Chapter 4 - The Anatomy of an Ex
The gravel driveway was a constellation of taillights as car after car pulled away into the darkness. I stayed in the conservatory until the caterers, looking intensely uncomfortable, began packing up the uneaten salmon and wrapping the towering tiered cake in plastic.
My mother refused to speak to me. She had left in a cab with Emma, leaving me with the keys to the rental car Marcus and I had driven together. Sitting in the driver’s seat of the sedan, the smell of his cologne still clinging to the headrest, I saw a solitary figure pacing near the entrance gate under the streetlights.
Tyler.
He hadn't left. He was waiting at the end of the long tree-lined driveway, smoking a cigarette, his black coat pulled tight against the chill.
Rage—sharp, irrational, and burning—flared through my veins. I put the car in gear, hit the gas, and sped down the driveway, braking sharply right next to where he stood. I threw the door open and stepped out into the biting wind.
"What are you still doing here?" I screamed at him, not caring if the neighboring estates could hear me. "Are you proud of yourself? Look at what you just did!"
Tyler blinked, startled by my fury, and tossed his cigarette onto the damp asphalt, crushing it beneath his dress shoe. "What *I* did? Jess, calm down. I didn't hold a gun to your head. You're the one who texted me to meet you behind the gazebo."
"You came here to blow up my life!" I stalked toward him, my hands balled into tight fists at my sides. "You didn't want me! For two years after we broke up, you barely remembered my birthday! You ignored my calls when my father died! But the moment you heard Marcus gave me a ring, the moment you saw I was happy and building a life with a real man, you couldn't stand it!"
Tyler scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest. His posture was defensive, the charming facade dropping to reveal the petty, insecure man I had forgotten he was. "A real man? The guy who just humiliated you in front of forty people and ran away like a child?"
"He didn't run away! I destroyed him!" I sobbed, the raw truth ripping through my throat like broken glass. "He gave me everything! He loved me without conditions, without games, without any of the toxic, manipulative bullshit you fed me for four years! And I threw it away because you whispered in my ear that I was 'settling'!"
Tyler took a step toward me, reaching out to touch my arm, but I recoiled as if his hand were on fire. "Jess, listen to yourself. If your relationship was so rock-solid, a five-minute conversation and one kiss wouldn't have broken it. You kissed me back. Don't act like I forced you."
The words hit me like physical blows, because they were true.
Tyler wasn't the monster who had slipped poison into my cup; he was merely the mirror that exposed my own weakness. He hadn't broken my engagement. I had. I had invited him into the fortress Marcus and I had spent three years building, and I had handed him the torch.
"Get out of here, Tyler," I said, my voice dropping from a scream to a dead, hollow rasp. "Don't call me. Don't text me. If you ever come near me again, I swear to God I will get a restraining order."
"Jess, be reasonable—"
"Get out!" I shrieked.
He looked at me, seeing the absolute repulsion in my eyes, and he finally understood that there was no victory for him here. He hadn't won me back; he had merely helped me ruin myself. He turned with a cold sneer, climbed into an Uber that had just pulled up behind my car, and disappeared down the winding road.
May you like
I stood alone under the amber streetlights, the wind whipping through my thin dress, clutching my stomach as dry heaves wracked my body on the side of the road.
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