Tessa had always been Elliot’s unreachable "white moonlight," the one he’d worshipped from afar.
He’d chased her for years, but she’d always kept him at arm’s length.
It wasn’t until she left for abroad that he finally allowed himself to accept my love.
I had thought he was over her. But now, it was clear he had only used me to numb his pain.
When Tessa returned and discovered Elliot was engaged to me, she fell into a deep depression.
Elliot, too, drowned his sorrow in alcohol, his voice laced with bitterness as he muttered to his friends, "Fate is playing a cruel joke."
From that moment on, he was convinced I owed Tessa.
He also believed I owed him, though I was still his fiancée.
I became nothing more than an unwelcome third wheel in our own relationship.
Elliot never officially ended things with me and so I kept humbling myself, loving him cautiously, waiting for a future that seemed more distant with each passing day.
Even as he spent entire nights at Tessa’s place, never returning home, I swallowed my pain, my heart heavy with silence.
Back then, I thought loving someone meant enduring everything, no matter the cost.