.
But the blow didn’t land.
Ethan had caught her wrist.
“What are you doing?” Celeste’s voice shot up an octave. “I told you to toy with her, not marry her!”
“E — you’ve actually fallen for her, haven’t you?!”
“She’s been a slutty little manipulator since we were kids! Don’t fall for it!”
Ethan didn’t answer the question about love. He was quiet for a few seconds.
“The moment you shoved me at another woman, you gave up the right to ask me anything.”
I sat on the floor and watched them go at each other — this tangled, tortured mess I’d somehow been dragged into.
My head was getting heavier. My skin was burning.
Through the fog, I caught Celeste.
“This is my room. Why are you letting her have it? Are you trying to make me jealous — is that it?!”
After that, the words blurred.
I smiled, faintly.
Laughing at myself. At how pathetic I was.
Pathetic enough to have thought, even for a moment, that Ethan had ever meant a word of it.
He was a liar from beginning to end. That was all.