Page 10 of Take My Love

Silas

PRESENT DAY

Eight Years After The Wedding

“Aundrea, please. Don’t do this,”I plead for the fifth time, feeling helpless and desperate as my fiancée packs her suitcase. She carefully removes a shirt from the hanger and folds it neatly before adding it to the others.

“It’s not workin’ out, Silas. It hasn’t for a while and neither of us have wanted to admit it, but if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see I’m right.” She glances at me with pity in her brown eyes. “Better to realize it before the wedding than after.”

The wedding that’s scheduled to happen in two weeks.

I hear the words coming out of her mouth, but I can’t comprehend how she can say them so cold and emotionless as if they aren’t driving a dagger through my aching heart.

“You’ll thank me once you realize how wrong we were foreach other. Once we spend some time apart, you’ll realize movin’ on was the right choice.”

She says it like she already has.

“How can you say that?” The anger building in my chest threatens to spill out. “I’ve gone above and beyond to do everythin’ to make you happy. Shit, I changed jobs to work with your dad since you said I didn’t make enough money. I gave up my apartment to move into your fancy-ass house ’cause you said mine was too small. What more do you want?”

She zips up her Louis Vuitton bag before setting it on the floor with a thud. It’s the first time she’s using it since it was meant for our honeymoon. It took me six months to save up the money to buy it for our anniversary and now I’m wishing I hadn’t.

No matter what I bought her, it was never enough or something her father couldn’t buy her without having to max out a credit card. Though I tried to make her happy in other ways, I shouldn’t be surprised at her expensive taste when we met on a sugar daddy dating app.

Warren dared me to sign up when we were drunk one night, and after I dared him to pierce his dick, I couldn’t chicken out. But I never thought I’d match with someone and it’d turn into more.

She knew I wasn’trichbefore our relationship progressed and she reassured me it wasn’t an issue. We fell in love and that’s why I proposed. I wanted to spend forever together. But maybe that’s why I was so blinded by how she treated me, always wanting more than I could give her and pushing me to be someone I’m not.

“I’m gonna stay at a hotel while you pack your things, but please be gone by Monday.”

“That’s it?” I throw up my arms still in disbelief. “You’re throwin’ away two years with no emotion?”

She wraps a dark strand of perfectly straight hair behind her ear and purses her red-stained lips. “We haven’t been intimate in six weeks and the last time you tried to be spontaneous, you took me out into the woods to have sex in the back of your truck. We’re not compatible.”

“It’s the busy season! Your dad has me workin’ overtime,” I explain, although she already knows since she’s the receptionist at his home construction company. “And I made up for the woods incident, didn’t I? Not much I can do when I don’t get home until after eight and then gotta be back to work at six. Then you go out with your friends on the weekends, so…”

“I always invite you to come with me and you rarely do.”

“That’s ’cause none of your friends can hold their liquor and I always end up babysittin’ ’em. Why the hell would I wanna do that every weekend? Especially since you ditch me most of the time and end up on the dance floor surrounded by other men.”

“God forbid I wanna let loose and hang out with my friends,” she says dramatically. “I’m not gonna apologize for havin’ a social life.”

“You know that’s not what I’m sayin’.” I fold my arms across my chest, staring down at the woman I asked to marry me only a year ago. Admittedly, things have shifted between us in the past few months, but I thought it was pre-wedding stress.

“It doesn’t matter anyway.” She shrugs mindlessly, lifting the suitcase handle and walking toward me. “I’m sorry for hurtin’you, I truly am. You’re a great man, but not the right one for me and that’s why I can’t go through with it. I wish you the best.”

She leans up in her four-inch heels and presses a soft kiss to my cheek. “Bye, Silas.”

If she were truly apologetic, she wouldn’t be giving me a two-day notice to move out. On top of that, I’m going to have to find a new job. There’s no way I’m going to walk in each day and see her behind the reception desk, pretending we weren’t supposed to build a life together.

After a couple days of packing boxes and feeling sorry for myself, I finally load up my truck and drive away from the place I’ve called home for almost two years.

I haven’t had the energy to tell Warren or my family, but they’ll find out soon enough. From either a “change of address” text or showing up and begging them to let me stay with them.

Before I chicken out, I drive to Warren and Maisie’s house. I feel bad invading their Sunday together, but after what I dealt with when Maisie left, he owes me.

Thankfully, Warren put his energy into building his house and stopped drinking so much. He refused to date or move on from Maisie even after she sent him divorce papers several times.

She returned a few months ago, demanding he finally sign them so she could marry another man. Heasked her to give him one week to prove they were still meant to be together and make her doubt getting divorced. I thought he was crazy for thinking she’d change her mind, but she did.