Wait…Why Did Everyone I Love Suddenly Call Me a Bitch?! novel Chapter 68

Chapter 9

Garrett eventually agreed.

Maybe out of guilt.

Maybe trying to buy peace of mind with money.

Or maybe he’d already lost everything and had nothing left to lose.

The company kicked him out completely. Hit him with massive breach-of-contract penalties.

He sold his apartment, his car, emptied all his savings, and scraped together a huge sum for me.

Wasn’t quite half his equity, but enough to take my mom abroad for treatment and let me go back to school without worrying about money.

The day I got the money, I felt nothing.

This was always his debt to pay.

I started handling paperwork for going overseas. Contacted hospitals and schools abroad.

Everything was finally moving in the right direction.

But the day before I was supposed to leave, I got a call from the police.

Garrett Brooks was dead.

The killer? Harper Sullivan.

When I got to the station, I was still in shock.

According to the detective, Harper’s mental state had completely collapsed from the online harassment and her life falling apart.

That day, she went to find Garrett with a kitchen knife. Kept screaming “why don’t you believe me” and “you ruined my life.”

They got into a fight. Harper lost it, stabbed him in the stomach.

By the time the ambulance arrived, he’d bled out. Couldn’t be saved.

When they arrested Harper, she was laughing hysterically. Saying she and Garrett were finally “together forever.”

I sat on that cold bench in the police station listening to all this. Felt a twisted mix of emotions I couldn’t sort out.

I’d hated him. Resented him, Imagined a thousand ways to make him pay.

But never wanted him dead.

That boy who used to stand in our courtyard promising to protect me forever.

That boy in the white shirt smiling at me in the sunlight,

He was really gone.

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Wait… Why Did Everyone I Love Suddenly Call Me a Bitch?!

I felt sad for him. But couldn’t cry a single tear.

Walking out of the station, I looked up at the city lights, neon flashing everywhere, but none of it could light up the confusion in my heart.

This eight-year war ending with two dead bodies felt like the most fucked-up punchline.

Did I win?

I don’t know.

I just felt tired. So, so tired.

On my way home, my phone rang.

The caregiver.

Her voice was crying and excited, words tumbling over each other: “Ms. Carter! Get to the hospital right now! Your mom… your mom… she woke up!”

My brain went blank.

I dropped everything in my hands and ran like hell toward the hospital.

When I pushed open that door and saw the woman who’d been lying there for eight years looking at me with her eyes open, weakly moving her lips, silently saying my name-I collapsed next to her bed and sobbed.

All the pain, suffering, and desperation from those eight years poured out with my tears.

Mom was awake.

My world hadn’t collapsed after all.

The most important light in my life had turned back on.

The doctor called it a miracle.

I knew better.

It wasn’t a miracle.

It was Mom’s will to live. She couldn’t bear to leave me alone.

I cancelled my plans to go abroad. Spent every day with Mom doing rehab.

Her body was still weak. Couldn’t talk much. But her eyes told me every day how much she loved me.

I talked to her constantly,

Told her about these past eight years,

How I’d kept our family going with my art,

How Dad had stayed by her side day and night.

About Garrett and Harper? Didn’t say a word.

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Wait… Why Did Everyone I Love Suddenly Call Me a Bitch?!

Those dirty pieces of the past could stay buried forever.

I didn’t want the people I loved hurting over people who weren’t worth it.

With my constant care, Mom got better day by day.

She could slowly say simple words. Could walk a few steps with my help.

The day she got discharged, the weather was perfect.

I pushed Mom in her wheelchair while Dad walked beside us. The three of us went back to that little house with the crabapple tree.

Dad cooked a huge meal. Our family of three finally sat together like old times and ate.

At the table, Mom used her still-awkward speech to tell me: “Sloane… you’ve… been through… so much…”

I shook my head. Her hand was covered in needle marks but I held it tight.

“Mom, no. It wasn’t hard. You and Dad-you were here. That’s all I needed.”

And that was true. I wasn’t scared anymore.

The echoes from that abyss had finally stopped.

And I’d finally made it to my own dawn.

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