The way he looked at me, always… like I was the only star in his sky. That’s what I told myself. That’s what I believed with every fibre of my being. We had dreams, modest ones, but they were ours. A little house, maybe a rescue dog, quiet evenings. It felt real. It felt forever.
My sister, on the other hand, lived a different life. Champagne wishes, private jets, an inherited fortune that made her world sparkle. We loved each other, in our own complicated way, but there was always that unspoken gulf. She was the dazzling one; I was the steady, quiet one. I never envied her wealth, not really. I had him.
Then came the day. He sat me down, hands clasped, eyes anywhere but mine. “I… I need more,” he mumbled. “Our paths are just… diverging.” My stomach dropped. I tried to ask questions, to understand, but his answers were vague, hollow. “It’s not you, it’s me.” The oldest cliché, delivered with a shake in his voice that felt more like impatience than regret. HE DUMPED ME. Just like that. After three years, after talking about forever, he ripped my world apart.
I spent weeks in a fog. The kind where your chest aches with a physical pain, where breathing feels like a conscious effort. I cried until my eyes were raw. My sister offered condolences, a sympathetic hug, a hollow kind of comfort. I believed her. I really did.
Then I saw them. At the new downtown bistro. Her hand in his. Laughing. MY SISTER. WITH HIM. My blood ran cold. The air left my lungs. It wasn’t just a casual meeting; their body language screamed intimacy. My heart didn’t just break; it imploded, shattering into a million icy shards.
I confronted her. She looked surprised, then shrugged. “What did you expect? He wanted more than you could give him.” She looked at me with that pitying, superior gaze. “He’s ambitious. He sees a future with me that he couldn’t see with you. A FUTURE WITH MONEY.“
He called later. No apologies, just a cold, hard truth. “She can give me everything I want,” he said, his voice flat. “Everything you couldn’t.” The words were a physical blow. He chose her. He chose her for her wealth. My modest dreams, my quiet love, were never enough. I WAS JUST THE WARM-UP ACT.
The pain was excruciating. Betrayed by the man I loved, betrayed by my own sister. I retreated. I didn’t want to see them, hear about them. I just wanted to disappear.
What they didn’t know, what no one knew, was that just weeks before he dumped me, something incredible had happened. My great-aunt, the eccentric one no one ever talked about, had passed. I’d helped her for years, visited her when no one else would. She’d left me everything. AN INHERITANCE SO SUBSTANTIAL IT WOULD HAVE MADE MY SISTER’S FORTUNE LOOK LIKE POCKET CHANGE. The lawyers had just finalized everything. I was going to surprise him, surprise everyone. I had kept it quiet, wanting to process it myself before sharing the news.
Now, it felt like a sick cosmic joke.
I rebuilt my life, quietly. I moved to a different city, invested wisely, started a small business that blossomed. I saw snippets of them on social media sometimes. He looked… stressed. Less vibrant. Maybe the gilded cage wasn’t as comfortable as he thought. My sister, still glamorous, but her smiles seemed tighter, her eyes a little harder.
Then the messages started. A polite “Hope you’re doing well.” A nostalgic “Thinking of you.” I ignored them. I had no interest in his regret.
Until one day, he called. Relentlessly. I finally picked up, my voice cold.
“I need to see you,” he pleaded, his voice hoarse. “Please. I made a terrible mistake.”
“You made your choice,” I said, my heart a stone.
“No, you don’t understand,” he practically yelled into the phone, sounding desperate. “I just… I just saw the news. That article. About your investment, about your… success. YOUR COMPANY IS EXPLODING.“
My blood ran cold. He knew. He finally knew.
“You’re… you’re doing so well,” he stammered, his voice filled with a sickening mix of awe and desperation. “I heard… YOU’RE WORTH TEN TIMES WHAT SHE IS NOW.“
He paused, then delivered the final, gut-wrenching blow. “I… I realize now. I loved you. I really did. I was a fool. A greedy, blind fool. I DUMPED THE ONLY WOMAN WHO EVER TRULY LOVED ME… FOR THE WRONG SISTER’S MONEY.“
He started to sob, right there on the phone. “Please. Can we… can we try again? I regret it. I REGRET IT SO MUCH.”
I hung up. My hand trembled. He regretted it alright. But not for love. Not for me. He regretted it because he chose the wrong target. He realized he’d thrown away the real fortune, the one he didn’t even know existed, by chasing the smaller, shinier prize. And the worst part? A tiny, twisted part of me, buried deep under layers of pain, found a grim satisfaction in his despair. But the larger part just felt hollow. BECAUSE HIS REGRET WASN’T ABOUT LOSING ME. IT WAS ABOUT LOSING THE MONEY HE THOUGHT HE COULD GAIN FROM ME. And that, more than anything, confirmed I’d been right to let him go. But the wound of being second best, even to a fortune I didn’t reveal, still ached. It always would.
