Too Late to Say I Do

Introduction: We were in a long-distance relationship for three years, saving up thirty-six boarding passes along the way. Yet when I finally moved back home, Ethan already had Mia by his side. I always thought his endless work meant he was busy planning our future together. Instead, at my own welcome-back party, Ethan protected Mia in front of everyone and had me thrown out of the room. I was done waiting. I would settle every single score from all those years, and then I’d find someone else to build a life with. Gwen's POV For the welcome-back party, Ethan booked thirty tables at an exclusive private club. The moment I stepped inside, the chatter and laughter among our friends dropped to a dead silence. Ethan walked over, reaching out to take my coat. I took half a step back, dodging his hands. Before I could even catch my balance, a girl in a white dress broke through the crowd and slapped me squarely across the face. The crack echoed so sharply through the room that the entire place froze. "I'm Ethan's girlfriend. Who the hell are you?" The girl tilted her chin up, but her eyes flicked nervously toward Ethan. I turned my face back, my cheek burning like fire. I recognized that face. Mia. She showed up all the time as Ethan's phone wallpaper and on his social feeds. Before, I’d just assumed she was a new junior employee at his firm. I never paid it much mind, and I never asked him about her. Back then, I figured he’d waited for me for so many years—it wasn't worth causing friction over an employee. I whipped my hand back and slapped her right across the face, hitting her even harder than she hit me. Mia stumbled back half a step, tears instantly welling in her eyes. Clutching her cheek, she looked up at Ethan, her shoulders trembling with sobs. "Ethan..." Her voice shook. Ethan’s eyes lingered on my face for a second, but he didn't say a word. In that second, I waited for him to speak. I was waiting for the simplest, most obvious thing: whoever hit me should apologize to me. "Get her out of here." I didn't look at Mia. I just tilted my chin toward the security guards standing by the wall. Two guards stepped in, grabbing Mia by both arms. Mia wrenched herself free, stood on her tiptoes, and planted a kiss right on Ethan's cheek in front of everyone. "Don't you dare touch me! I'm his girlfriend!" The room full of friends traded glances. Then, someone took the lead, and one after another, they all started chiming in for Mia. "Oh, this must be Mia! Ethan's future bride! They look so good together." "Ethan, you should’ve told us sooner so we could properly roll out the red carpet for her!" One after another, like a rehearsed script, they acknowledged Mia as Ethan's future wife right in front of my face. I recognized every single person in this room. During the years I lived abroad, these were the very people who constantly sent gifts and care packages to my family's house. Ethan stepped forward, putting himself between me and Mia, his brows furrowed. "Gwen, she's still practically a kid. Don't be petty with her." I looked at the arm he used to shield her. That same hand had once blocked things for me—shielding me from unwanted drinks at parties, shutting down anyone who dared talk behind my back. Today, that hand was turned the other way. Shielding her from me. "I'm not being petty." I raised my hand, pointing to the untouched bottle of hard liquor on the table. "Finish this entire bottle today." "If you want a drink, I'll drink with you," Ethan said, frowning. "I'm not drinking it. This bottle, these thirty tables, and the explanation you owe me after three years and thirty-six flights—if you don't drain every drop today, nobody leaves." I shook my head, my gaze sweeping across the faces that had just flipped their loyalties. The room went dead silent. Even Mia forgot to cry. Ethan didn't respond to my demand. In front of the whole crowd, his tone chilled. "You've had too much to drink, and you're making a scene. Someone, see Miss Vance out." Two servers immediately stepped forward, politely making a gesture toward the exit. I recognized both servers. Whenever I used to visit this private club, they were always the ones attending to me. A moment ago, I still had a sliver of hope that someone in this room would realize how twisted this was. Now I knew: not a single person in this room gave a damn. In their eyes, I was just a troublemaker ruining the party, while Mia was the guest of honor. I didn't make a scene. I looked down at the dress I was wearing, gathered my skirt, and walked out, step by step. In the entire room, not one person dared to stop me. When I got home, I locked myself in my bedroom without turning on the lights. I dug up every single photo, post, and timeline trace of Ethan and Mia over the past few years, organizing them all. In the pictures, Mia was sitting where I used to sit. Ethan blocked drinks for her, draped his jacket over her