Hiding Me in the Name of Love Chapter 05
When the plane Tanded, a light rain was falling outside.
The moment I turned my phone back on, it was flooded with notifications. Jared had called more than 30 times,
His text messages tracked a rapid descent from gentle pleading to impatient frustration.
“Tasha, where did you go?”
“Stop this. Didn’t I say I would marry you?”
“You deleted all your posts. What does that mean?”
The last message had been sent at 4:00 am.
“Babe, I was wrong. Please answer the phone, okay?”
I stared at the words “I was wrong” and found them almost laughable.
L
He didn’t realize he was wrong when his friends publicly humiliated me. He didn’t think he was wrong when he promised to marry me while planning a parallel wedding for Yvette. And he certainly hadn’t admitted fault for hiding another woman from me for three years.
He was only panicking now because he finally realized I was truly gone.
Mom and Dad were waiting for me at the arrival gate. The moment Mom caught sight of me, tears welled up in her eyes. She didn’t ask me anything; she just pulled me tightly into her arms.
When I breathed in the familiar, comforting scent of her laundry detergent, the tears I had spent the entire flight holding back finally spilled over.
Dad stood beside us, awkwardly handing us tissues. His voice was stiff when he spoke. “It’s good that you’re home. No matter what happens, your family has your back.”
1
That day, I slept heavily for hours. When I finally woke up, the evening sun was setting, and my phone was vibrating quietly on the nightstand.
Jared was calling again.
I reached to decline the call, but Mom sat down on the edge of the bed and gently patted the back of my hand.” Answer if you’ve thought it through, Tasha. If you don’t want to, don’t force yourself. But don’t keep your pain bottled up. You’re not alone anymore.”
Looking at her, I felt a sudden surge of strength. I slid the screen to answer but remained silent.
Jared’s voice came through immediately, sounding hoarse and rough. “Babe, you finally answered. Where are you? I’ll come find you right now.”
“That’s not necessary.”
He acted as if he didn’t hear me and continued explaining. “What happened yesterday was my fault. I shouldn’t have told everyone you were just a friend.
“I was just afraid Yvette wouldn’t be able to take it. She’s in poor health, and she really couldn’t handle a shock like that.”
I let out a hollow laugh. “So you thought I could?”
Aheavy silence fell over the line.
When he spoke again, his voice had dropped into a gentler, coaxing tone. “Tasha, we’ve been together for seven years. You know I love you the most. I’ll slowly take care of things with Yvette. Just come back first, and we’ll talk through everything.”
“Jared Jackman, I’m never coming back,” I said.
Jared’s breath hitched. “What do you mean by that?”
“I’m breaking up with you,” I replied.
When the words finally left my mouth, I expected the pain to rip the breath from my lungs. But it didn’t. Instead, it felt like the final, clean break of something that had been rotting away for years.
Jared let out a sharp laugh, laced with disbelief. “Tasha, don’t use a breakup to scare me. You’ve threatened this before. When have you ever actually left?”
I tightened my grip on my phone. So he had always known I couldn’t let go. That was why he dared to cross my boundaries over and over again. He was certain I would forgive him and take him back.
I gave no further explanation and ended the call.
Seven years.
I had loved Jared from his youth into his adulthood. I stood by him when he had nothing, and I was there to see him at his best.
I also knew the exact layout of his vulnerabilities-that he had a weak stomach, that he needed a small gap left in the curtains to sleep, and that he unconsciously twisted his ring whenever he was nervous.
I used to think that memorizing these little details was what a lifetime together meant.
But I was wrong. A lifetime wasn’t held together by how many habits one could recite. Once the trust was gone, even seven years of shared history felt meaningless.
That night, I lay quietly in my old room.
Mom had made the bed with the same sheets I used as a teenager. On the windowsill, the empty ceramic pot from a succulent I couldn’t keep alive back in high school still sat in the corner.
Everything here was old, worn, and frozen in time–yet it gave me the first real sense of peace I had felt in years.
