My Fiance‘s Kindness To Her Was My Humiliation In A Bridal Shop Chapter 08
I closed the folder, and my voice went cold with it.
“Yesterday at the bridal shop, your son put his foot
on my dignity.”
“Today in this conference room, I’m collecting what I’m owed.”
“I’ve already left you more face than you deserve.”
“If this goes any further, I won’t be the one who ends up looking bad.”
The words landed, and Ryker lifted his head to
look at me.
It was the first time he seemed to truly understand that I wasn’t throwing a fit.
I was here to settle accounts.
And once a relationship got to the point of settling
accounts, there was no going back.
He sat in silence for a long moment. Then he
picked up the pen and signed the liability
statement.
The nib hit the paper, and Margaret looked like she
wanted to lunge across the table and stop him,
but she held herself back by a thread.
I watched him sign, and the stone that had been
pressing on my chest all day finally shifted, just a
little.
The hotel manager moved on to confirm the
cancellation procedures, and Maya started
separating out the refundable and non–refundable
portions.
She walked through each item. I took down every
one.
Through the whole process, Ryker barely spoke
another word.
He just sat there, watching the numbers that were
supposed to belong to a wedding get carved up
into refunds, repayments, liability, cancellation.
Like he was watching me tear through our
seven–year future, page by page, with my own
hands.
As the meeting wound down, I slid one last sheet
across the table to him.
“This is the portion you need to make up within
three days.”
“Transfer it to my account. Don’t drag it out.”
He looked up at me, his voice scraped dry.
“Presley. Does it have to end like this?”
I put my pen away and met his eyes properly.
“It’s not me who wanted it to end like this.”
“You forced my hand. This was the only way left.”
I stood and pulled the folder into my arms.
“We’re done here.”
“The wedding is over.”
The room started to clear.
My parents went with Maya to go over the remaining refund details. Piper stepped out to
grab my valet parking voucher.
The corridor went quiet. Just me, Ryker, and
Carson Vance, who’d stayed by the window
without saying much of anything.
I was about to leave when Ryker called after me.
“Presley.”
I didn’t stop.
He said it again, rougher than before. “Pres. Let’s
talk.”
I finally stopped and turned around. “What’s left to
talk about?”
He stood there, like he wanted to step closer but
couldn’t quite make himself. He looked like a
different man from the one in the bridal shop
yesterday, the one who’d kept saying “don’t make a
scene.”
“I didn’t think you’d take it this far.”
“I thought…”
He cut himself off.
I finished it for him.
“You thought I’d swallow it.”
“You thought the most I’d do was make some
noise, and then I’d go through with the wedding
anyway.”
“You thought that as long as you came back and
sweet–talked me a little, I’d let it go. Same as
always.”
He didn’t say anything.
And his silence was worse than a confession.
A wave of exhaustion hit me, bone–deep.
So all those years I’d spent filling in his blanks,
making excuses for him, covering the gaps–it all
boiled down to those two words from him. “I
thought.”
“Presley.” He looked at me, and something frantic
was finally showing behind his eyes. “I’ll admit it. I
was a goddamn idiot yesterday.”
“But I never planned on losing you.”
“Willa–she’s not what you’re imagining to me.”
I laughed at that.
“What exactly am I imagining?”
“She flies back into the country, and you cancel
dinner with my parents to pick her up at the
airport.”
“She says one word about wanting to try on a
dress, and you put my wedding gown on her body.”
“The second this blew open, your first instinct was
to protect her reputation. Not my dignity.”
“Tell me, Ryker. What exactly am I imagining?”
He had no answer. Not one word.
Still by the window, Carson lifted his eyes for the
briefest moment.
He didn’t say anything either. Just glanced at his
watch, like a quiet reminder that this kind of
conversation wasn’t worth burning my last scraps
of energy on.
Something in me steadied.
Yeah.
Not every relationship in this world deserved every
last ounce of fight you had.
“The worst thing you did to me wasn’t those
fifteen seconds yesterday.”
I looked at Ryker, and my voice came out soft, but
it hit harder than anything I’d said before.
“It was making me spend seven years before I
finally understood that I was never the only one.”
“You wanted to marry me because I was marriage.
material.”
“Stable. Reasonable. Someone who’d handle the
logistics and keep your life running.”
“But the one you couldn’t bring yourself to cut
loose–that was always her.”
“That’s why you dared to trade my dignity to
indulge your soft spot for her.”
“Because in your head, I was the safest bet. The
one who’d never actually leave.”
The words landed like cuts, each one peeling back.
a layer of the thing he’d been trying so hard to
keep hidden.
Ryker’s face went pale, one degree at a time.
“That’s not true.” He was finally rattled. He stepped
forward. “I admit I handled this badly. But the
person I chose was always you.”
“Chose me?”
I looked at his face, and those two words had
never felt so sarcastic.
“Ryker, don’t call ‘suitable for marriage‘ the same
thing as love.”
“You didn’t choose me.”
“You used me as the safe fallback.”