shoulders, and listened to her talk with the exact same tender smile he used to give me. Every single gesture of affection was intimately familiar. All of it was originally meant for me. Turns out, he had been saving it all for someone else. He took my place, took every bit of tenderness meant for me, and handed it to another woman without missing a single detail. And then, in front of a whole room of people, he told me not to be petty with her. I sat in the darkness for a long time. So long that the sky outside began to pale with dawn. So long that the sting on my cheek finally went numb. My plan had been to come back and build a real life with him. That thought snapped tonight. It was a clean, absolute break; I didn't even care to ask him why. I picked up my phone and sent a message to Carter, whom I’d met while studying abroad: *Whenever you get back, let's get married.*Gwen's POV Right as dawn broke, I bundled all the gathered files and sent them to Ethan. I didn't say much. Just one question: Do you want to explain? Sending that was the very last chance I offered him. If he had replied with just one word, I could have treated this as a massive misunderstanding. The message was marked as read. No reply ever came. I set my phone face down on the desk, lay down for a while, but couldn't sleep. I don't know how long passed before I heard the front door open downstairs. I threw on a cardigan and headed down. The living room lights were blazing. My father, Marcus Vance, sat on one end of the sofa, while Ethan sat on the other. Spread across the coffee table between them was the exact stack of files I’d sent out last night. "These files were anonymously leaked onto Mia's college forum in the middle of the night," my father said, his voice held low without looking up at me. "You're the only person who had access to this." I froze. I parted my lips, wanting to tell them it wasn't me, but swallowed the words down. I swallowed them because I saw who the files were sitting between. The two men in this room—one was my father, the other was the man I had waited for through all those years. Both of them had already made up their minds about who was to blame. My father and Ethan stood up. Ethan didn't yell at me. He simply gestured toward the door. "Wake everyone in the house up. Have them line up in the courtyard." Within fifteen minutes, every light in the estate was on. The butler, the driver, the chef, the cleaners, the security guards, the nanny who had raised me since I was a baby—around twenty people stood in an orderly line in the courtyard, their coats wrapped tightly against the chill. Even my father walked over and took his place at the end of the line. Besides me, there were exactly twenty-six people. Not a single person was missing. "If even one person in this line is willing to answer you," Ethan said, looking straight at me, "we'll consider this whole thing water under the bridge." Looking at that row of backs, my throat tightened painfully. I could name every single person standing in that courtyard. I knew where their kids went to school, whose legs ached when winter came, and who had quietly saved the tin of sweets I once brought back from abroad. These twenty-six people were the ones I had trusted the most, the ones around whom I never felt the need to keep my guard up. I started calling out from the far end. "Nathan," I called to the butler. The figure standing on the very edge, facing away from me, didn't move an inch. I called him a second time. Still no answer. I moved down the line, calling them one by one. I called Emma, the nanny who practically raised me, Jack the driver, the chef, the guards. With every name I called, that person simply turned further away, giving me the stark, cold visual of their back. Emma had held me in her arms as a baby. When I had burning fevers as a child, she was the one who paced the rooms holding me all night long. When her name left my lips, Emma's shoulders trembled slightly. But in the end, she never turned around. I called out all twenty-six names. Not a single back budged. After the first round, I was still waiting for the voice at the end of the line. I told myself that even if the staff were afraid to answer, my own father surely would. "Call them again from the start," my father said. So I called them again from the beginning. Still nothing. By the second round, my voice was already turning thin and airy. After finishing the second round, I no longer dared to hope anyone would answer. I lowered my expectations, just praying Emma's shoulders would twitch once more. A single twitch would count as an answer. Her shoulders stayed completely still. By the third round, I couldn't bear to look up at their faces anymore. I just stared at the rows of shoes on the ground, calling out to pair after pair. Counting shoes was easier on the heart than looking at faces. Faces carried memories; shoes belonged to anyone. Round after