The Night He Didn't Come Home

Synopsis

My fiancé, Sean Lane, had this rule. He would never spend the night at my place. Even on the nights when we were most intimate, he would leave promptly at eleven. He said he had a sleepwalking disorder and was afraid he might hurt me in his sleep. I believed him for five years. Then one night, I started bleeding heavily in the middle of the night. I was curled up on the floor in pain when I called him, crying and begging him to come back. His voice was calm and flat. "Take a painkiller. You can't rely on other people for everything. I'm going to bed." In the end, the woman next door drove me to the ER. The doctor said that if I had arrived half an hour later, I could have been in serious danger. Sean came to the hospital the next day and merely told me to be more careful next time. He didn't ask what kind of surgery I had undergone. This week, the sleep report from his smartwatch suddenly popped up on the iPad he had left at my place. It read: [Average deep sleep this week: 7.6 hours. Sleep quality score: 92. Location: Building 3, Willow Residence.] The location was the same every night, and the report covered five full years. I knew that place. His junior from school lived there, the girl he claimed he barely knew, and the girl his mother had always liked best. He had never been sleepwalking. He had simply been going to someone else every night. And on the night I nearly died, his sleep score was 94. I turned off the iPad, canceled our wedding reservations, put his keys and slippers into a bag, and left them outside the door. Then I turned off the light I had left on for him every night. He never stayed for me, and I wasn't going to wait for him anymore.