Chapter 2

The next day, Charles was still ten minutes late. He got out of the car carrying breakfast.

Black coffee, and a breakfast sandwich with no onions. All of it the way I liked it.

He said, "You didn't eat last night. I know you didn't."

I didn't take it.

He raised an eyebrow. "You can't even eat before signing divorce papers?"

Emily came too, with a scarf pulled up over her face and her eyes badly swollen. "Sophia, I didn't sleep all night."

I looked at her. "Afraid I'd change my mind?"

Her face went white.

Charles frowned. "She's worried about you."

I laughed. "She wasn't worried while she was sleeping with my husband. Now she's worried?"

Emily's tears came instantly.

Charles' voice dropped. "Sophia, that's enough."

"Fine. Let's talk business." I handed him the divorce agreement my lawyer had rewritten overnight. "I agreed to take less to save Emily. I don't need to anymore.

"The house, the savings, the funds, everything that gained value during the marriage, all of it split by law. The money you gave Rachel over three years counts too. You hired her to deceive me, and I'll claw back every cent."

Charles turned two pages and actually laughed. "Now you know how to count money? You spent three years chasing me with nothing in your head but jealousy."

"I lost on the feelings. I'm not losing on the money."

He paused, dug a stomach pill out of his coat pocket, and set it on top of the agreement. "Take it."

I didn't move.

Charles said, "It isn't poison."

There was a time when that worked on me.

He could stay out all night and still remember to send his driver over with medicine the next day. He could take somebody else's side in front of me and then crouch by the bed at home warming milk for me.

Three years of half-real kindness kept me on the hook.

I kept telling myself that a man who remembered a person's illness had to love her at least a little.

I pushed the pill back. "Save it for Emily."

He frowned. "There's nothing wrong with her stomach."

"Even better. From now on you only have to remember one person's habits. Much simpler."

His smile thinned.

Emily suddenly grabbed his sleeve. "Charles, maybe we should drop it. I don't want Sophia thinking later that I forced you two apart."

Charles patted her hand. "Nobody forced anything."

Then he looked at me. "This marriage should have ended a long time ago."

It still went through me like a splinter, but only once.

Charles flipped to the last page and signed his name. "Fine. You want it counted out, we'll count it out."

When he pushed the agreement back, his tone was as careless as ever.

In his mind, whether I took more money or less, one thing wasn't going to change. I couldn't leave him.

To him, the divorce really was one piece of paper.

Get Emily out of the line of fire first, then wait for me to come back around the way I always had.

It was our turn inside. When the paperwork was done, I had my divorce decree.

It was windy outside, and Charles tucked my hair behind my ear without thinking. "I'll come by tonight. We should talk."

I stepped back. "Come by where?"

"Home."

"That's your home." I took out my phone and, right in front of him, deleted the number I had kept pinned at the top of my screen for three years.

The careless look finally left his face. "Sophia, what is this?"

"This is a divorce."

He stared at me for two seconds and laughed again. "Fine. Delete it. You've deleted it during fights before. You always added it back by midnight."

He leaned down, and the certainty in his voice was insufferable. "How many days do you think you'll last?"

That made me smile. "Take your time counting."

I turned and got in the car. He called after me. "Take the breakfast."

I didn't look back.

He was still standing there in my rearview mirror long after I drove away.

He probably believed I had only found a new way to make a scene.