Page 15 of How To Not Need You

I looked at him. "You've heard? From who?"

"Noah."

Traitor. Noah didn't even have the decency to look guilty.

"What? Jake's one of my mates."

"Wonderful."

"He is."

"I'm thrilled for you."

"No, seriously." His smile faded just enough for me to know he meant it. "He's one of the good ones."

Something in my chest tightened. I stared into my wine.

“They all are.”

Nobody spoke. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

Harper reached across and squeezed my hand. “You know, you’ve hinted at what happened before, but you’ve never really told us about him.”

I glanced up at her.

“Who was he?”

I let out a slow breath and resigned myself to actually talking about that fuckwit.

"Matt."

Noah frowned at that seemingly confused. “You have an ex? I thought you avoided relationships like the plague.”

I nodded.

“That’s post Matt. We were together for five years." Nobody interrupted, thankfully. It was hard enough to talk about anyway. To relive my youthful optimism and stupidity.

"We had a house deposit." I take a breath before continuing. "And a dog." I take another sip of wine.

“I wore his ring. We were going to get married.”

Harper winced. "Did he cheat?"

I looked at her. "You guessed it."

She sighed. Silence settled around the table.

"The cheating wasn't even the worst part."

Alexander looked up at that. "What was?"

I rolled my wine glass between my palms. "Finding out I'd spent five years planning a future with someone who clearly wasn't planning the same one. That and when we split, he took everything. Cleaned out the account with our house deposit, kept the ring and took the dog.”

Nobody had a smart comment after that. Not even Luca.

Eventually Noah spoke. "I'm sorry."

I smiled but it was shaky. "It was a long time ago."