In the first year of our marriage, Ethan Frost looked at me like he was being generous and said, “Lily, I love you. But one person for life? Sooner or later, anyone gets bored. From now on, we both do our own thing. We can have fun outside the marriage, but no one falls in love. When we’re done playing around, we come back home and live properly. Okay?”
He said it so calmly. Like he was proposing a new dinner reservation, not setting our marriage on fire.
I stared at him across the living room, at the shards of the wineglass he had knocked over during our fight, at the man who used to chase me through snowstorms and midnight streets like I was the only woman in the world.
And then I did something out of spite.
I started seeing a college boy.
He was the golden boy of Northlake University. Beautiful, bright, soft-spoken, with clear eyes and a smile that felt like summer after a brutal winter. His name was Noah Chase. He was younger than me, yes. Only younger in age, though. In every other way, he was not small at all.
At first, I told myself it was revenge. That if Ethan wanted an open marriage, then I would give him one. That if he wanted to break me, I could break him right back.
But Noah would call me late at night in that low, gentle voice and say, “Did you eat, Lily?”
He would show up the minute I needed him. Sit beside me without pushing. Wait without asking for anything. And when I got into a car accident months later and woke up in a hospital bed with tubes in my arm and my whole body aching, Noah was there with red-rimmed eyes, holding my hand so carefully, like I might come apart if he squeezed too hard.
Slowly, without me noticing, the places in me that Ethan had left bruised and hollow began to heal.
I had thought about giving Noah an apartment. A check. Something clean, simple, easy. But he wanted none of it.
He only wanted a name.
“Divorce her,” he told me, looking straight into my eyes, his own full of that unbearably sincere light. “Choose me.”
And for the first time in years, I looked at myself through someone else’s eyes and didn’t see a woman humiliated, exhausted, dragged bloody through a marriage that should have ended long ago.
I saw someone still worth loving.
So I went home on shaky legs and handed Ethan divorce papers.
He didn’t even know we were getting divorced.
Because he was too busy on the phone soothing the feelings of mistress number fifty-two.
He took the papers from me without looking, signed his name with lazy confidence, and said, “Next time you want to buy another house, just buy it. You don’t need to bring me paperwork for every little thing. I’m busy.”
Then he slipped on his jacket, still murmuring into the phone.
“All right, all right, baby. I’m coming now, okay? Don’t be mad.”
Only after he had one foot out the door did he glance back and ask, almost as an afterthought, “Wait. What was that I just signed?”
I let out a little laugh. Cold. Tired. Empty.
“You already signed it,” I said.
He waved a hand. “Whatever. As long as it’s not another fight.”
Then he left.
That night, he didn’t come home.
The next day was my birthday.
My house was full of guests, crystal glasses, champagne, and people smiling at me under chandeliers while pretending not to notice my husband’s absence.
Then the front door opened.
A young woman stood there, cheeks flushed, supporting Ethan’s drunk weight with both hands. She looked nervous under the eyes of a room full of people.
“Sorry,” she stammered. “I brought Mr. Frost back.”
I set down my glass and walked to the door.
I was about to take Ethan from her, but even drunk, he refused to let go of her hand.