He Wanted My Bestie Reborn Me Said YES—So Why Regret Chapter 07
That day, Jessica slapped him across the face.
He accepted it. He deserved it.
He shouldn’t have wavered between her and Meredith.
But the elusive figure kept reappearing.
Sometimes he dreamed of Meredith, face streaked with tears, a gash on her head from an ashtray.
Sometimes he saw her thin frame shivering, arms wrapped around herself.
Sometimes he heard others cursing her.
These fragmented glimpses came without pattern, but each one stabbed at his heart.
No matter how he reached, he couldn’t touch her.
Waking from another nightmare, gasping for air, he turned on the lamp to find a mess.
He kicked aside empty beer cans, swept clothes off the couch.
Sitting there, he suddenly buried his face in his hands and sobbed.
Without Meredith, he was a wreck.
The next day, he moved into the condo they were supposed to share.
He’d moved out two years ago because Jessica said she wanted to see him, and he’d acted on
impulse.
Now, opening the door, he saw the wedding banners still hanging on the wall.
The matching monogrammed slippers by the door seemed to be waiting for their owner.
He crouched, studied them, then put one on and placed the other carefully in the shoe cabinet.
Everywhere, traces of Meredith’s life.
He moved his things in beside hers, terrified of disturbing anything, as if that would make it feel like their married life.
In the bedroom, he found the documents in the trash.
The ones Meredith had brought home that day.
Hesitating only a moment, he picked them up.
When he read them, his pupils contracted. He shut the folder with regret.
It was the title search request she’d filed with the county clerk.
Why had she requested a title search? Was she trying to sell?
So she’d found out the deed was in Jessica’s name?
He gripped the folder, wanting to tell Meredith, that Jessica just needed the property for her residency paperwork; it was just a favor, and this was still their home.
But now it was too late.
He couldn’t find her.
The first year Meredith was gone.
Ethan transferred the deed back to his own name and cut ties with his old friends.
He didn’t reach out to Jessica.
But she came to him-not for him.
He found her standing by the bookcase, holding the shell pendant from that competition.
“Meredith hated this pendant,” she said.
He said nothing. He looked into the open cabinet.
It was crammed with gifts-from him and Jessica.
Seeing them, memories flooded back.
The Meredith he’d first met. Their first date. Valentine’s Day.
But the further back, the fainter-because Jessica had come into the picture, and his attention had
drifted.
Now that he remembered, he realized how vivid Meredith had been then.
Looking down at the jumble, he felt needles in his chest.
The old Meredith would have kept each gift pristine packaging and all.
Not like this-tossed together carelessly.
His hands dropped.
Maybe from the first time he noticed something off Meredith had already changed.
She’d stopped caring about them.
Jessica was still crying and apologizing. “We shouldn’t have done that. We killed Meredith.”
But Ethan stared into the cabinet and started rummaging.
Why wasn’t the pearl necklace he’d polished for her birthday there?
He searched everywhere, came up empty.
He spun around and murmured to Jessica, “No-Meredith isn’t dead.”
She’d taken that necklace with her.
