She Lost Me the Day She Chose Him

The day Serena Vance agreed to come home and meet my parents, my mom slaughtered the hog she'd been raising for two years for the holiday feast.

Then Serena took a phone call at the dinner table, said the company had an emergency, and left.

The next day, I saw it on her social media: my engagement gold watch, strapped to the wrist of her assistant, Roger Manning.

The caption read： Roger has such slim wrists, this watch fits him perfectly.

My mom called to ask when Serena was coming back.

I told her not to wait.

I packed Serena's things into a box and left it at the company's front desk.

When she came to find me, Roger was trailing behind her.

“Ms. Vance only stayed because she was worried I'd have nobody to look after me at home. Please don't misunderstand, Stuart.”

He made a show of reaching for the watch clasp on his wrist, all wide-eyed sincerity.

I let out a cold laugh.

“Don't bother taking it off. Keep it.”

“Consider it a parting gift from me to the both of you.”

Serena's face changed instantly.

“Who said anything about breaking up?”

“I did.”

I slapped my badge down on the desk and turned to leave.

“I'm going home. The hog's already been slaughtered. Somebody should at least sit down and eat.”

……

“Stuart Fox, are you a grown man or aren't you? Are you done with this tantrum?”

Serena came striding after me in her heels and seized my wrist.

Heads poked out of offices up and down the hallway.

I looked at her calmly.

“Let go.”

“Over a watch? Really?”

She kept her voice low, but it carried the same clipped irritation it always did when she slipped into boss mode.

“I let you throw your little fits every other day, but today we have a major client. You pick now to walk out? Is this blackmail?”

Roger jogged over in a tailored designer casual blazer.

He tugged timidly at Serena's sleeve.

“Ms. Vance, this is all my fault.”

“Maybe I should just give the watch back to Stuart.”

His eyes actually went red as he said it.

Serena reached back and pulled him behind her, her frown deepening.

“He'd throw a fit whether you returned it or not.”

“Stuart, Roger just graduated. He's new at the company. What's wrong with me looking out for him a little?”

“You always said that watch was too heavy. I lent it to him for a few days to go with a suit. And you're blowing this up into a breakup?”

I looked at this woman I'd been with for five years.

The absolute certainty on her face made her feel like a stranger.

“Serena, that's an engagement watch. Our names are engraved on the back.”

“I know it's for the engagement.”

A slight crease between her brows, a note of tired patience in her voice, the tone of someone who was simply above this.

“But Roger has a meeting with Grandview Corp today and he needed an accessory that commands the room. I lent it to him for one day. Is that going to kill you?”

She read my flat expression and decided I was sulking again. She sighed, pulled her phone from her designer bag.

“If it bothers you that he wore it, fine, let him have it. Tomorrow I'll take you to the store and we'll pick out a nicer one. We can look at wedding rings while we're at it.”

She opened the transfer screen with practiced ease and held it out to me.

“Here, I'll send you a hundred thousand now. Go pick whatever you like. If it's not enough, I'll add more.”

I didn't answer. I just looked at the number on her screen.

She understood everything I'd said. Every word.

She just believed that everything I held sacred could be priced and replaced whenever it suited her.

“Stuart, don't be mad at Ms. Vance. She's only thinking about the company's image.” Roger chimed in from the side.

“Shut up.” I didn't spare him a glance.