Eventually, she deleted her accounts.
Ethan fired her.
She confronted him afterward.
“You can’t do this to me. You pursued me too.”
“And it was the biggest mistake of my life.”
“You told me you had feelings for me.”
“Having feelings doesn’t mean I wanted to destroy my marriage.”
Vanessa laughed bitterly.
“You already did.”
For once, she was right.
Ethan just hadn’t accepted it yet.
Ryan didn’t forgive him either.
To Ryan, the betrayal was public humiliation.
The woman he had spent years trying to win back had gotten involved with one of his closest friends while he was away.
Over the following months, business relationships collapsed.
Important clients switched suppliers.
Ethan’s company began struggling.
And while he tried to repair the damage, he kept searching for me.
My response was simple.
I sent divorce papers.
Then Diane came to my apartment.
She no longer looked like the woman who had spent months ordering me to take remedies and produce a grandchild.
“Claire, I know I’ve done many things wrong.”
I said nothing.
“Ethan is sick. He has a fever. He can’t sleep. He barely eats. Please, just go see him once.”
The request brought back an older memory.
Before Ethan and I married, Diane had also come looking for me.
Back then, she opposed our relationship because she believed my family didn’t have enough money to belong in hers.
So I ended things with Ethan.
He chased after me.
Begged me to reconsider.
Then one night, during an accident nearby, Ethan pushed me out of danger and was seriously hurt himself.
He spent days in intensive care.
When he woke up, the first thing he did was ask me for another chance.
I gave it to him.
That was why I agreed to see him at the hospital one final time.
Not because I wanted him back.
Because I wanted to end our story properly.
Ethan was sitting upright in bed when I arrived.
He had lost weight.
His beard had grown out.
Dark circles surrounded his eyes.
I placed another copy of the divorce agreement in front of him.
He didn’t touch it.
“Is this really all that’s left of us?”
“Yes.”
His eyes filled.
“If you knew about Vanessa, why didn’t you confront me? Why didn’t you scream? Maybe I would have realized what I was doing.”
I stared at him.
“Are you actually trying to make this my fault?”
He lowered his head.
