“He said he is,” I replied, folding my hands on the table.
“Is he bringing his lawyer?”
I shook my head. “He said he didn’t need one.”
Maria’s brow furrowed. “That’s not good. He’s planning to negotiate on his own?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I said quietly.
She glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s ten minutes past four. We’ll give him fifteen more minutes. If he doesn’t show, we’ll call the meeting off.”
“Okay,” I said, my voice even, though my chest felt tight.
Then we both went quiet. Maria turned her attention to her laptop, fingers tapping against the keys, while I sat there, lost in thought.
I thought of everything that had led us here.
The arguments. The silences. The things we both got wrong.
How I kept pushing him away, again and again. How I couldn’t bring myself to say the one thing he needed to hear—I love you.
Not enough to make him stay.
Not enough to make him choose me.
How, after ten years of marriage, I still couldn’t give him what he needed. I couldn’t show him affection the way a normal wife would. I took him for granted, again and again, but he stayed. Patient. Forgiving. Until I pushed him to the edge.
And then, his betrayal.
How he went looking for comfort in someone else.
How the hurt was still lodged deep in my chest, tangled in my mind, refusing to let go. It kept eating at me from the inside out, and no matter how far I ran, I knew I would never escape it.
And I didn’t think I could ever forgive him for it.
I kept telling myself, over and over, that this needed to happen. The divorce. The separation. That it was the right thing to do.
But God, it hurt.
Because, despite the betrayal, he was the only one who ever stayed. Even when I gave him every reason not to.
Even though I knew my words cut deep, he always came back.
I relied too much on that. I thought he always would.
“But now it’s all buried under how much I’ve come to despise you. Whatever I have left to give you, it’s gone. There’s nothing left in me for you. Nothing. Not love. Not even hope.”
I said that to him.
I pushed him too hard.
But I never expected him to walk away. Not after all those years he spent holding on and trying.
But he did.
He gave up on me in the end.
I’ve been through worse. I’ve lived through things that should have broken me. And they didn’t.
