He Once Had 28 Chances to Marry Me Chapter 04

He Once Had 28 Chances to Marry Me Chapter 04

But I didn’t answer. Dropping my phone into the very bottom of my tote bag, I stepped onto the jet bridge 

without a single backward glance. 

From that exact moment, my twelve year bond with Julian Reed was permanently broken. 

It wasn’t until later, through Samantha’s frantic updates and the inevitable rumors that followed, that I pieced together the absolute chaos unfolding in that private Manhattan hospital the second my definitive text went through. 

When Julian read the words, “We are going our separate ways“, he knocked over the cup of hot coffee he had just brought for Lily, completely oblivious to the scalding liquid splashing across the back of his hand. 

Like a madman, he frantically started blowing up my phone. 

“Your call has been forwarded to an automated…” 

The first call rang for barely half a second before the robotic, emotionless prompt abruptly cut it off. 

Julian’s entire body went rigid, all the color draining from his face in an instant. Refusing to accept reality, he gritted his teeth and pressed the redial button with trembling fingers. 

This time, there wasn’t even a half–ring. It went straight to voicemail. 

The cold, mechanical female voice blared from his phone’s speaker, echoing down the sterile hospital hallway. 

“Impossible… How is this possible?” Staring at his screen, he looked like a man whose soul had just been 

painfully extracted, muttering incoherently to himself. “We were supposed to go to City Hall this morning… I just asked her to postpone it because of the MRI… She’s just going out of state for rehab on her ankle. She can’t just leave me. She wouldn’t do this.” 

Lying in her hospital bed, clutching an ankle that had been diagnosed as nothing more than a mild sprain, 

Lily stared in sheer astonishment at the man who was historically level–headed and had never been anything but utterly devoted to her every whim. 

Completely ignoring her delicate, whiny calls, Julian bolted from the hospital like a man who had entirely lost his mind. 

He sped all the way back to the National Training Center and practically tore the door off Head Coach David’s office. 

“David, Stella just texted me saying she resigned from the national team and filed to dissolve our partnership? What kind of sick joke is this? Why the hell did she go to Milan?!” Julian demanded, his hands. 

planted firmly on the desk. His chest heaved violently, his eyes wild with a mixture of raw panic and desperation. 

David paused his pen, looking up with a deeply complex gaze. 

“Stella wasn’t joking with you, Julian,” David said, letting out a heavy sigh. “The other night, she officially withdrew from Pairs. She accepted an invitation to an elite Women’s Singles training camp in Milan. I assumed she had already ironed things out with you before leaving.” 

Those words hit Julian like a sledgehammer, 

ruthlessly shattering the very last thread of denial he had been clinging to. 

He gripped the edge of the desk, feeling as though he had been plunged into freezing water, a deafening roar ringing in his ears. 

It was probably right then that he finally remembered my uncharacteristic silence over the past few days. 

Just yesterday afternoon, when he had rushed back to our apartment to grab that diamond necklace for Lily I had been standing right under his nose, packing my bags to leave. He hadn’t bothered to ask me a single question. 

The night before last was even worse. 

While I was burning up with a high fever, playing the perfect PR puppet to secure his sponsorships at our championship gala, he spent the entire evening in a dimly lit corner, cozying up to Lily. 

When the night finally ended, he literally slammed the door of my own Uber in my face. Without a second thought, he stole my ride for a stomach–aching Lily, mercilessly abandoning me on the freezing curb. 

For two whole days, he hadn’t given me a single opening to speak. He had been with Lily the entire time. 

Stumbling out of David’s office like a wandering ghost, Julian pushed through the doors of the main rink. It was totally empty. 

He slumped onto a bench by the boards, sitting in the suffocating, dead silence for three solid hours. 

As the biting chill of the arena slowly seeped into his bones, he stared through bloodshot eyes at the surface of the ice. 

The pristine sheet, scarred by a lattice of unhealed blade marks, seemed to mercilessly mock his sheer arrogance. 

Twelve years of memories flashed before his eyes, reflecting off the ice like cold, harsh shards of light. 

He likely remembered the junior trials twelve years ago–the day we first met. Fresh to the intensive training camp and struggling to adapt to the grueling pace, I had taken two brutal falls attempting an Axel jump. 

It was Julian, a fellow competitor, who had glided over and extended a hand, pulling a battered and bruised me up from the ice. It was because of that accidental touch and the way he hoisted me up that the coaching staff noticed the astonishing physical and visual synergy between us. 

From then on, he would routinely ask me to stick around for secret late–night practice sessions when the rink was dead quiet. 

Through countless hours of synchronizing our blades and building an unspoken mental telepathy, we evolved from partners into lovers. 

Through the years we were together, we left our mark on top–tier arenas around the globe. 

We conquered the Grand Prix and the World Championships. Whenever we stepped onto the ice together, we commanded the absolute center of attention. 

During that era, we were the undisputed, uncrowned royalty of the federation–everyone believed we were a match made in heaven. 

In our fourth year together, standing on the podium after winning Nationals, he slipped an engagement ring onto my finger under the glare of a thousand spotlights. 

Recently, many of our peers had lamented in private, wondering if things would have been different if Lily hadn’t bought her way into the training camp three years ago, backed by massive sponsorships. If there hadn’t been a younger rink–mate who received his 

boundless, unapologetic favoritism, would we have kept skating in perfect harmony? Would we have skated right into our tenth anniversary, or even clinched Olympic gold? 

But I knew the truth. Even if there had never been a Lily, there would have been someone else—another fresh face, another younger partner. 

Ultimately, the complete collapse of a relationship is never really about the arrival of a third party. It was Julian’s own doing. 

It was his repeated, instinctual choices to leave me behind, taking my presence entirely for granted. 

And now, the tragic script of Stella the devoted pairs skater has officially wrapped. 

The moment my flight touches down in Milan, I will step out onto the ice solely as the Queen of Women’s Singles–dancing for no one but myself.