r/ReadingReality

Chapter 1

At the class reunion, someone egged my husband on with a grin. "Come on, Dean, tell us. Who was the one you secretly had a crush on back in high school?"

Dean Delgado glanced at me, a look so brief it barely registered, then let his gaze settle on Chloe Brennan, the former beauty queen sitting beside him. His voice was steady and impossibly gentle.

"Chloe."

Chloe's whole body went still. Shock and something wounded churned behind her eyes, and her lashes trembled as they turned red at the rims.

"Then why, when I sent someone to tell you to meet me after school by the trees near the field, that I had something to say to you, why didn't you ever show up?"

Dean stiffened. Disbelief washed across his face, and when he spoke again, his voice had dropped almost to a whisper.

"I did show up. I waited in those trees until it was dark. No one came. I thought you were messing with me. That you hated me."

"I went too. But the person who showed up wasn't you."

A few sentences lobbed back and forth, and the misunderstanding that had festered for eight years finally cracked open.

Chloe had genuinely asked him to meet her. But the person who carried the message got it wrong and sent someone else to the meeting spot instead. Dean thought he'd been made a fool of. Chloe thought she'd been rejected. A mutual first love, derailed for eight years by a single botched message.

The crowd erupted with nosy speculation and exaggerated sighs of pity.

"No way, that's too much of a coincidence. Someone must have sabotaged them on purpose, right?"

The air turned to ice.

In the next second, every pair of eyes in the room swiveled toward me, loaded with suspicion, mockery, and the gleeful malice of spectators at someone else's misfortune.

None of them knew Dean and I had been married for five years. To them, I was nothing more than the desperate hanger-on from high school, the one who'd clung too hard, punched above her weight, and stolen someone else's destiny.

I turned to look at Dean.

All I wanted was one word of fairness from him. Just one. Even something as simple as telling them the truth: that he had pursued me first.

But he said nothing. His eyes darted away, complicated and evasive, and his silence did what words never needed to. He let every ugly assumption about me stand.

In that moment, I slowly slid the wedding band off my ring finger, the one I'd worn for five years, and told myself in the quiet of my own heart:

Eight years. This is where it ends.

——

Five years of marriage, and he had never once looked at me the way he was looking at her. Never once been that tender.

All this time, I'd told myself he was just cold by nature. That he didn't know how to show affection, didn't know how to be warm.

Now I understood. It wasn't that he didn't know how. His warmth, his patience, his gentleness had simply never been mine.

A few more rounds of drinks, and Chloe drifted to Dean's side, eyes glistening, leaning close. The two of them murmured to each other about all the years they'd lost.

She tilted her face up, fragile and wounded. "I can't believe it was just a misunderstanding. All those wasted years."

"I should have told you myself back then. None of this would have happened."

Dean seemed to melt. He reached up and brushed the tear from the corner of her eye with his fingertip, so careful, so deliberate, as though she were something that might break.

"It was my fault. I should have waited longer."

The alcohol had Chloe flushed and unsteady, swaying slightly, and she let herself tip into his arms.

Dean caught her without hesitation, one hand patting her back to soothe her, the other reaching for a cup of hangover broth. He blew on it until it cooled before lifting it to her lips.

Every motion was practiced and natural. Tender enough to burn.

Not once, through any of it, did he so much as glance in my direction.

The jeering around us swelled, wave after wave, each one sharper than the last.

"If they hadn't missed each other back then, they'd probably be married by now!"

"A perfect match is a perfect match. No matter how far apart they drifted, they always end up back together!"

"Too bad someone cut in line. Otherwise their kid would be old enough to run errands by now."

And then the tone shifted, the barbs aimed squarely at me, barely even pretending to be subtle.

"Exactly. Some people have skin thick enough to stop a bullet. Hang around long enough and they think they can replace the real thing."

"Maybe she should take a good look in the mirror and ask herself if she's even in the same league. Does she really think something stolen can last?"

Their stares pinned me like needles, dripping with contempt, ridicule, and schadenfreude.

I clenched my fists until my nails bit into my palms and said nothing.

Before long, one of the louder classmates dropped into the seat next to mine. He leaned in, voice low enough to seem conspiratorial but pitched loud enough for the whole table to hear.

"Serena Lambert. That thing back in high school. That was you, wasn't it?"

"You're the one who changed the message so they'd miss each other, right?"

"I knew it. You'd do anything to get ahead."

My expression went cold, and I opened my mouth to fire back.

But the room had already exploded into laughter, every voice piling filth onto me without a shred of mercy.

"Obviously it was her. Who else would pull something that low?"

"She used to follow Dean around every single day like a leech. Couldn't shake her off no matter what. A girl like that would do anything to get what she wanted."

"Waiting outside his classroom after the bell, bringing him water, shoving snacks at him. She had no shame and a whole bag of tricks."

"Changing one little message? That's nothing for someone like her. She was always trashy."

"Honestly, Dean's a saint for putting up with her this long. Anyone else would've kicked her to the curb ages ago."

Not one of them knew. Not a single one.

Dean and I had been together for eight years. Married for five.

I wasn't the latecomer. I wasn't the other woman. I was the one who had stood beside him when he had nothing, when we lived in a basement apartment and survived on instant noodles.

But in his eyes, and in the eyes of everyone in that room, I was nothing but a joke.

Link pleaseeee

have a link that’s not for a weekly/ monthly/ annual subscription?

I’d like to continue with this novel because this plot trope is not unique but the interesting aspect is that the hero returns strong - that’s the opening of the novel- which makes it more interesting because you don’t have to read through chapters of victimisation and quagmires. it’s laid out clearly .