Eight Years Wasted The Betrayal That Set Me Free

The day before the wedding, my fiance skipped the rehearsal.

That evening, I got a text from her.

Reuben's been diagnosed with a terminal illness. He doesn't have long.

He loves me so much. I can't go through with a wedding right now and break his heart.

I need to go abroad with him for treatment. A year at least, two at most. I promise I'll come back and marry you.

I'll need to focus on him during this time, so I might go off the grid. Make up whatever excuse you want for postponing the wedding. If you're worried about losing face, just blame it on me.

I typed back a single word:

Okay.

If this engagement continued, that would be the real embarrassment.

Almost simultaneously, Reuben Simmons posted on Instagram.

The photo showed the two of them with freshly shaved heads, cheeks pressed together.

In their clasped hands were two plane tickets to France.

The caption read:

She told me she won't let me die, because love can cure anything.

In the comments, Andrea Rowe's friends were falling over themselves to like and praise her. What a selfless woman. Such boundless compassion. They pledged to chip in for Reuben's treatment however they could.

Not a single person mentioned me.

As if tomorrow's wedding was never supposed to exist in the first place.

I let out a bitter laugh, hit "like" on the post, and left a comment:

Wishing you a speedy recovery!

My comment blended right in with the chorus of well-wishes. Nothing out of place.

But a second later, it was deleted.

Andrea's call came immediately after, her voice dripping with impatience.

"Ethan Calloway, what the hell was that? Leaving a comment just to start something?"

I was momentarily speechless.

"I wasn't starting anything. I genuinely wished him good health."

Andrea had already made up her mind that I was causing trouble.

"If you were genuine, you'd do what everyone else did and just send money instead of sitting there being petty and jealous!"

"Nobody brought up the wedding because they didn't want to make Reuben uncomfortable, and then you just pop up with 'wishing you a speedy recovery'? You're twisting the knife on purpose!"

"Apologize to Reuben! He's devastated because of your comment!"

From the other end of the line came the sound of a man choking back sobs.

"Andrea, forget it! I shouldn't have told you about my diagnosis. The doctors said I don't have long. I need to stop clinging to impossible hopes! I'll cancel the tickets right now. I can't be selfish enough to ruin your wedding just because I'm dying!"

Andrea's voice instantly went soft, soothing him like he was a child.

"Reuben, just because they can't treat it here doesn't mean there's no hope overseas! How could a wedding be more important than your life? No matter how long the treatment takes, I'll be right there with you. Until you're better."

Reuben dissolved into sobs.

"But what about Ethan? He must be so hurt. I'll just go abroad alone. You two can have your wedding tomorrow as planned..."

Andrea's voice grew even softer, edged with urgency.

"You going alone would worry me even more! The surgical consent forms need a family member's signature. Who would you have?"

"I already worked it out with Ethan. Two years, tops, and he gets what he wants. It's not like I'm going to run away."

"Stop crying! You'll start hyperventilating again."

"And if your eyes are all swollen, the border agent won't think your passport photo matches tomorrow. Then what?"

Reuben let out a teary laugh.

Andrea exhaled with relief, then turned back to me. Her tone was slightly less sharp.

"Ethan, why aren't you saying anything? Hurry up and apologize to Reuben!"

My nails dug into my palms. I cursed myself for being stupid enough to like and comment on that post in the first place.

But I hadn't done anything wrong. Why should I apologize?

"Andrea, what if I say no?"

She faltered for a beat, then her voice shot up in disbelief.

"Ethan, if you keep this up, it's going to get ugly! Reuben is a sick man. The last thing he needs is emotional stress, and you're deliberately upsetting him. How can you be so inconsiderate?"

"Fine, don't apologize. Then make it up to me with actions! Call everyone and tell them you're the one who doesn't want to get married!"

As if afraid I'd refuse, she hung up immediately.

