บททั้งหมดของ My Ex Called Me Fat, Now His Father-in-Law Wants Me: บทที่ 71 - บทที่ 80

Chapter 72: Not Worth the Trouble POV: Clara I should have known the second he muted the TV. I'd stood there in his living room in half a dress, one earring in, the muted screen throwing pale blue light across the walls. Ice from the glass he'd dropped was still melting into the carpet, and the room smelled of spilled whiskey. He stared at Odette's face on that screen with an expression I recognized instantly and hated myself for recognizing. The same look he used to give me in the early days, before I'd become something he simply expected rather than something he wanted. "We're still going to dinner," I'd said, because saying it out loud felt like it might make it true. "Yeah," he'd said, distracted, already reaching for his phone. "Give me a minute." That minute turned into an hour. I stood there with my arms crossed, the missing earring pinching at my bare lobe, while he paced and typed. The bedroom clock ticked. My mascara wand sat forgotten on the bathroom counter, one eye

Chapter 74: What He Can't Get ThroughPOV: Odette"That's not my driver."The words hung there a beat too long before either of us moved. I turned to follow his eyes, and through the tall study windows the headlights swept closer, slow, deliberate, the exact unhurried menace I'd learned to dread from three black cars parked outside a college quad.Nikolai was already crossing to the window, one hand flat against the glass like he could stop whatever was coming just by looking hard enough at it. My pulse slammed, old panic rising fast, my whole body bracing for suited men and cameras and my mother's voice pitched perfectly for microphones. I thought of the fifteen minutes I'd already burned, the guard rotation ticking down somewhere behind me whether I stood here frozen or not.Then the car turned. Not toward the main gates. Toward the smaller service road curling off to the staff cottages, and the lights swung wide and away, taillights shrinking into the dark until the drive sat empt

Chapter 76: The Groveling ExPOV: OdetteThe guards turned Beckett away at the gate that same night. I heard about it from my mother, who mentioned it over breakfast the next morning with the same bored disdain she used for everything, the clink of her spoon against her teacup punctuating the sentence like it barely warranted the interruption. "Some man, I guess the poor one you are leaving with for five years, showed up at the gate last night claiming he needed to speak with you. Security handled it."I should have known that wasn't the end of it.I found out the hard way, walking across the quad toward my ethics seminar with my head down, hood up, the morning air cold enough to sting the back of my throat, trying for the first time in a week to feel like a normal student instead of a headline. Leaves crunched dry and brittle underfoot, the campus smelling faintly of cut grass and somebody's burnt coffee drifting from the café cart near the fountain. I'd almost made it to the buildin

Chapter 78: Trash CanPOV: OdetteI looked at the phones. I looked at Beckett, still on his knees, roses spilling across the pavement like some tragic prop in a play only he thought he was still starring in.And I felt, for the first time since this whole nightmare started five weeks ago, something that wasn't rage.Amusement."You want to know something funny?" My voice came out lighter than I expected, almost conversational, which seemed to unsettle him more than shouting would have. "You brought a hundred roses to convince me you've changed."I turned slightly toward the crowd, toward the raised phones, toward the audience that had assembled itself without invitation. A gust cut across the quad just then, cold enough to sting, carrying the smell of wet stone and somebody's abandoned coffee cooling on the library steps."But you didn't buy them. Did you notice that, everyone?" The cold air caught sharp in my throat on the inhale. "He's never once bought me anything with his own mone

Chapter 80: ReassessmentPOV: BeckettThe water was colder than I expected, and shallower, which meant most of the impact went straight into my tailbone instead of cushioning anything.I came up gasping and furious and dripping in front of what felt like the entire campus population, phones still recording every single humiliating second of it. Water ran down my face and into my collar, cold enough to make my teeth ache. It tasted like pennies and rotting leaves.A dull, hot throb had already started at the base of my spine.Nobody helped me out.I climbed over the stone rim on my own, soaked through, my jeans dragging heavy against my legs. One shoe was gone somewhere in the fountain's murky depths. The other squelched with every step, loud enough that I heard it even over the laughter. My other foot, in nothing but a sodden sock, slapped wet against the pavement.The laughter followed me the whole walk back across the quad. Students I didn't know filmed me from every angle. Someone