(Scarlett’s POV)
More Rewards >
My legs feel shaky as I walk backstage with Lily, the apuse still ringing in my ears. The adrenaline from speaking in front of all those people is wearing off, leaving me drained but proud. I did it. I actually did it.
“Mama, everyone loved you!” Lily bounces beside me, her excitement infectious.
“They did, didn’t they?” I squeeze her hand, smiling down at her bright face.
“Scarlett.”
That voice. That damn voice that still makes my heart skip, even after everything.
I turn around slowly, my smile fading as I see Jasper standing there in his perfectly tailored suit. And beside him, like a shadow I can never escape, is Virginia in her white dress, looking every bit the innocent angel she pretends to be.
“What do you want, Jasper?” My voicees out harder than I meant, but I’m tired of ying games. “I thought I made myself clearst time. We’re getting divorced. End of discussion.”
He holds up his hands, and something in his expression catches me off guard. It’s not the desperate pleading I’ve grown used to. It’s something else. Calmer. More resigned.
“I’m not here to talk you out of the divorce.”
I blink, surprised. “You’re not?”
“No. I’m here to give a speech.”
“A speech?” I stare at him, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“The university called me <i>two </i>weeks ago. Asked if I’d speak about business development.” He pauses, his dark eyes meeting mine. “I agreed, but only on one condition.”
My chest tightens. “What condition?”
“That they extend an invitation to you as well.” His voice is quiet, steady. “I told them about your bakery, about what you’ve built. I knew you deserved to be here more than I did.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. I take a step back, my hand instinctively tightening on Lily’s.
“You… you’re the reason I got invited?”
< Chapter 76
More Rewards <b>> </b>
“I wanted to hear your story.” His gaze doesn’t waver. “I needed to know what you went through. What I put you through.”
My throat feels tight. I don’t know what to say to that. Don’t know how to process the fact that Jasper is the reason I’m here, the reason I got to share my story with hundreds of people.
“Scarlett,” Virginia steps forward, her voice sickeningly sweet. “I’m so proud of you. What you’ve aplished is truly inspiring.”
She reaches for my hand, and I jerk back like she’s on fire.
“Don’t touch me.”
Her face falls, the perfect mask slipping for just a second before she recovers. “I was just trying to-”
“I don’t care what you were trying to do.” I pick Lily up, needing thefort of my daughter’s weight in my arms. “Stay away from us.”
I turn back to Jasper, my heart hammering. “When is your speech?”
“In ten minutes.”
I nod curtly. “Come on, Lily. Let’s go back to our seats.”
“But Mama, that’s Daddy-”
“I know who it is, habibti.” I kiss her forehead, shooting onest look at Jasper. “Good luck
with your speech.”
I walk away before he can respond, before the pain in his eyes can weaken my resolve. Chloe meets us halfway back to the auditorium.
“How did it go? You look pale.”
“Jasper’s speaking next,” I say quietly.
Her face darkens. “What? Why didn’t you tell me he was going to be here?”
“I didn’t know.<i>” </i>I sink into my seat, Lily climbing onto myp. “Apparently he’s the reason I got invited in the first ce.”
“That bastard-” <fnbe35> ???s ??????? ?s ?????? ?? F?nd-Novel</fnbe35>
“Chloe. Not here.” I nod toward Lily, who’s coloring in her new princess book.
< Chapter 76
More Rewards >
The lights dim again, and my stomach knots as Jasper walks onto the stage. He looks confident, polished. Every inch the sessful businessman he’s be.
But when he starts speaking, it’s not about business at all.
“Six years ago, I was nobody,” he begins, his voice carrying easily through the hall. “A schrship kid from the wrong side of town who worked two jobs just to afford textbooks.”
My breath catches. I remember those days. Remember seeing him in the library at midnight, exhausted but determined.
“I was angry at the world, convinced that everyone around me had it easier. That they didn’t understand what it was like to scrape by, to feel like you didn’t belong.” He pauses, scanning the audience. “I was drowning in my own bitterness.”
“And then I met her.”
My heart stops. No. He’s not doing this. Not here, not now.
“She was this bright light in the darkness I’d created for myself. Optimistic in a way that should have been annoying but somehow wasn’t. She saw potential in people, especially in those who couldn’t see it in themselves.”
Lily looks up at me. “Mama, is he talking about you?”
I can’t answer. Can’t breathe.
“She worked at Mickey’s Bar for exactly three weeks,” Jasper continues, and I hear a few chuckles from the audience. “She was terrible at it. Broke more sses than she served drinks. But she kept showing up, night after night, just to…”
He stops, his voice catching slightly.
“Just to be near someone who was too stubborn and too proud to see what was right in <i>front </i>of him.”
My eyes blur with tears. I remember those nights. Remember cutting my hands on broken ss, remember the other workersughing at me behind my back. Remember Jasper’s cold rejection when I finally got up the courage to tell him how I felt.
“She funded my education,” he says quietly. “Not directly, but through her family. She convinced her father to sponsor my schrship, to give me a chance when no one else would.”
The audience ispletely silent now, hanging on his every word.
315
:
< Chapter 76
More Rewards >
“She saved me,” he whispers, and the microphone picks up every word. “In every way a person can be saved. And what did I do with that gift?”
He looks directly at where I’m sitting, and even from this distance, I can see the pain in his
eyes.
“I threw it away. I was so afraid of not being worthy of her love that I convinced myself she didn’t really love me at all. So afraid of being abandoned that I abandoned her first.”
Tears stream down my face now, and I don’t bother wiping them away.
“She left this town four years ago, eight months pregnant with my child, because I was too much of a coward to fight for what we had.” His voice breaks on thest word. “She rebuilt herself from nothing. Built a business, raised our daughter alone, became the incredible woman you heard speak earlier.”
Murmurs ripple through the audience. I can feel people turning to look at me, but I can’t move. Can’t do anything but listen.
“Everything I am, everything I’ve achieved, I owe it to her. She was my first love, my greatest love, and my biggest regret.” He grips the podium, his knuckles white. “I came here tonight not to talk about business, but to say what I should have said six years ago.”
He looks directly at me, his voice carrying across the silent auditorium.
“Scarlett, you are the best thing that ever happened to me. And losing you is the greatest regret of my life.”
The apuse when he finishes is different from mine. Softer, more emotional. But I barely hear it over the roar of my own heartbeat.
Lily tugs on my sleeve. “Mama, why are you crying?”
“I don’t <i>know</i>, sweetheart,” I whisper, and it’s the truth.
Because hearing Jasper say those words, hearing him finally acknowledge what we had, what he threw away–it doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t erase the years of loneliness, the nights I cried myself <i>to </i>sleep wondering why I wasn’t enough,
But it unties a knot in my heart, settling a grudge I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
As he walks off stage, as the audience files out around us, I sit frozen in my seat, holding my daughter and remembering.
Remembering the boy who worked three jobs and still found time to help me with my calculus homework. The boy who helped me get home safely after getting drunk at the bar.
<Chapter 76
And the husband who put a ring on my finger.
More Rewards
Remembering the night he left me on that highway, choosing her over me one final time, the love and the hurt tangle together in my chest, making it hard <i>to </i>breathe. Because the truth is, hearing him say those words–hearing him finally see me, acknowledge me–makes a
difference.
Even if it’s toote.
Even if nothing can ever be the same.
Violet Moon
#Vote#!
2
Get Bonus (Ad) >