Then sent me a text:

Ethan, I'm begging you, please stop making a scene. I'm just going with Reuben for his treatment. It's not like I'm never coming back to marry you. Canceling the wedding is just so we can save your dream wedding for the perfect moment.

Those familiar words stung my eyes until they burned.

The perfect moment.

I'd been hearing that for eight years. Nearly three thousand days and nights, waiting for her to marry me.

And what I got instead was her leaving to be with another man for two years.

Andrea, I'm done waiting.

Because we were never right for each other.

She unsent the message.

Then a new one came through:

What I just sent isn't something Reuben should see. He's been really sensitive since he got sick. Just do what I asked, okay? Whatever I owe you, I'll spend the rest of my life making it up after these two years! You want kids, right? When I come back, I'll give you a whole football team!

I couldn't help but laugh.

I waited two minutes. Sure enough, she unsent that message too.

So which was it? Was she lying to me, or to herself?

She'd already made up her mind to stay by Reuben's side until he recovered. Why bother promising me two years?

If his condition never improved, was I supposed to wait forever?

I shook my head, forcing those maddening hypotheticals out of my mind.

I typed a single word: OK. Hit send.

All I got back was a red exclamation mark.

She'd already deleted me. Couldn't wait to smooth things over with Reuben.

Just as well.

I didn't dwell on it. I posted on social media announcing the wedding was off.

People started asking why almost immediately.

I didn't want to stir up drama, so I stuck to Andrea's script and said it was my decision.

But my friends flooded my messages, telling me I was an idiot:

"Ethan, Andrea isn't the broke girl she used to be. Now? Every guy out there would kill for a shot with her. You call off the wedding out of nowhere, and you're basically handing your wife to someone else on a silver platter."

I didn't reply.

Because Andrea was already someone else's wife.

Shortly after I made the post, Reuben sent me a photo of their marriage certificate.

His tone dripped with smugness as he thanked me for stepping aside.

Big thanks for the assist, bro! Andrea was originally going to come with me as my girlfriend, but to make it easier to sign medical paperwork on my behalf, she pulled some strings and fast-tracked a marriage license!

I didn't bother responding. Deleted the message, blocked his number. One smooth motion.

My phone buzzed again. My mother, calling to chew me out.

"Are you out of your mind? The fruit's right there on the branch and you won't pick it! What kind of stunt are you pulling? Wait too long and she might not want to marry you at all!"

A quiet laugh escaped me.

"What if she's the one who doesn't want to marry me?"

She went silent for a beat, then tore into me harder than before.

"Then you obviously did something wrong! Swallow your pride and sweet-talk her. You spent all those years helping her build her empire. Don't you dare walk away with nothing to show for it!"

Eight years with Andrea. She always said the same thing: career first, then family.

But when she finally made it, giving me a family wasn't what she had in mind.

It wasn't that I hadn't tried. Trying just didn't matter.

For eight years, I gave up my own dreams to help her build her company. She feasted while I survived on scraps, and I never complained. All I wanted was to marry her, to stand beside her as her husband where the whole world could see.

But she terminated three pregnancies rather than walk down the aisle.

Every time, the same reason: the timing wasn't right. She didn't want a child to suffer through the hard years.

I loved her. So no matter how much it gutted me, whatever she said, I gave her what she wanted.

Like tonight, when she said she wanted to stay by Reuben's side while he got treatment.

She was the same woman who used to complain about him following her around like a lovesick puppy. She'd even said his affection made her sick.

In that moment, even though my heart felt like it was being carved open, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Maybe it was better this way. At least I wouldn't have to keep waiting in the dirt for her to finally marry me.

My mom was still rattling on about how to win a woman back, but the grievances lodged in my chest suddenly lost their will to be spoken.

"Mom, the wedding's off. I'm never marrying her."

I hung up and called the wedding planner to cancel tomorrow's ceremony.

The emcee paused for a beat before speaking.

