Regrets After the Split: Does It Matter

Chapter12

Charles shifts his gaze awkwardly. “I just feel like the kids need a complete family.”

“Aaron has changed a lot lately; he’s not as willful and spoiled as

before. So-”

“Didn’t you marry Miss Browns?”

Charles freezes.

“Back then, everyone told me she was the wife who suited you, the

mother of Aaron.”

“Even though you never said it directly, I figured you agreed.”

“So I quit willingly.”

“What? So you two ended up not being together?”

Unable to bear my gaze, Charles clenches and then relaxes his hands unconsciously. “That’s all in the past.

“My relationship with you is also in the past.”

“But we have a child.”

“So what? Charles, stop using others as an excuse.”

Chapter12

“It was Vanessa before, and now it’s Aaron.” I smile softly and say, “Is it really that hard to admit you have feelings for me?”

I used to wonder just how unworthy I seemed in Charles’s eyes that he was so ashamed to acknowledge it.

It’s really hard to hide feelings like that. Just like how I never said I

loved Charles, but the blush spreading across my cheeks and my

racing heart had long betrayed me..

My marriage to Charles lasted a full four years.

Though I tend to be somewhat of a people–pleaser, if he had never

given me even a glimmer of hope, I couldn’t have held on for four

years.

I wasn’t sure when he started to like me or how much he actually liked me.

I just inherited Grandma Samantha’s habit: if something was broken, my first instinct wasn’t to throw it away and get a new one, but to patch it up and use it as long as I could.

I applied the same mindset to my marriage.

I thought maybe Charles didn’t hate me as much as I thought, and if I tried a little harder, perhaps this marriage could work. Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

I desperately searched for any trace of affection he might have for me, trying to gather those scattered feelings into something that could illuminate my path forward.