When I arrived at the villa in South Bay, I expected Noah to be waiting outside.
He wasn’t.
I frowned, pushed open the front door, and stepped into darkness.
Then—bang.
Lights flooded on.
Music burst through the room.
The black living room bloomed into soft pink and white roses. The air smelled faintly of flowers and sugar. Familiar faces and strangers alike rolled out a giant castle-shaped cake while cheering so loud my ears rang. At the piano sat Noah in a black tailcoat, fingers flying over the keys with effortless elegance, his whole face lit with concentration.
For a second, I thought I had walked into someone else’s life.
The music ended just as I reached him.
Noah stood, produced a bouquet as if by magic, and placed it in my hands.
“Lily,” he said, smiling in that beautiful, impossible way of his, “thank you for choosing me.”
The whole room erupted.
“Happy divorce, Lily!”
“Congratulations on getting the guy!”
I could feel my ears turning red. Before I could hide, Noah stepped forward and pulled me into his arms.
Against my ear, he said softly, “You promised me a status. Does that still count?”
I blinked and looked up.
He stepped back.
Then he got down on one knee.
The screaming around us became deafening.
He opened a ring box, lifted my hand, and pressed the lightest kiss to my ring finger before looking up with eyes so full of hope they almost hurt to see.
“Lily,” he said, in front of all our friends, “will you give me a chance to become your fiancé?”
Everyone around us started chanting, “Say yes.”
And in that noise, in that warmth, in that sudden impossible brightness after years of misery, a thousand moments with Noah flashed through my mind.
The first night in the bar when he held me while I cried and let me mistake him for another man.
The way he laughed when I said I wanted to keep him.
The endless late nights when he stayed and talked me down from breaking apart.
The hospital room after my accident, his hand wrapped around mine.
The way he never treated my pain as an inconvenience.
The way being with him made me feel like my life was not over.
I had walked out of a nightmare and found dawn.
And Noah had been waiting there all along.
So even with fear still in me, even with the future uncertain and my legal case not entirely finished in the practical sense, I made the truest choice I had made in years.
“I will,” I said.
His smile broke open like sunlight.
He slipped the ring on my finger. Everyone screamed. I laughed and cried at the same time, and for the first time in forever, the tears did not taste bitter.
That night, while I was wrapped in happiness so bright it still felt unreal, Ethan was spending the night at Sophie’s hospital room.
At some point after midnight, he opened social media and saw video after video of my proposal.
One clip showed only Noah at first. Ethan almost scrolled past it.
Then the camera shifted.
And he saw my back.
He sat up so fast he nearly dropped the phone.
No. That couldn’t be me.
We were still married, weren’t we?
He replayed it. Stared harder. Convinced himself it was someone who only looked like me.
Then he liked the post and put down the phone.
By morning, he came home.
And only then did he realize the house felt empty in a way it never had before.
My display cases were gone. My dishes gone. My blankets, my toys, my jewelry, my clothes.
The bedroom was half hollow.
The dressing room was bare.
The jewelry room had been stripped clean.
That was when Ethan finally understood that I, along with everything of mine, was gone.
He exploded at the housekeeper.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me she moved out?”
The poor man bowed his head. “Sir, you said before that no matter how mad Mrs. Frost got, we weren’t to bother you with it.”
Ethan called me immediately.
I answered.
His first words were furious.
“So this is what you’re doing now? Threatening me with divorce?”
I opened the curtains in my new room and let the sun in.
“It’s not a threat,” I said. “Our marriage is already over.”