"Ms. Rowe already called about this. But she asked us to keep the decorations and banners in storage for two years. That's going to be difficult. Most of those materials are single-use."

It clicked instantly. She'd picked that fight on purpose, just so I'd be the one fielding all the awkward questions.

And she still believed I'd wait for her, like those cheap decorations gathering dust in a warehouse. Two years. Just sitting there.

"Throw it all out. Even if it weren't disposable, it'd be rotted after two years."

Just like her love for me.

It would fade with time until there was nothing left.

After hanging up, I pulled up my mother-in-law's number and felt a headache building behind my eyes.

Edna Rowe despised Reuben. If she found out her daughter had already gotten a marriage license with him, she'd probably have a stroke.

I took a deep breath and wired the 0-020,000 dowry back to her account. Every cent.

I counted to three in my head.

The phone rang.

"Ethan, why did you send the dowry back?"

"Mom, Andrea and I aren't getting married right now. Maybe in a couple of years."

Mrs. Rowe was sharp. She caught the lie before it fully left my mouth.

"Did Andrea do something to you? I'm going over there right now. The wedding is happening tomorrow, and that's final!"

"Mrs. Rowe, the wedding really can't go forward..."

But she'd already hung up.

That was Andrea's problem now. She could figure out how to handle her own mother.

And I needed to pack and leave.

The apartment was still dressed for a celebration. Every detail was something I'd arranged with my own hands, each one a small monument to the happy life I'd imagined after the wedding.

Now every single one of them felt like a blade in my chest.

There wasn't much to take. I couldn't even fill one suitcase.

But there was plenty to throw away.

By the time I finished, I noticed Andrea had called me several times.

Didn't take a genius to figure out why. She wanted to know why I hadn't handled her mother.

I set the apartment key on the entryway table, grabbed the last framed wedding portrait, and headed for the door.

I walked straight into Andrea.

The portrait slipped from my hands and shattered on the floor, splitting into pieces.

A shard sliced across the top of my foot. Blood welled up immediately.

Andrea shoved Reuben behind her, shielding him, and glared at me.

"Ethan, what the hell? Didn't you see Reuben standing there? What if you'd hurt him?"

She didn't see the blood pooling on my foot. Instead, she crouched down and carefully picked a speck of glass no bigger than a pea off Reuben's shoe.

I had no interest in watching her dote on another man. I grabbed my suitcase and walked past them.

She caught the suitcase in her peripheral vision and scrambled to her feet, grabbing my arm.

"Ethan, where are you going?"

I was about to answer when her phone rang.

I saw the caller ID. Her mother.

She picked up, irritation bleeding through her voice.

"Fine! I know! It's not cancelled! I'll smooth things over with him! Don't worry!"

She hung up and turned to me.

"Ethan, my mom says the wedding has to go ahead tomorrow as planned."

"I don't want to upset her, so let's keep everything on track. But can you be the one who runs? Fly to France. I'll book your ticket and everything."

"My mom adores you. If you're the runaway groom, she'll insist I go after you. That way I can pretend I'm overseas chasing you down."

I stared, wide-eyed, unable to believe these words had come from the woman I'd loved for years.

But then I remembered she'd gotten a marriage license just to accompany Reuben for his medical treatment.

And suddenly, nothing she said or did seemed surprising anymore.

I was leaving anyway. Might as well do her this one last favor.

"Fine."

Maybe it was how easily I agreed that finally snapped Andrea out of her tunnel vision.

She noticed the shattered wedding photo on the floor for the first time.

Then she noticed the blood smeared across the top of my foot.

Her eyes went red in an instant, and she rushed back to the bedroom to grab the first aid kit.

The moment she was gone, Reuben lifted his chin and sneered at me.

"Ethan, you're really pathetic, you know that? You knew I was already Andrea's husband, and you still tried to go through with the wedding."

"So what if her mother doesn't like me? She can fight it all she wants. Doesn't change the fact that Andrea calls me her husband."

