He Gave Her The Best So I Left Him With Nothing Chapter 02

He Gave Her The Best So I Left Him With Nothing Chapter 02

The Novels Starts From Here

My fiancé, Cormac, had a favorite way of humiliating me.

He would lay out two choices, one first-rate and one clearly inferior, then invite me to “choose first” in front of everyone. Once I’d picked, he would conjure some perfectly reasonable pretext to hand the better one to my dazzling twin sister, Marguerite.

This time it was our wedding china.

Pointing at the Italian bone china I had just selected, he told the sales clerk, “Put this set under Miss Marguerite’s name. She has more use for it.”

He assumed I would do what I always did — nod obediently and settle for the lesser set. Accept that he would forever put my sister first. Accept that his love was a consolation prize, handed to me only after she had turned him down.

But he didn’t know.

Every time he let me “choose first,” he was declaring to the world: You don’t deserve the best.

Every time he praised me for being “so easy,” he was nudging me one step closer to walking away for good.

I looked at him and smiled.

He had no idea that every “best” thing he set aside for my sister was simply clearing my path to disappear.

This grand wedding was about to come up one bride short.

The polite smile on Cormac’s face froze.

“What do you mean, you don’t want it?” He sounded genuinely baffled. “Sadie, this is for our wedding.”

“Then why does the Italian bone china get to go to Marguerite?” I asked, my voice level.

He paused, then a faint smile touched his lips, as though the question amused him.

“Because you’re always the easy one, aren’t you?” He reached for my shoulder, but I stepped aside, and his hand closed on nothing.

“This set has a simpler design. It suits you better,” he said, switching tactics, though his tone stayed the same — calm, unarguable. “Less chance of anything going wrong.”

There it was again. Easy. Less chance of anything going wrong.

For as long as I could remember, I had lived in Marguerite’s shadow. She was the star surgical resident, my parents’ pride, the daughter they swore was born for the spotlight.

And I was the one my mother called slow.

“It’s fine,” she’d say. “One smart child in the family is enough.”

To earn the smallest crumb of their approval, I had spent my whole life playing the easy one. If Marguerite didn’t feel like going to a family dinner, I went. If her cat got sick, I took it to the vet. If she was too busy, I picked up her couture gowns from the tailor.

I used to believe that obedience could buy me a little peace.

I had told Cormac more than once how much I hated being defined that way.

Each time, he’d offer a beautiful promise — and then change nothing.

I held his gaze and said, one word at a time, “Cormac, let’s call off the wedding.”

The smile dropped from his face, replaced by an offended disbelief.

“Sadie, don’t be so emotional.” He frowned, as if I were a child mid-tantrum. “If you don’t like this set, we’ll go to the jeweler right now. You can pick out anything you want.”

It was his signature move: bury the real problem under something expensive.

Just then, my phone lit up.

A message from Marguerite: a wedding registry link for that exact set of Italian bone china.

Her text read: Throwing a fit over something this small? Sadie, stop acting like a child.

Before I could answer, Cormac’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen, drifted away to take it, and his voice softened without his even seeming to notice.

“Marguerite? Don’t worry. She’s just in a mood.”

He had his back to me, plainly assuming I couldn’t hear.

“That china? It was always meant as a housewarming gift for your new apartment. I picked it out for you.”

My whole body went rigid.

He went on in that indulgent tone he had never once used with me. “Sadie doesn’t appreciate handcrafted tableware. Her taste is… simple. It would be wasted on her.”

So there it was. The entire performance of letting me “choose first” had been a lie.

The best one was never meant for me.

I wasn’t his second choice.

I had never even been an option. 

Chapter 2

Cormac hung up and turned back to me, not a shadow of guilt on his face. If anything, he looked appeasing, eager to smooth it all over.

“I’ll make it up to you.” He scooped up his car keys. “I’ll take you to the travel agency. This time, you get to choose the honeymoon.”

Again.

He always papered over one humiliation with a bigger, more generous-looking promise.

The travel agency was warm, the air heavy with the scent of fresh coffee. A consultant enthusiastically painted pictures of the white-sand beaches of the Maldives and the northern lights over Iceland.

The words were only sounds. I leafed through the brochures, the glossy paper slick and cold beneath my numb fingers.

Then Cormac’s phone rang again. Marguerite.

He answered exactly as I’d known he would — angling away, dropping his voice, that easy intimacy sliding over him like a second skin.

“Tuscany? You want to go for the medical conference?” He paused. “You don’t feel safe going alone? I get it.”

A moment later he hung up and turned to me and the consultant, his tone allowing no argument.

“We’ll book Tuscany.”

The consultant blinked and glanced at me.

Cormac pressed a Tuscany brochure into my hands as though we had decided it together.

“We can go with Marguerite, keep her company. We wouldn’t want her traveling alone. Besides, your sister has wonderful taste. You can’t go wrong following her lead.”

I didn’t take the brochure.

I looked at him and nearly laughed. My honeymoon had just become an escort mission for my sister.

“I’m moving my things out of your apartment tonight,” I repeated. “We’re calling off the wedding.”

The smile slid from Cormac’s face. “Sadie, stop this nonsense.”

That night, he summoned my parents to the apartment.

The instant my mother walked in, her heels struck the hardwood like tiny, accusing gunshots. She tore into me without preamble.

“Have you lost your mind? Calling off the wedding?” Her gaze raked over me, dismissive. “Look at you. A dull personality and a dead-end career. If your sister weren’t so busy, do you honestly think it would ever have been your turn to get engaged to Cormac?”

The words landed like stones, but after a lifetime of them, I was almost numb.

Cormac stepped in right on cue, playing the good man, planting himself between us as if to shield me.

“Mrs. Whitaker, please don’t say that. Sadie is wonderful.”

My mother twisted his defense into another weapon. “You hear that? Cormac still stands up for you! If you call this off, where do you think you’ll find someone this good again? What about our family’s reputation? Are you ready for that kind of fallout?”

My father sat off to the side, his silence a clear endorsement of every word.

All three of them stared at me, waiting for my answer.

After a long moment, I drew a breath and gave them a single word.

“Sure.”

The tension in the room dissolved at once, as if this whole absurd drama had finally arrived at its inevitable conclusion.

I turned and went to my room, shutting the door behind me.

With the strained chatter from the living room sealed out, I pulled out my phone and messaged my college friend, Zara.

Did you ship those packages I asked you to hold for me?

The boxes held all my antique restoration tools — the craft that was my entire livelihood.

Zara answered almost instantly. Everything’s been sent to Santa Fe, just like we planned. Don’t worry.

I crossed to the window and looked out at the glittering lights of Chicago.

Then I took a deep breath and typed the words.

Zara, it’s time. Let’s start the Santa Fe plan.