Tainted Love
- Reads 124,188
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- Parts 33
Ongoing7h 22m
Last published Sat, Jan 10, 2026
I never believed in marriage. Not after growing up watching it tear my family apart. Wanting someone was easy. Loving someone was dangerous. But promising forever? That felt impossible.
And then came Dean Ashford.
He never asked for much; just me, just us, just a future he swore he'd protect with everything he had. And when he asked for that future-when he held out a ring with hands that were shaking-I did the one thing I never wanted to do.
I walked away.
He broke. I broke. And the next morning, when I finally found the courage to choose him-really choose him-I had no idea he'd spent the night destroying everything we ever were. I had no idea what I was walking into. I had no idea what he'd done.
I thought the worst thing I'd ever feel was the fear of losing him.
I was wrong.
Because nothing prepares you for the moment the person you love looks at you with eyes full of secrets...
Nothing prepares you for the truth that the one night you walked away was the one night he didn't.
And now I have to decide if the love I built my world around can survive the one mistake that broke both of us.
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#72
grovelling
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Loving him was the cruelest kind of torment-a love that lived in the shadows, one that could never bask in the warmth of the sun. I was nothing more than a stolen moment, a whispered name in the dark, a secret he tucked away between the life he had built and the one he wished he could have. I knew, deep down, that I was a fracture in his story, a fleeting escape from the weight of his reality. And yet, I still clung to him, to the illusion that for a few precious hours, he was mine. But the truth was relentless-it came in the form of unanswered texts, in the way he dressed hurriedly after loving me, in the way he said her name with the same tenderness he once gave me. I had given him my heart, knowing he would never be able to keep it, and yet, I loved him still. Loved him as I watched him walk away, loved him as he returned to the arms of the woman he truly belonged to, loved him as I drowned in the loneliness he left behind. Because no matter how much I wished it to be different, I was not his home-I was just a place he visited before going back to where his heart truly lived.
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