round, until my throat was so raw I couldn't even form a proper sound. Not a single person gave so much as a quiet hum. From start to finish, I never begged. Under the porch, Ethan stood with his arms crossed, watching with a cold, blank stare, completely devoid of emotion. A night breeze swept through. I stood barefoot on the stone pavement, shivering from the biting cold, yet no one offered me a jacket. Standing in the center of that courtyard, I realized I had nothing left in my hands. I used to think this family was my safety net—that whenever I suffered outside, someone here would stand up for me. Only tonight did I realize that this safety net was nothing but my own delusion. Only when I couldn't make a sound anymore and clung to the doorframe, gasping for air, did my father raise his hand and dismiss everyone. Once the courtyard emptied out, only the three of us remained. The stone pavers still bore the footprints of the line of people, shimmering faintly under the settling night dew. Only then did Ethan speak, his tone as flat as if he were closing a routine business deal. "Tomorrow, you will go to the auditorium at Mia's university. In front of all her classmates and professors, you will admit your mistake. You will say those photos and that timeline were all fabricated by you to ruin her reputation." "I didn't fabricate anything," I rasped, my voice barely audible. "She was the one who crawled into your bed." "Where's the proof?" Ethan asked. "The stack I sent you last night. You saw it." "Gwen," Ethan frowned, "what's the point of bringing this up now, other than making a fool of yourself?" "Why should I have to confess to a lie?" "Because the files came from your hands," he said, staring at me. "The whole forum is tearing her apart right now, and the faculty has gotten involved. You go admit the blame, and this whole mess ends. I'll still treat you like the sensible person you've always been." *Sensible.* During those years I was overseas, he said that every time we met. Back then, I thought it was a compliment. I looked up at him, my eyes burning red. Looking at the man I had waited for all these years, I didn't offer a single word of defense. A defense only works if someone is willing to listen. Twenty-six people had just stood in this courtyard, and not a single one was willing to hear me. I simply nodded, accepting his terms. The moment I nodded, I had already made up my mind: there was only one way to put an end to this, and I had to walk up to that stage myself. As for the words "I apologize"—not a chance in hell. Ethan seemed surprised by how easily I gave in. As he turned to leave, his footsteps hesitated for a fraction of a second.Gwen's POV I ran a fever all night. By the next morning, it still hadn't broken; my skin burned, and my lips were peeling and cracked. Before dawn had fully broken, Ethan barged into my bedroom with two bodyguards. Wrapped in my duvet, half-delirious from the fever, I was dragged out of bed, shoved into the car between the guards before I could even grab a coat. The car drove straight to the main auditorium of Mia's university. The auditorium was packed. A sea of people sat in the audience—Mia's classmates and professors. A few reporters had even set up cameras in the back corners, lenses pointed at the stage. Mia stood in the center of the stage, her eyes rimmed with red, saying nothing. Every now and then, she glanced briefly at the crowd before quickly ducking her head again. A few professors stood beside her. When they saw me being brought up to the stage, their brows drew together in disapproval. "Gwen," Mia said softly, her voice just loud enough for the front rows to catch, "if you just apologize publicly, we can put this behind us. I won't press charges." "Yeah, just apologize! Don't be so cruel," a girl called out from below, backing Mia up. Ethan didn't give me a chance to speak. He reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone, shoved it into my hand, and forcibly tapped the screen to wake it. "Unlock it." Too weak to put up a fight, I punched in the passcode. It was my birthday. He knew it. Ethan pressed the phone back into my palm. "In front of everyone," he said, his voice measured but carrying clearly across the auditorium, "delete every single thing. One by one, with your own hands." A low collective gasp rippled through the room. I cradled the phone, the glare of the screen reflecting off my fever-flushed face. Everything on this phone had been collected piece by piece through contacts just the night before. When I gathered it, my only thought had been to wait for his reply, lay it out before him, and have a clear, honest conversation. Now I understood: these files were the very last shreds of leverage I had left. And this was precisely what he wanted today—to force me to crush them with my own hands in front of the world. I started with the photos. Stored in the album were the pictures I’d had people