All Chapters of Regret After Goodbye: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

"Callum, why are you just standing there? Aren't you going to greet my friends? You're so useless!"Kristen's shrill voice pulled me out of my memories. Only then did I realize I had been standing in the blazing sun for a long time, my whole body drenched in sticky sweat. I wiped my forehead and gave a faint smile."What, am I the hired help now? Am I supposed to handle everything?"Kristen clearly had not expected me to talk back. She looked at me coldly, her disgust written all over her face. "I only agreed to get engaged to you because I felt sorry for you. Instead of being grateful, you're disrespecting me and Lance? You've really got some nerve!"She stared at me with contempt, as though I had committed some unforgivable crime. I let out a long breath and looked at her hand locked with Lance's, then at their matching outfits that anyone could spot from across the room.A revulsion I had never felt before welled up inside me. "You two look so sweet together that anyone would t

I stood in the living room and looked around. In the house I had lived in for five years, there was pitifully little that belonged to me. It seemed like one small suitcase would be enough to erase every trace of me from this place.For all those years, I had worked hard to give Kristen a better life. After my shift every day, I would rush home to make her dinner, then hurry out again to do food deliveries.I even cut myself down to six hours of sleep a night. I could not promise Kristen the life of a rich man's wife, but at least I made sure she never had to worry about food or clothes, and that she was never bothered by the little hassles of everyday life.Even after all that, Kristen never once looked at me properly. To her, I was just some crude guy who only cared about money, and I would never compare to the bright, handsome Lance she remembered.What she seemed to forget was that I had given up on my passion for computer science and spent every day delivering food, rain or shi

Now that I had a goal, I felt more motivated at work. I went online to look up information about computer certification exams and ended up reading for the entire morning. It was not until Maddie waved a boxed lunch in front of my face that I realized it was already lunchtime."Callum, take it easy. Leave some work for us interns, will you?"I took the lunch and started eating slowly. Halfway through, Maddie poked my arm, her little face scrunched up as she looked at the barely touched lunch on her desk."Callum, now I finally get why you're never excited about lunch. This company's food is awful!"The utterly miserable look on her face made me laugh. I simply put my lunch down and grabbed my phone off the desk."Come on. I'm taking you somewhere with real food. My treat!"When we got to the entrance, I was surprised to find Kristen there. She was wearing a long white dress with her hair down, and she was staring at Maddie and me with a dark expression.As I walked over, Kristen

The days always went by quickly when there was something to look forward to. Following Alan's plans, we were set to leave for Redmere in one week, but that week flew by as fast as a single day.Maddie and I seemed to have endless energy, and work that used to take us a full day now took only half a day to finish with ease.Maybe what I had said last time had really hurt Kristen, because she stopped showing up to bother me. Instead, she used a string of burner accounts to message me about how much she missed me and how badly she wanted things to go back to the way they were.She said she regretted everything and had only just realized that Lance never loved her at all.Every time she sent a message, I blocked that number, but somehow Kristen managed to get her hands on a new one every single day, as if she had lost her mind. Eventually I stopped paying attention. If she wanted to keep sending them, fine. It was not like it would hurt me.There was one thing I could not wrap my he