Page 85 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

I couldn’t fix that.

I couldn’t undo what I had done.

I couldn’t erase the hurt.

I could fix myself. But even then… why should she give me another chance? Why should she open the door again for a man who had failed her so completely? Why should she risk her peace for someone who had already shown her exactly how deeply he could hurt her?

Because I loved her?

Wasn’t that just me being selfish all over again? Using my feelings as another excuse to cling to her?

But there was one thing I could fix. Right now.

I could deal with my mother. I could end whatever delusion Cassandra was harboring.

And after that… there was one more thing I could still do for her. Give her the one thing she’d been asking me for all along.

A divorce.

She wanted out. She wanted to be free of me, free of everything our marriage had become, and after all the ways I had failed her, what right did I have to make even that harder?

The papers waited on the coffee table.

Stark. Inevitable. Final.

For months, I had clung to the idea that love meant holding on. That if I loved her hard enough, apologized enough, promised enough, there would eventually be some road back to the life we had before.

But she didn’t want that life anymore.

She wanted freedom.

She wanted peace.

She wanted a future that didn’t have my mistakes hanging over every part of it.

My hand reached for the papers, the movement sluggish beneath the weight pressing through my chest.

Her signature caught my attention first.

That familiar sweep of ink had once appeared everywhere. On notes left beside my coffee. On grocery lists stuck to the refrigerator. On little reminders I used to tease her about because she always added some unnecessary flourish at the end of her name.

It was beautiful.

And it was telling me to let her go.

My eyes burned as I stared at her name. For several seconds, I couldn’t force myself to look beyond it. I couldn’t bring myself to face the empty line waiting for mine.

A pen. I needed a pen.

My feet carried me toward our bedroom before the rest of me caught up. The hallway passed in fragments beneath me, each step dragging me closer to the one room I had refused to enter since that night.

The door stood open.

Beyond it waited the bed, the nightstand, the familiar pieces of a life that no longer felt mine.

I had stayed outside when Felicity came to collect Alessia’s clothes. Had turned away when Alessia returned home. Not once had I crossed that threshold.

That night still lived there.