Novalie POV
Kira had dropped me off at home yesterday night because I was adamant. I hated everything about hospitals.
The hospital scent. The antiseptic. The noises of pain. I hated everything.
And now, I was in the dining room, with damp hair, forcing myself to eat breakfast and hoping, stupidly, that Noah and I could talk when he got home.
The front door opened and I turned my eyes on the door. Noah stepped in without looking at me, the way someone enters a room with a void. His expression was stone cold.
As though he wasn't smiling with Amelia yesterday.
Oh God.
He didn't even drop his keys into the bowl or shrug off his jacket like he usually did. He just walked straight to the dining table and placed a folder on it.
“Sign these.” He said flatly.
No greetings.
No apologies whatsoever.
My stomach tightened painfully, staring into the envelope in front of me. “What….what is that?” I stuttered.
He raised his brow at me and my hand was already trembling.
“Divorce papers, Novalie,” he said expressionless.
The word DIVORCE echoed louder than the emptiness in my heart.
“I think we both know this marriage shouldn't have happened.”
The room tilted slightly.
“Can we talk first?” My voice came out small. Very Fragile. “Please?”
He exhaled sharply, as if I were exhausted.
“Amelia needs me,” he simply said, as if that was an explanation enough.
“She's going through a lot. She wants stability, and I want to give it to her.”
My legs buckled weakly, causing a little push.
Does Amelia need him? Amelia needs him more than I do. He had never, for once, used that word with me.
Even when I went to his office, urgently in need of him, he'd held me back. Asking his secretary to tell me to wait because he was in an urgent meeting.
“And what about…” my voice broke before I could finish. “Noah, I just lost our baby. Don't you think..”
His reaction was instant. As though he had been waiting for those words to slip out of my lips.
He spun toward me like I had struck him, his face twisting into a disgusting look. “I am tired, Novalie!” He shouted, the sound slamming into me so hard I flinched.
“Tired of you acting like the world ended every time something happens! Something like this!”
I stared at him, taken aback. “Something..? Noah, I lost…”
He cut me off with a harsh scoff as he hit his hand furiously.
“Exactly! Exactly, Novalie. Here we come again with that stupid emotional blackmail of yours. You've had three miscarriages, Novalie. Three fucking! How many more times do you expect me to go through this?.” His eyes flashed with irritation.
Through this? Like he was the one carrying them or whose body broke every time.
But then he said something I wasn't expecting.
“I'm tired of pretending”
The word lingered more than it should before he added.
“I can't do this anymore. I won't. Amelia would never put me through this emotional circus. It's very clear you are not even fit to be a mother.”
The words coursed through me like an arrow, piercing my damn heart.
Three miscarriages.
Not fit to be a mother.
Amelia would never put me through this emotional circus.
Every word was ringing in my damn brain.
He said it was like my grief was an inconvenience. Like I wanted to lose my own baby.
I can't even recognize the man I said yes to.
His voice grew colder. “I'm done okay? This was a mistake from the start. I shouldn't have married you. I was confused, and you were…there.”
I felt my soul break inside of me and I blinked.
“I loved you,” I whispered.
I knew the divorce was coming. However, I never thought of it like this.
He didn’t even blink. “And I tried. Maybe I was confused, but I can’t force myself to feel for you what I feel for Amelia.”
Of course! All he had been saying was ‘Amelia this Amelia that.”
He always chose her!
My lips trembled, but I forced my voice to be steady. “If I sign this… you won't ever regret it?”
His eyes flickered. Just briefly.
Something unreadable passed across his face.
Then it vanished.
“No.” His answer came sharper than I expected. “This is what I want. Who do you even think you are to ask me if I won't regret.”
And just like that, any protest died in my throat.
I exhaled, ruffling my hair.
“Fine.”
I took the pen with trembling hands and signed the agreement. He simply picked up the papers, slid them back in the folder, and headed for the door.
Before he left, he halted to a stop and a small silence call came through.
I saw the caller before he could even cover it.
Amelia Darling.
He answered it as he stepped outside.
And that was the final thing I heard from my husband of five years:
“Hey. It’s done.”
The silence that came after this heavy storm was more deafening.
My body felt too empty for tears. I sat on the sofa, staring at nothing, until the house blurred. The world kept happening even as mine had stopped.
Then I turned my head and saw it. The picture.
The one Amelia sent me on the night I miscarried, their photo on a Paris street. Her lipstick smudged from kissing. His hand on her waist. Their smiles are too intimate to be anything but true.
The tears came slowly at first, then all at once as I realised what had just happened.
Amelia took back the love of my life.
I pressed the phone to my chest, curling around it like a wound, sobbing until breathing felt like punishment. My body shook as if grief was trying to tear itself out of me.
I stood up and began packing the essentials in two bags, nothing more. Clothes. My documents. The small locket my mother gave me. The last pregnancy test I couldn't bring myself to throw away.
And the report from the hospital.
I didn’t look around the house. I didn’t take one last memory. What was there to hold onto? Every room was filled with ghosts of the things I lost.
I walked out and locked the door behind me, even though it wasn’t my home anymore.
When I got into the car, my hands were still shaking, but I started the engine anyway. I pulled out of the driveway and onto the street without thinking, without a destination, without anything but the need to get away from the place where my heart died.
Traffic was heavier than usual and I could hear horns blaring. People shouted from open windows. My vision blurred as my tears returned, more stubborn than I’d hoped. I blinked them away, but they kept spilling.
My chest tightened again, trembling fingers, the steering wheel slipping slightly under my clammy hands.
“Stop crying,” I whispered to myself. “Stop. Please.”
But do tears ever listen?
Another horn blared and a flash of white lights.
A screech.
Something slammed into the side of my car. My body jolted violently, seatbelt locking hard against my ribs. My head hit something and pain exploded.
Then I heard it, a voice calling my name.
“Novalie! NOVALIE!”
My breath seized. It had to be Noah.
He finally came by..