take over the years: Mia holding Ethan's arm as they left a restaurant, Mia leaning against his shoulder during a movie, Mia taking groceries from his hands at his apartment door. My fingers trembled as I tapped to delete them, one by one. With every photo I deleted, I turned the screen outward, holding it up so every pair of eyes below could see it clearly. When I reached the photo where Ethan was draping his coat over Mia's shoulders, my finger paused. "Delete it. What are you waiting for?" Ethan urged in a low voice from behind me. Someone in the audience let out a snicker, quickly shushed by the person next to them. I deleted it anyway. "Delete the timeline too. Don't leave a single entry," Ethan demanded. I deleted an entry, held it up, deleted another, until I reached the one I hated to let go of the most—Ethan waving at the camera through an airport glass partition. That was originally taken for me. My thumb hovered over the screen. I had kept that picture thinking that one day, when he was finally done being busy, I'd show it to him and tell him I'd kept every memory safe. "What, having second thoughts?" someone yelled sarcastically from the crowd. In the end, I pressed down. "Chat history, contacts—delete all of it," Ethan's voice came from behind. I deleted them slowly. So slowly that people in the front rows began shifting impatiently in their seats, slowly enough that the shutters of the cameras in the back clicked continuously, capturing every bit of my humiliation. "Wipe it completely clean!" someone shouted. I didn't miss a single thing. I deleted until the gallery was empty, the chat list wiped, until nothing remained. I slammed the phone face-down on the podium. Not a single person in the audience spoke; even the excitement of watching the drama had fizzled out. "Now, say you're sorry," Ethan said, thrusting a microphone in front of me. I took the mic, gripping it tightly. I stepped up to the front, my legs long since numb, leaning heavily on the edge of the podium with one hand to stay upright. I lifted my head. "Go on, just say sorry and get it over with!" someone urged from below. Everyone was watching me, waiting for that apology. All the evidence in my hands had been forcibly wiped out. Now, the only thing I had left was the statement everyone in this room was waiting to hear from my lips. What that statement would be was still entirely up to me. I didn't say I was sorry. I brought the microphone to my lips. My voice was raspy and broken, but I delivered every single word with utter clarity into everyone's ears. "Ethan and I have broken up." The room erupted into an uproar. I had deleted all my own files in front of everyone, only to drop this bomb at the very end. "You—" a man standing in the front row stammered, entirely at a loss for words. The pitiful facade on Mia's face cracked completely. "Gwen!" Ethan hissed from behind me. "Do you have any idea what you're saying?" "I know exactly what I'm saying," I said into the mic. "I said: you and I are finished." Ethan froze on the spot, his hand reaching out to take the microphone hanging motionless in midair. Without waiting for anyone to react, I supported myself on the edge of the stage and moved down the steps, one agonizing step at a time. I missed a step, hastily catching myself against an adjacent chair, but I didn't fall. I walked straight through the parted sea of slack-jawed onlookers, looking at none of them, right out the front doors of the auditorium. Outside, the sunlight was blindingly white. I tilted my head back, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. The fever was still raging, and my legs were still shaking. I reached out to steady myself on the cold iron railing by the steps. With those words spoken, the man I had waited for all these years had nothing to do with me anymore. I thought saying it out loud would feel liberating. It didn't. It just felt empty. All the memories I had collected over the years were gone today. Behind me, the steps remained empty. Ethan never ran out after me.Gwen's POV Not long after I cleared the auditorium steps, I leaned against the exterior wall to catch my breath, my vision swimming with dark spots. As I tried to steady my breathing, a hand suddenly shot out from behind me, clamping hard over my mouth. