The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 265

The Secret Between Us 

LUCAS’S POV: 

I thought about the proposal. Martin on one knee in the backyard while the fireworks went off and everyone we loved was screaming and Cherry had her phone light on like we were at a concert. I had said yes before he finished the sentence. I had cried ugly happy tears all over his suit. 

And this whole time. This whole entire time. 

“You should have told me,” I said. “Before the proposal and before any of it. You should have told me.” 

“I know,” he said. “You are right. I know.” 

“But you did not,” I said. 

“No,” he said. “I did not.” 

I stood up because I needed to do something with my body and staying on that sofa was not an option anymore. I walked to the window and stood there looking at the street below and I thought about all the times something had felt slightly off and I had told myself I was being paranoid. The relationship paranoia that people who have been hurt before develop and spend years trying to talk themselves out of. 

I had talked myself out of it. And I had actually been right to feel it. 

“I need you to leave,” I said. 

“Lucas.” 

“Not forever,” I said. “I just need you to not be in this room right now because I cannot think properly with you sitting there looking at me like that.” 

He stood. He looked at me one more time. Then he left. 

I stood at the window for a very long time after the door closed. 

Here is the thing nobody tells you about being let down by someone you love. 

They tell you about the anger. They tell you about the grief. They tell you about the sleepless nights and the going over things and the way you suddenly notice the absence of someone in every room of your life because they had filled so many of them without you realizing. 

What they do not tell you about is the embarrassment. 

I laughed. Which I had not expected to do at all. It came out a bit wobbly but it was real. “Tell him he asked a completely reasonable question. He did nothing wrong.” 

“I already told him that,” Hannah said. “He said he has decided to keep the seventy percent anyway because it feels accurate.” 

“He is a very specific child,” I said. 

“He really is,” she said. 

We stayed on the phone for over an hour. She did not try to fix anything. She did not offer advice I had not asked for. She did not tell me what to do or how to feel or what was probably going to happen next. She just stayed. That was the thing about Hannah. She always knew when the staying was what mattered. 

I gave the ring back two weeks later. 

I did it in person because I thought he deserved at least that. I set it on the table between us and I said I was not ending things permanently, I just needed real time and real space to figure out what I actually wanted, and I could not do that while I was engaged to someone I did not feel I fully knew yet. He nodded and he did not argue. He looked like a man who had been expecting this and had made a decision not to make it worse. 

“I love you,” he said, when I was getting up to leave.