My Wedding Dress For The Other Woman? His Regret After I Canceled Chapter 10
Kaelan’s POV
I found out about Vivian’s wedding from a guard.
I’d been in solitary for fighting—some idiot tried to steal my blanket, and I wasn’t about to let that slide. They gave me a newspaper to calm me down, thinking it would distract me.
Page six.
“Billionaire Ethan Crane Marries Secret Heiress Vivian Vance in Private Ceremony.”
There was a photo. Ethan kissing her forehead. Vivian laughing at something Summer had said. The dress. The flowers. The happiness.
I stared at that picture until my eyes burned. Then I ripped it in half. Then I ripped it into quarters. Then I just sat on my cot with my head in my hands and didn’t move for six hours.
The guard found me like that at lights out.
“You okay, Cross?”
I didn’t answer.
I was thinking about the day I met her. How she’d seemed so simple. So easy. How I’d actually believed she was lucky to have me.
I was the lucky one. I just never saw it.
And now I’m here.
…
Fifteen years later, I got out.
They let me walk out those gates with a paper bag and nothing else. No one came to pick me up. No one even knew I was free.
I ended up in a shelter that smelled like bleach and desperation. Cardboard bed. Stolen blanket. And a photo I’d torn up a thousand times but couldn’t throw away.
Somewhere across the city, fireworks exploded for New Year’s Eve. I watched them through a cracked window.
The woman in that photo was laughing. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard her laugh. I’ll never hear it again.
The fireworks kept exploding. Red and gold and blue. The whole sky was on fire, and I was sitting in the dark with nothing.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember her face before the rain. Before the boutique. Before I threw everything away.
I couldn’t.
And somewhere in the dark, I started to cry.
The end.