Chapter 1

After I saw the letter my husband, Jason Garrett, had written to me ten years ago, I lowered the knife I had been pressing to my throat and signed the divorce agreement.

When I reached out and handed him the document he had been waiting for all this time, he simply stood by the window and watched me in silence.

He was waiting for me to lose control again, waiting for me to tear the papers to shreds, to beg him through bloody wounds to give up the woman outside, to use our dead child as leverage to force him to stay by my side.

But I only looked at him, calmly, almost gently, and, for the first time in a long while, I smiled.

The truth was, the man I had always tried to hold on to was the one he had been ten years ago, not the person standing in front of me now, the one who had driven me out of my mind.

However, after Jason finally got what he wanted and divorced me, he began to regret it.

*****

As I finished signing the divorce papers, I pulled my tangled hair into a ponytail. I blinked away tears, my eyes puffy and red.

I reached out and handed Jason Garrett the third divorce agreement he'd pushed on me.

Jason's gaze lingered on the chaos littering the floor. He hesitated, unable to take the agreement he'd spent a year chasing after.

The last wedding photo on the wall, the one that survived all our fights without a scratch, fell right then.

The shattered glass cut into my calf. Blood welled up instantly. I glanced down at the blood, and my knees went weak.

Jason frowned, his mouth opening as if he was about to speak. But just then, the phone rang, interrupting him.

"Wait, your husband found you again? Hang tight. I'm coming over right now. Don't be scared," he said.

I blinked, and for once, not a single tear fell.

Jason walked out, not even bothering to take the divorce agreement with him.

Back then, I would've picked up the knife from the floor and held it to my throat, desperate to make him stay with me.

It wasn't until blood started dripping from the wound that Jason would finally grab my wrist. He'd drag me downstairs to the clinic to get the cut treated.

But after a while, even that move stopped working.

As the rain outside started coming down harder, I called out to Jason again just as he was about to leave.

"What is it now? Are you going to make a scene again?" Jason said.

"Didn't you hear? Elodie's waiting for me outside. I knew you wouldn't make it this easy," he added. "It's pouring out there. Elodie's pregnant. She shouldn't be out in the rain."

I cut him off and handed him a couple of umbrellas.

I slipped the divorce agreement into a document bag and handed it over to him.

Seeing Jason's face darken, I paused for a second before speaking up again. "You should file the divorce papers soon. There's still a thirty-day waiting period."

After that, I thoughtfully placed a warm jacket in his hands. Then I smiled and closed the door behind him.

The cut on my neck still stung, blood trickling down as I caught sight of myself in the mirror. For a moment, I just stared, feeling a bit dazed.

It turned out that the marks this past year left on me cut deeper than I ever realized.

Sitting amidst the wreckage, I finally opened that letter from ten years ago.

There weren't any long, romantic confessions. It was just a short note and a worn-out, faded wish slip.

It read: [Ten years feels so far away, but I always believed we'd last.

[I know how stubborn you are. Even if I mess up, you'd never give up on us. But I don't think you'll ever find happiness this way. So I want you to remember.

[Imagine you have a scorecard for me, starting at ten. Every time I hurt you, take away a point. When the score drops to zero, I hope you'll walk away from me without hesitation.

[Leave me behind, leave someone as messed up as I am.]

Tears fell onto the back of my hand before I even realized it.

All the emotions I'd been holding back crashed over me in an instant, but when I opened my mouth, not a single word came out.

Ten years later, Jason ended up with a zero on this test called love.