"And you? You're nothing but a homewrecker in everyone's eyes."

"Don't bother dreaming she'll divorce me and marry you in two years, either. Because..."

He tugged his collar to the side, revealing a trail of marks on his skin, his smile dripping with smugness.

"She told me I'm the only one who's ever made her feel true ecstasy."

"Oh, and you probably don't know this. Our first time was the night of your birthday."

I lowered my gaze to hide the tears that surged without warning.

So Andrea had betrayed me long ago.

And she'd played me for a fool, telling me to wait two more years.

My thirtieth birthday was the first time Andrea had ever thrown me a real celebration. But Reuben had shamelessly confessed his feelings to her that night.

She'd torn him apart in front of everyone, humiliating him so thoroughly he couldn't show his face.

But on the drive home, she'd dropped me off halfway up the hill, claiming something urgent had come up.

The next day, she came back full of apologies.

And proposed to me.

Said she wanted to give me a dream wedding.

I'd waited eight years for that moment.

The joy crushed every doubt, every uneasy feeling I'd been carrying.

But that same night, she forgot to lock the bathroom door. When I walked in, I saw the scratches down her back.

Fresh scratches. I demanded to know what happened.

She didn't even flinch. Said she'd been scratched by a cat.

Even pulled up her rabies vaccination record as proof.

I forced myself to believe her.

But my gut told me something was wrong. Even while planning the wedding, none of it felt real.

A voice in the back of my mind kept whispering: The only reason she finally agreed to marry me was guilt. Compensation for what she'd done behind my back.

I buried my head in the sand, too afraid to confirm it.

But I couldn't let it go, either. So I started following her in secret.

When I discovered that her so-called client meetings were actually visits to Reuben's apartment, I stopped digging. I just waited for her to come clean.

That was why I didn't press her when she skipped the rehearsal.

When she texted saying she needed to stay with Reuben for his treatment, I didn't object.

"Excuse me."

I had no interest in wasting another word on Reuben. I just wanted to leave.

But the second Andrea stepped out with the first aid kit, he grabbed my hand and threw himself backward into the pile of broken glass.

A sickening crunch.

Blood. On Reuben's hands. Pouring from his mouth.

He slurred his words, staring up at me with wide, accusing eyes.

"Ethan, I know you don't like me, but why would you push me?"

Andrea saw the blood and lunged forward, shoving me to the ground.

"Reuben, don't be scared. I'm taking you to the hospital right now."

She hauled him to his feet and rushed for the door.

Before she left, she turned and fixed me with a look cold enough to freeze.

"Ethan, I never thought you could be this vicious. Attacking a sick man. How could you?"

"If anything happens to him, there is no future for us."

I watched her retreating figure, sitting amid the broken glass.

"You and me," I murmured. "There hasn't been a future for us in a long time."

I raised my hand. Shards of glass studded my palm, embedded deep in the flesh. The pain was blinding.

By the time the clinic downstairs finished bandaging my wounds, cold sweat had soaked through every layer of clothing I wore.

The suffocating weight pressing against my chest drove me to a decision. I reached out to the company's shareholders.

When they heard I was selling my thirty percent stake, every one of them expressed interest.

I told them to make their offers. Highest bidder wins.

Half an hour later, I signed the equity transfer agreement with Lisa Chavez, the technical director.

She was capable. Ambitious. And Andrea had always kept her on a tight leash.

With my shares in her hands, she'd become the company's largest shareholder.

I hoped Andrea would enjoy the wedding gift I'd prepared for her.

But the moment I said goodbye to Lisa, a furious voice erupted behind me.

"Ethan!"

Only then did I realize Andrea had called me countless times.

Watching her storm toward me, face twisted with rage, I couldn't help but picture Reuben deliberately throwing himself onto the broken glass, coughing up blood on cue.

Had something actually happened to him?

Or had she found out about the share sale and come to make my life hell?

