The Best Man novel Chapter 59

"I feel the same way"

"These last few months however, I realized that you're not the same girl I feel in love with anymore. You changed and grew into this other person", the was commotion amongst the guests and the excitement on her face slowly faded away.

"What are you doing?", she asked quietly, her eyes looking over the guests before they found mine again

"In spite of everything, I still desperately wanted to fix you, get back the girl I feel in love with in the beginning, but I couldn't, she was gone forever. I would be lying through my teeth if I told you right now that I recognize this person standing in front of me because I don't"

Her eyes were frozen wide open, stunned in an expression of surprise as she started squeezing on my hands, like she was begging me to stop talking

"Always, I tried to seal your wounds, not realizing that I was the one bleeding from our relationship, I was actually the one that was falling apart instead"

She started shaking her head in disbelief, denying everything that was coming from my mouth. Her unblinking stare dissolving as tears fell from her eyes at each flutter

"For someone who claimed to love me as much as you do, you really had a weird way of showing it because you always made me feel weak, stupid, unappreciated and unhappy. You're plain abusive and controlling. I'm not sure I can deal with your bullshit any longer than I already have"

"Tristan-"

"I thought I could go through with this but standing here in front of you and all these people made everything a lot clearer. The life I'm going to live the second we walk out down this aisle as husband and wife, is the kind of life I'd never wish upon anyone, not even my greatest enemy",

"Y-you don't mean t-that", she sobbed wholeheartedly with tears continuing to stream down her face as she grabbed my face in her hands and I withdrew from her hold

"I don't want to spend the rest of my life regretting what should have been one of the best days of my life", I took off my wedding band and placed it in the palm of her hand and she grasped, seeing her fingers starting to visibly tremble

"Truth be told, our love isn't worth fighting for anymore", I closed her hand around the ring in a fist, looking at her again to see that she was already crying. This time, I didn't feel anything, seeing her like this hurt me, but it didn't affect me anymore, I wasn't going to feel sorry for her because I'm done.

"Tristan please", she begged, desperately clutching on my arm the second I was about to back away. "We can still fix things"

Doing what seemed like a legitimate plan to run away from punishment, we sneaked out, got into my car and stated driving around until we reached this place. We got here just in time to witness the sunset, watching the sky turn purple while we sat on the pier. The night breeze blowing into our hair as the darkness started covering everything it touched and the stars started scattering in the sky, there was peace and quiet, and we got to be alone with our thought for a while.

..... from that day onwards it became our secret place

We spent most of our days here, just lazing around. The sun was always blazing in the afternoon, more enough reason to take a swim in the clear waters that looked blue but the deeper you looked, the water had a hint of green.

Liv and I would lie down in the pier just when the sun would start going down, looking above at the stars above us and just talk until we eventually lost track of time. Those were the little moments I lived for, the ones you reminisce with a smile on your face because they are engraved in your memory forever.

Closing my eyes after sitting down on the pier, my mind drifted to think about all that's happened throughout the years. What eventually lead me to actually thinking, you know what? I'm done.

I was hurting deep inside and all I just wanted to do was to start over, escape from reality even if it's for a few minutes to my own virtual world where I'm actually happy and content. One thing I knew, and I was sure about was that everyone was probably wondering what actually happened back there at the ceremony.