Chapter 3

For once, Damien looked genuinely flustered.

Before he could answer, she walked out.

The woman he flew across the country to see every month.

Sophia Reed.

I hadn't expected him to bring her into the home we once shared.

The moment I moved out, he moved her in.

Sophia noticed the ring on the entry table and picked it up naturally.

"Wait—isn't this the one you gave me? What's it doing here?"

I froze.

I watched Damien avoid my eyes.

And in that moment, I felt how ridiculous I really was.

The ring I had treasured for six months.

The one I never took off.

It was never meant for me.

It was the ring he had given his ex-wife.

The one she returned to him.

The one he then passed to me like a hand-me-down.

Damien opened his mouth. No explanation came.

Sophia didn't notice anything wrong.

She slid the ring onto her finger.

It fit perfectly.

No wonder it was always loose on me.

From the beginning, that ring was never made for me.

"Damien, look, it still fits."

She smiled at him.

Then seemed to remember I was there.

She turned to me with an innocent look.

"I'm sorry, did I interrupt something?"

Damien glanced at me. "No," he said quietly.

"You're Damien's girlfriend, right?" She smiled at me again. "We've met before."

"You two have met?" Damien frowned at me.

I didn't answer.

I turned and left.

......

That night, my phone rang.

It was him.

In three years of fighting, I had always been the one to reach out first.

This was the first time he had ever called me.

I answered. Said nothing.

The silence stretched.

I was about to hang up when his voice finally came through.

Flat. Controlled.

"Sophia's apartment was broken into recently. She doesn't feel safe staying there alone. I told her she could stay in the guest room until things are sorted out. Once the apartment is secured, she'll move out."

He could have put her up in a hotel.

He could have hired security.

But he chose to let his ex-wife live with him.

I gripped the phone.

Something cold settled in my chest.

"Is there anything else?" I asked. "If not, I'm hanging up."

"Olivia, do we really need to do this?"

His voice dropped lower. Edged with that familiar impatience.

"What are you actually trying to prove?"

"Nothing."

I just didn't want to do this anymore.

I heard a lighter flick on the other end.

He was lighting a cigarette.

"You're ending things over a plane ticket?"

"Damien, is it really just a plane ticket?" I asked softly.

He went quiet.

There was no rule that said two divorced people had to disappear from each other's lives.

If it had been one ticket, I would have let it go.

But it wasn't one ticket.

It was every month.

For two years.

And those were just the trips I knew about.

What I couldn't accept wasn't that he saw her.

It was that he had always put her ahead of me.

"Olivia, do you have to be this petty?"

His voice thinned with the irritation I knew too well.

"She's alone over there. Is it really a crime for me to check on her?"

"I didn't tell you because I knew you'd overreact."

I said nothing.

He could see whoever he wanted. That was his right.

I wasn't being petty.

I just couldn't keep doing this to myself.

He hadn't even bothered to buy a new ring.

Hadn't bothered to explain.

Just expected me to swallow it, smile, and forgive—

Because I always had.

I opened my mouth to speak.

And from his end, a soft voice cut through the line.

"Damien? You're still up?"

He went silent instantly.

In the second before he hung up, the question I'd been carrying for months finally rose to my lips:

"Damien, if you had never met me… would you have remarried her?"