Her eyes were bloodshot. She slammed her fist into my chest.

"Reuben's kidney ruptured because you pushed him. He nearly died. And you're out here on a date?"

I struggled, tried to explain. "I didn't push him. He threw himself down on purpose"

Andrea shoved me into the car. "Reuben is already seriously ill. Now he's lost a kidney. You think he'd gamble with his own life?"

She spun around and turned on Lisa. "Can't beat me in the boardroom, so you go after my man instead?"

I wasn't about to let Lisa take the blame for something that had nothing to do with her. I grabbed the equity transfer agreement and threw it in Andrea's face.

I expected her to lose it on the spot. To demand I reverse the deal.

Instead, she just bit down hard on her lower lip, got in the car, and floored the gas. She drove like a maniac all the way to the hospital.

She forced me to my knees at the foot of Reuben's hospital bed.

"Apologize to Reuben. And promise you'll give him one of your kidneys to make up for it."

My kneecaps hit the freezing tile floor. Pain and cold radiated through my entire body.

I tried to stand, but Andrea's hand clamped down on my shoulder and held me in place.

"Lost your voice? Apologize to Reuben. Now."

I fought through the discomfort and forced the words out, one by one. "I didn't push him. If you don't believe me, go back and get the security footage from the neighbor's camera."

The camera mounted above the neighbor's door would have captured every second of Reuben's little performance.

But she didn't believe me.

"Ethan, you are such a disappointment. Do you have any idea what your shove did? Reuben almost died. That's attempted murder. You could go to prison for this."

"He's being generous enough not to press charges. All he's asking for is an apology and compensation. What more do you want?"

"If you don't want to end up behind bars, you should be grateful to donate a kidney. When you do the math, you're coming out ahead. And I won't even go after you for selling off company shares behind my back."

Coming out ahead.

What a thing to say.

And Andrea, the woman who had always put her career above everything, had just ranked thirty percent of her company below Reuben Simmons.

She truly was head over heels for him.

I laughed until tears blurred my vision. Then, quietly, I said three words.

"I'm sorry."

Andrea released her grip and had me sign a document.

She was delusional. What made her think that signing a piece of paper would actually make me donate a kidney to Reuben?

But I needed to get out of there. So I signed.

Only then did Andrea help me to my feet. Something complicated flickered behind her eyes.

"Just in case you go running to my mother to make a scene, I'm going to need you to play along for a bit."

"Once I'm done with the act tomorrow, you'll come abroad with us for the kidney transplant. Reuben doesn't make a full recovery, you don't come home."

I didn't understand what Andrea meant by "making things difficult for me" until I was tied up inside an abandoned building.

While I was locked away, she was wheeling Reuben to the hotel to stage the whole runaway-groom act.

I pounded on the door and screamed until a woman scavenging for recyclables nearby heard the commotion and let me out.

I checked the time. My flight was about to leave.

I flagged down a cab and raced to the airport.

As I was boarding, Mrs. Rowe called.

"Ethan, where are you? Andrea's saying you ran off from the wedding! Something about fleeing the scene of a crime?"

Before I could answer, she caught the sound of a flight attendant announcing boarding information in the background.

"Ethan, you're really at the airport? What on earth did you do that was bad enough to abandon your own wedding?"

"Mrs. Rowe, she's already Reuben Simmons' wife. There's nothing left between us."

She didn't even bother hanging up before turning to interrogate Andrea about whether she'd been mistreating me.

But Andrea, furious that I'd escaped to the airport, screamed with tears brimming in her eyes:

"Ethan Calloway! You cost Reuben a kidney, and you owe him one! If you try to run, I'll call the police and have you arrested for attempted murder!"

She actually pulled out her phone to dial 911, trying to stop me from leaving.

She never saw it coming. Mrs. Rowe slapped the phone right out of her hand.

"That's nonsense! Reuben Simmons was born with only one kidney. If he'd lost another one, he'd be dead already!"