He Kept Postponing Our Marriage for Her Crises… So I Ended It Myself Chapter 12
He’d always known the Crawfords were wolves you couldn’t tame.
So he’d kept things with Audrey careful. Controlled. Never giving the Crawfords anything to grab
onto.
Eventually, the Crawfords’ twisted version of the “truth” came out: the Crawfords had never
intended to let Audrey marry him.
Audrey had forced their hand.
They claimed she’d spiked Chloe’s drink and pushed her into Nathaniel’s father’s bed.
Once it was done, the Crawfords had no choice.
They married Audrey off to him.
He’d known Chloe since they were children.
Back then, she was just a little girl in a ponytail, always trailing after Stella, dimples showing every
time she smiled.
He’d watched her go from a girl who smiled at everything to someone the old man from the Brooks family used and discarded.
It ate at him.
He couldn’t understand why Audrey had to do it.
He thought she’d trusted him. Even if the Crawfords had pushed Chloe on him publicly, he would’ve
said no.
But in his mind, Audrey had been selfish enough to throw another woman into hell just to get what
she wanted.
He owed Chloe something for that. He believed that in his bones.
In three years of marriage, Chloe had been a ticking time bomb.
Every time he and Audrey started finding their footing again, Chloe would threaten to leave the Brooks family.
He couldn’t just let Chloe self-destruct.
He’d postponed the wedding twice. Audrey accepted it both times.
He assumed she’d accept it again.
He figured Chloe just needed him around for a few days, like before, that she’d burn herself out and
settle down.
He didn’t expect her to actually slam her head into a wall.
And he never imagined the damage would be permanent.
He couldn’t put a name to what he felt after that.
Guilt. Rage. Fear. And underneath all of it, a hatred he couldn’t aim at anyone.
Hate who? Chloe? The Crawfords? Himself?
He’d twisted all of it into a rope and looped it around Audrey’s neck without thinking twice.
But now, hunched over the steering wheel, all he could see was Audrey on her knees in the broken ceramic, looking up at him.
She’d asked him: “If it had been me, if I was the one who lost my mind, would you be standing over her right now, demanding she spend the rest of her life taking care of me?”
He hadn’t answered.
Now he knew.
He wouldn’t.
He would never have let it get that far.
But who was left to hear him say it now?
