The morning air was sharp against my skin as I stepped out of the mansion gates, the suitcase handle digging into my palm. The city looked the same as it always had—bustling, indifferent, alive—but to me, it felt like another universe. For three years, this place had been my prison, my palace, my battlefield. And now, it was nothing but the graveyard of my love.
I walked down the quiet street, not daring to look back. If I did, if I saw even a glimpse of the house I had called home, I knew my heart would break all over again.
The taxi driver gave me a strange look when I slid into the back seat, my eyes red and swollen, my clothes wrinkled from a sleepless night. "Where to, miss?"
The question stung more than it should have. Where to? I had nowhere. No plan. No destination. My parents lived in another state, too far for me to show up unannounced with a broken marriage. My friends—what few I had—had drifted away after the wedding, tired of my constant excuses for Alex's absence.
So where did a forsaken wife go when her husband finally proved he didn't care if she stayed or left?
I forced my voice to remain steady. "Just… downtown."
The driver nodded and pulled into the traffic. I pressed my forehead to the window, watching buildings blur past. Every corner of the city reminded me of Alex. The café where I used to wait hours for him, only for his seat to remain empty. The park where I once imagined us walking hand in hand, laughing, dreaming. Dreams that were mine alone.
My phone buzzed in my bag. For a single wild second, my heart leapt—what if it was him? What if he had changed his mind? What if he was finally chasing me?
With shaking fingers, I pulled it out.
It wasn't Alex.
It was Vanessa.
"Don't worry, sweetheart. I'll take good care of him now that you're gone. :)"
The text blurred through my tears. My chest caved in with the sharp ache of betrayal, humiliation, and cruel reality. He hadn't just let me go. He had handed my heart to another woman, wrapped in silence and indifference.
I turned the phone off and shoved it deep into my bag, as though burying it could bury the pain too.
The taxi stopped in front of a modest motel, the kind of place I never thought I'd end up. I paid the driver with the last bills in my wallet, my pride burning hotter than my tears.
Inside, the receptionist hardly looked at me as I signed the register, sliding a single room key across the counter. Room 17. A stranger's bed, a stranger's walls, a stranger's future.
When the door closed behind me, the silence roared. I dropped my suitcase by the bed and sank to the floor, my knees finally giving way beneath the weight of everything I had lost.
The diamond ring still clung to my finger like a cruel reminder. With trembling hands, I yanked it off and threw it across the room. It clattered against the wall, the sound far too small for the enormity of what it symbolized.
I hugged myself tightly, rocking against the cold floor. The reality was suffocating—I was no longer Emily Reed, wife of Alexander Reed. I was Emily Carter again. Alone. Unwanted. Forgotten.
And as the night deepened, the truth cut deeper than any blade. Alex hadn't fought for me. Not once.
I had been nothing more than a mistake he couldn't wait to erase.