Page 177 of Scandalous Contract
Maybe love wasn’t something I was meant to have. I’d done horrible things in my past. My skeletons followed me wherever I went. I deserved to be punished for taking two lives. Just because I felt justified doesn’t make it right.
But Julian... he didn’t deserve this pain. That man had only ever treated me like a treasure. He’d taken the time to understand me. He’d treated me like I was his world. And all he got in return was heartache and lies.
I’d destroyed the one man who had loved me without condition. I deserved his hatred. I deserved his wrath. I deserved this unspeakable pain I was feeling. And I’d bear it all as long as my daughter was happy.
Chapter Forty-Two
STEFANIE
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JULIAN MOVED OUT THATsame night, just like I’d asked. I sat in Ronnie’s guest bedroom, curled up with a throw blanket around my shoulders, watching him on the bear’s cam as he packed his things.
I cried so hard my throat burned and my head throbbed. He didn’t rush. He moved slowly, like he was still hoping I’d change my mind. I wanted to. I’d almost done it two or three times. But in the end, I didn’t.
He left the key on the counter and then stared straight into the bear and said, “You can never make me stop loving you, Stefanie Adams. I’ll be back.” His words had only made me sob harder as I watched him walk out of my house, out of my life.
Over the next few days, he called me over a dozen times. Texted even more. He left voice messages I couldn’t bring myself to listen to. Each time the phone buzzed, my heart skipped. And each time, I ignored it, it was like cutting off my own air supply.
I felt like I was dying. And I’d never felt this way before. India left the next morning for school, and she didn’t say a word to me. She asked Ronnie to help her with her bags, and she said she didn’t want to deal with any more drama before she went back to campus.
Apparently, I was the drama she didn’t want to deal with. That had damn near crushed my soul. The last thing she told me was to just go home, like I was the one who didn’t belong here. I knew she was acting this way because we’d gotten into another argument after Julian left that day.
“You embarrassed me,” she snapped. “Even Joanie’s mom was asking whose that guy on Ronnie’s porch.”
I’d tried to explain. I told her I ended things with Julian, that I’d walked away from someone who made me feel like the best version of myself. But she wasn’t trying to hear that. She didn’t care that I was breaking on the inside.
She didn’t see that I was barely holding myself together. All she cared about was how she felt and how she looked to others. And I hadn’t raised her that way, but I understood at her age, those were the things that mattered.
But damn, couldn’t she see that her mother was struggling right now? For two weeks after she went back to school and after I returned home, she said nothing to me. No phone calls. No texts. No nothing. Then, finally, a single text came through.
INDIA:It doesn’t seem like Aubrey knows what you and her brother were doing. I hope it stays that way.
That was all. No,how are you. No,I miss you. Just her trying to preserve the illusion that everything was fine. And maybe that was my punishment for being selfish. For falling in love and daring to want more than just being India’s mom.
Life became super hard after Julian left, and after India and I became distant. I didn’t want to write. I barely ate or slept. I just stayed in bed, staring at the wall or the darkened screen of my phone, praying it would stop lighting up with Julian’s name, but aching every time it didn’t.
