Chapter 8
Bradley knew everything. He deliberately relied on my love to trample on me.
I said coldly, “Then listen carefully. I don’t love you anymore and I will never forgive you in this lifetime.”
“To me, you’re no different from a stranger on the street, completely irrelevant. Even if you died in front of me, my heart wouldn’t ache for you at all.” My words shocked Bradley deeply.
He stopped waiting for me after work every day but would still appear around me, sneaking glances. It seemed like his love for me had reached its peak only after I left
him.
I was so troubled by it that I called the police and applied for a restraining order. Eventually, after some negotiations, Bradley chose to return to the country.
The career he once held as everything was
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now crumbling. Meanwhile, the job he had always looked down on was thriving for
- me.
From time to time, I would still receive messages from him. I blocked one number and he’d switch to another.
He kept expressing his love for me, his regret for all he’d done. He bought an entire field of roses on a mountainside, tending to them meticulously, all by
himself.
He texted me: [Yasmine, whether you accept it or not, I want to make up for everything I owe you.]
[If you’re willing to come back to me, I’ll give up everything for you.]
The vast expanse of roses swayed in the wind, a sea of red that seemed to etch itself into one’s heart. But every single one of those bright roses silently reminded me of how painful their thorns had once been.
I replied to Bradley: [You’re not willing to
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give up everything for me. You only remembered me when you had nothing left.]
Merryl heard a lot through her friends back home. Bradley’s company had collapsed. Veronica, in her desperate bids to gain his attention, had exhausted the last bit of his patience by constantly threatening to end her life.
When she tried to gain sympathy by hurting herself once more, Bradley chose to ignore her. She survived, but she became a vegetative state. Bradley never visited her again.
However, he frequently visited my mother. After hearing about his bankruptcy, my mother no longer treated him kindly. She often scolded or even beat him, yet he accepted it without complaint, as if he thought this could atone for what he had
done to me.
But what does any of this have to do with me? I closed my laptop and stretched by
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the window.
The sun was shining brightly, the grass was lush and green.
They were trapped in their cycle of self–pity and mutual torment, stuck in the swamp of their memories, unable to free themselves.
But I was different. I had loved, I had tried and now, I had let go. I had a clear
conscience.
They would only rot away in their regret.
But my future, my tomorrow, would be even more radiant.
(The End)
