We ended up at the same college.
She was the one who confessed first. She came to me.
It wasn't until we were together that I found out she was an heiress……
The day we graduated, we decided to stay together, but her family was fiercely against it.
Her sister especially looked down on someone like me, some nobody from an ordinary family. Ruby Henson's words dripped with contempt, and she didn't even bother hiding it in public, calling me a pretty boy who'd latched onto their wealth like a parasite.
But only Serena and I knew the truth.
What we had started as a pure friendship that grew into love. Through all of it, I had no idea she came from money.
That stretch of time broke something in me.
Serena, wanting to protect my feelings, defied her family. She snuck out their household documents and we got our marriage certificate in secret.
Her parents were furious when they found out. It wasn't until Serena showed them the pregnancy test results that they finally, grudgingly, accepted it.
But they never stopped looking down on me. Time after time I showed up with warmth and got nothing back but cold shoulders and cutting remarks. No matter how hard I tried, her family stripped me of every shred of dignity.
In the beginning, Serena would comfort me, encourage me.
But gradually, as the years passed, especially after the baby was born, she grew distant. The gap between us widened until I could barely see her on the other side, and then there was her assistant, with their relationship that neither of them could quite explain.
I tried so many times to close that distance, made myself softer, more attentive, more present.
None of it worked. If anything, it repelled her. She started picking me apart, finding fault in everything I did. Sometimes she'd hold Finn up like a mirror and point out all the ways I fell short, until there was nothing left of me worth mentioning.
Then my mother died in that hospital, and the last ember went cold.
That was when I finally understood. The pure feeling we once shared had been diluted by time until nothing recognizable remained. Whatever made us special to each other was gone.
The relationship had soured beyond saving. There was no reason to hold on.
I stayed up until well past eleven that night. The habit was old by now.
I didn't go back to our bedroom. I chose a clean break instead.
At this point, even sharing the same bed meant sleeping in different worlds.
The next morning, Serena and I opened our doors at almost the exact same moment, face to face across the hallway.
She looked at me, caught off guard for a second：“Why didn't you come back to the room last night?”
“Do you really think there's a point?”
I asked.
Serena's expression hardened：“You're always so petty. You never even try to understand what I'm going through!”
“Right. I don't understand you.”
“When my mother was in the hospital, begging to see her grandson one last time!”
“When your assistant told me you'd fallen asleep at his place!”
“I've been racking my brain trying to figure out how to understand you! How to forgive you! But I've thought about it for so long, and I can't. I just can't!”
I turned and walked straight for the door. At the threshold, I stopped and looked back：“The divorce papers. Are you hiring a lawyer, or should I?”
Serena stood where she was, watching me in silence：“Do whatever you want!”
The weekend came.
I went to a law firm and had an attorney draft the divorce agreement.
When that was done, I drove back to the Henson residence.
I had the key out, ready to unlock the door, when I stopped.
Maybe I never wanted to set foot in this place again.
I pulled the key back and went home instead. My real home.
The house was hollow. After my mother passed, I was the only one left.
I pulled open a drawer and dug out a photograph from a few years back.
It was a picture of me, my mother, and my son. In it, my mother was beaming, her smile warm and gentle. But my boy wore a tight little frown, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else.
