Then he smiled at her.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
The girl lifted her hand, admiring the ring.
“It’s perfect,” she replied.
My heart stopped.
I stood there, unable to move, while the woman I believed was my future watched a ring sparkle on her finger.
For six years, I had waited for Mark to make that same gesture toward me.
Six years of patience.
Six years of excuses.
Six years of convincing myself that one day, he would finally decide I was the woman he wanted to marry.
And now, just two days before my forty-fourth birthday, I was watching him give another woman the future I had spent years begging him to share with me.
At least, that was what I believed.
I had no idea that the truth was about to break my heart in a completely different way.
My name is Allison, and at forty-three, I had reached a point in my life where I often wondered whether things were supposed to look different.
