The Wife he threw Away (Claire and Lucian) novel Chapter 249

CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-NINE LUCIAN’S POV

Eva stood perfectly still.

For a long time, neither of us spoke.

Then, almost in a whisper, she asked, “If things had gone differently…”

She hesitated. “…would you still have chosen me?”

The question hung heavy between us.

A year ago, I might have struggled to answer it.

But today I didn’t.

Before I could answer her, my mind betrayed me. It carried me somewhere else.

Not to Eva, but to Claire.

I saw Claire walk into my office a year earlier.

She’d been holding her phone with trembling hands, looking equally furious and devastated.

The paparazzi photographs of Eva and me had just gone viral.

Claire had looked at me as though she’d forgotten how to breathe.

Her eyes were red and swollen, dark circles clouding beneath them.

She didn’t scream, she just seemed… broken.

I remembered every word she’d said.

“Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me you didn’t cheat on me.”

And I couldn’t.

Because it had been true.

She had resigned to begging me to stay and fight for our marriage.

And to my greatest shame, I had walked out of the office.

The memory shifted then, to Claire sitting beside me in a hospital consultation room, the doctor’s words echoing very clearly.

“I’m sorry… the damage to your uterus is extensive.” Dr. Ramon had declared. “There is extensive scar tissue.”

Claire had begged me to say something. Anything.

I had refused to react.

Claire had nodded politely, thanked the doctor and walked out with tears in her eyes.

Then she’d collapsed against the hospital wall the moment no one was watching.

I hadn’t gone after her.

I hadn’t held her.

I hadn’t told her we’d survive it together.

Instead I’d gone searching for something else.

Someone else.

Then another image replaced it.

Claire asleep beside my hospital bed, her head resting awkwardly against the chair, dark circles beneath her eyes.

Her fingers remained wrapped around mine.

She’d fought for me while I couldn’t even open my own eyes.

She’d defended my company-protected my name. She saved everything when I’d been too unconscious to save myself.

And she’d done it after everything I’d put her through.

I looked back at Eva. “No.”

Eva flinched as though I’d struck her.

“…No?” She repeated.

She had genuinely believed I could ever love her more than Claire.

I couldn’t blame her- I had made the mistake of protecting her over Claire once.

But never again.

I slowly shook my head. “If things had gone differently, Eva, I still wouldn’t have chosen you.”

She stared at me, almost desperately.

“… Why? When did you stop loving me?”

I looked past her for a moment, searching my own memories, searching for the truth.

“I don’t know.”

She frowned.

“I just know that one day, years ago… I realized I was trying much harder to keep you than you were trying to keep me.”

Silence.

“I was rearranging my life for you, while you were rearranging me to fit yours.”

She looked down.

“You cared more about what people saw than about who I actually was.”

Another pause.

“And not long after that, I fell in love with someone else.”

I didn’t say Claire’s name. I didn’t have to.

Eva already knew.

Her eyes closed briefly.

“…Claire.”

I nodded once.

She laughed. Not because anything was funny, but because she’d finally understood something she’d spent years refusing to see.

“I didn’t lose you when the pregnancy came out…”

“No.”

“I lost you long before that.”

“You did.”

Another long silence settled between us.

She swallowed.

“When we got back together…”

Her voice sounded smaller than I’d ever heard it.

“When we were…”

She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

“…seeing each other.”

She finally looked at me again.

“Did you love me then?”

The answer hurt.

Mostly because of what it said about me.

“My loneliness brought me back to you.”

Her expression slowly crumbled.

“I thought I was searching for what was missing.”

I shook my head.

“But I already had everything.”

“My marriage was falling apart.”

“My wife hated me.”

“I was desperate for a child.”

“I convinced myself you were the answer.”

I looked directly at her.

“I wasn’t chasing love.”

“I was chasing relief.”

“And then…”

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