After My Fiancé Humiliated Me, I Ruined Him novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Earrings

Solène calls Diana a stalker and won't read the texts, because Ashton warned her Diana would come.

She hadn't seen me yet.

She was kissing her grandmother on both cheeks and complaining about peonies.

Then she straightened up and looked at the stool beside the old woman.

At me.

Her whole face stopped.

"No," she said.

Her grandmother looked from her to me.

"Solène?"

"No. No, no, no." Solène took a step back toward the door, like I might jump at her. "I know you. I've seen your picture."

"Have you," I said.

"He showed me. On his phone. He said you'd do this." Her voice climbed. "Julien!"

Julien came out of the back with a coffee cup in each hand.

"What?"

"That's her. That's the woman from New York."

He looked at me. He looked at his sister. He set the cups down on the marble very carefully.

"What woman from New York?"

"Ashton's ex. The one who won't leave him alone." Solène pointed at me with her umbrella. "She calls him at four in the morning. She sent a letter to his building. She told him she'd come to Paris and find me."

I had never sent Ashton a letter in my life.

I had called him at four in the morning exactly once. From the emergency room.

"Is that what he told you?" I asked.

"Don't talk to me."

"You're wearing my earrings."

Her hand flew up to her ear.

Then she laughed, high and sharp. "These? These are from a jeweler on the rue de la Paix. He bought them for me."

"In February," I said. "He told me so. He said they look better on you."

"He would never say that."

"He said it Tuesday night."

The shop had gone very quiet. Somewhere in the back the coffee machine dripped.

Julien said, "Somebody explain this to me in one sentence."

"She's a stalker," Solène said.

"I was his fiancée," I said. "Until two days ago. He told me about you by text while he thought I was on a plane."

Julien's eyebrows went up. He looked at his sister.

"Fiancée."

"She's lying, Julien. He told me she'd say that. He said she made up a whole engagement in her head."

"He gave me a ring box with no ring in it," I said. "And these."

I touched my bare earlobe.

"You're not wearing anything."

"I threw them in the trash at JFK."

Solène's mouth opened and closed.

I took my phone out of my coat pocket.

I opened the thread and held it out to her across the little space between us.

"Read it," I said. "You don't have to believe me. Just read what he wrote."

She looked at the phone.

"I'm not reading anything you made."

"I didn't make it. It's his number. You can check it against yours."

"Anybody can fake a screenshot."

"It's not a screenshot. It's the thread. Scroll up. There are twenty months of it."

"Put it away."

"Solène," her grandmother said quietly.

"Grand-mère, stay out of it, please." Solène's voice cracked. She pushed it back down. "You don't know her. He told me everything about her. Everything."

"Read one line," I said. "The fourth one down."

"No."

"He calls you whole. He calls me damaged. Read it and tell me he's someone you want to marry."

Her chin came up.

For a second I saw her eyes drop to the screen.

Then she turned her head away, hard, so the platinum hair swung.

"I'm not doing this in my family's shop."

"Then where?"

"Nowhere. Ever." She dug in her bag for her own phone. "I'm calling him."

"Call him," I said. "Ask him where he was on Tuesday at seven p.m. New York time."

She stopped with the phone halfway to her ear.

Julien came around the counter. He wasn't looking at me now. He was looking at his sister.

"Solène. What did he tell you about her?"

"Enough."

"Tell me."

"Why are you on her side? You've known her for ten minutes. You don't even like Ashton."

"I don't have to like him to ask a question."

"You never have to like anybody. That's your whole personality." Solène turned to me. Her eyes were wet and furious. "Do you know what you're doing? You're going to stand in my grandmother's shop and humiliate me because he left you?"

"I'm not here to humiliate you."

"Then why are you here?"

I couldn't tell her the truth. That her family's house was a folder on my desk. That the man she loved had priced it at forty million euros and her wedding day was the closing date.

Not in front of an eighty-four-year-old woman holding three paper strips.

"I wanted to see the shop," I said.

"Why?"

"He told me about it."

That part was true. Just not the way she'd take it.

"He told you about my family?" Her face went white under the lipstick. "Then he was right about you. All of it."

"Solène."

"No, Julien." She stepped closer to me. She was taller than me in her heels, and she used every inch. "I know who you are. He told me what happened to you. I'm sorry for it. I am. But you can't keep doing this to him."

"Doing what?"

She lowered her voice so her grandmother wouldn't hear.

It didn't work. The shop was too small.

"He told me you'd come," she said. "He told me you lost a baby and blamed him for it."

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