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. Before I could even kick, I was dragged and shoved into a backstage dressing room. The door slammed shut with a heavy kick. Outside, the muffled bustle of the dispersing crowd hummed, but inside, there were only three men looking at me like I was a piece of merchandise. Burning with fever and weak all over, I was pinned to the icy tiled floor after barely two seconds of struggling. My knees struck the hard surface with a dull, throbbing pain. One of them crouched down, shoving a phone into my face with the camera recording. "Go on, cry," he sneered, grinding his knee into my hands. "Weren't you acting all tough on stage just now? Why aren't you crying?" "Let me go... this is a felony," I forced out through gritted teeth. "A felony? Honey, why don't you ask your dear boyfriend if he even knows who you are first?" The man laughed. I turned my face away, biting down hard to stay silent. I hadn't eaten a bite or slept a wink since last night. I was a collapsed mess on the floor, lacking even the strength to lift my head. Another man grabbed a fistful of my hair, wrenching my face toward the camera lens. My scalp burned with pain. Tears mingled with the cold sweat of my fever, smearing across my face. The man behind the lens laughed, recording the whole thing while telling his buddies to search me. "Don't break her phone," he said, making a face at the camera. "We need it to extort her family." The phone I had just wiped clean was pulled from my pocket. "Got her phone." The crouched man took it, scrolled through the contacts, and stopped on a name. "Ethan?" He looked up, mouthing the words to the camera. "Isn't this that big-shot Ethan?" He dialed the number on the spot and put it on speaker. It rang twice before connecting. The background was noisy, with women talking and music drifting through. "Hello?" It was Ethan's voice. Hearing his voice, my heart loosened slightly. I had just ended things with him in public this morning. Ending things was one thing. But right now, if he acknowledged knowing me, these men wouldn't dare lay a hand on me; if he just said I was his, I could make it out of here alive. The man holding the phone shoved the camera downward, capturing my pinned, disheveled face on the floor. "Mr. Miller, right?" The man grinned slyly. "Your girlfriend is in our hands. Five million ransom. Wire it over, or this video goes viral across the entire internet." "Ethan!" I screamed with every ounce of strength left in my body. "Help me—" "Shut up!" The hand pinning me twisted violently. Silence fell on the other end for a second. Pinned to the floor, I strained desperately away from the camera, letting out muffled, desperate pleas for help. But with someone stepping on me, barely a coherent word reached the receiver. I heard a woman on the other end ask flirtatiously who it was. I heard Ethan tell her impatiently not to worry about it. And then came the words that chilled me to the bone. "Who is this?" Ethan's tone went completely cold. "Whoever she claims to be, it has nothing to do with me." The man holding the phone froze. "Mr. Miller, this is literally your—" "Wrong number. I don't know her. Do whatever you want with her," Ethan cut him off. "Ethan!" I shrieked. "You swore to me! Look at me—" *Click.* The call ended. The dial tone beeped steadily through the speaker. The men traded bewildered glances before bursting into loud laughter. "Hear that? The man said he doesn't know you." He waved the phone in front of my face. "You're not even worth five hundred bucks, sweetheart." The other two joined in, their laughter bouncing off the walls of the dressing room. "See that?" The leader crouched down, leaning in close to my ear. "That's the guy you gave everything to." I stared blankly at the phone. The screen went black, reflecting my pathetic, ruined face. Right then and there, they forwarded the recorded video into eleven different chat groups. Once that was done, the three men laughed and stood up. The leader casually kicked me in the ribs, sending me curling into a ball, before they finally pushed the door open and left me alone on the dressing room floor. The door clicked shut, cutting off the noise from outside. The room plummeted into silence, leaving only my ragged breathing and the freezing cold seeping from the tiles into my spine. I lay on the ice-cold floor, staring blankly at the flickering ceiling light overhead. The high fever refused to break. My body throbbed, my scalp pulsed with pain, my knees were bruised, and my palms were scraped raw. Yet all of that combined couldn't compare to that single sentence through the phone: *It has nothing to do with me.* When I broke up with him on stage, I had still kept a tiny corner of my heart reserved for him. That corner held on to one belief: no matter how biased he was, he wouldn't leave me to die if I was in real danger. Today, he claimed over the phone that I was nothing to him. When he said it, there was music playing, someone talking to him, and he didn't even bother to utter my name. That little corner was completely empty now. And I had no intention of ever letting anyone back in. I lay there motionless for a very long time, tears running down my temples, soaking into my hair and ears, icy cold. Footsteps passed through the corridor outside—people chatting, laughing, the click of dress shoes approaching and fading away. I pushed myself up from the floor and retrieved the discarded phone. A fresh crack ran across the screen. From this moment on, there was no room left for him in my heart.