Like a judge on high, handing down a sentence without a shred of mercy.
“Vera, if you won't leave, you'd better get along with Rachel.”
“I don't want fires in my own backyard. You and her—you're both very important women to me.”
Hah.
I let out a cold laugh and threw the memory back in the trash where it belonged.
Rachel's expression was hard to hold together, especially after she saw the words on my desk: “Divorce Lawyer.”
Her face got even uglier.
“What are you doing here?”
Clark looked at her quietly for a moment, then spoke.
“I want a divorce.”
“And I'm transferring every asset under my name to Vera. All of it. For free.”
“Have you lost your mind?!”
Rachel screamed, disbelief cracking her voice wide open.
She grabbed Clark by the collar and demanded again.
“Clark, have you ever once thought about me?”
“I've been with you since I was eighteen!”
Clark answered quietly.
“So was she.”
I felt nothing. Not a flicker. What surfaced in my mind instead
was what came after: the night I talked to Clark until dawn, the night I got on my knees and begged.
I'd recited every one of our seven years together. Told him I didn't care about any of it, everything that had happened, if he would just come back to me.
He'd been moved. Deeply, visibly moved. He swore he'd cut off all contact with Rachel.
The next day, I caught them in bed again.
I lost it.
I cursed him out, screamed at him—why was he so disgusting.
He just leaned against the headboard of our bed, Rachel lying in his arms with that taunting look on her face.
Lit a cigarette. Spoke like it meant nothing.
“You're calling me cheap? You were in my bed at eighteen.”
That moment, the pain cut all the way through.
I'd thought my teenage recklessness was giving myself for love.
Now I knew. In his eyes, I was no different from a whore.
I lowered my voice and coughed twice before speaking.
“If you two want to fight, take it outside.”
“I'm about to get off work.”
Rachel glanced up at me. Just once.
Her whole body went rigid, as if she'd seen something impossible, and she jabbed a finger at me and screamed.
“Vera?!”
“No—no, the eyes just look a little like hers. You can't be her.”
“There's no way she'd still be anywhere near Clark Sanchez!”
I met Clark's gaze with flat, empty eyes.
That part, Rachel had right.
I was never going back to him.
The day Clark cheated on me for the second time I caught him
was the same day he'd promised me our second wedding.
The day before the ceremony, he'd had every newspaper in Harbor City run the story.
He was going to marry me again, to thank me for my years by his side.
Our second wedding was held on the rooftop of Century Tower, the most glamorous venue in Harbor City.
Helicopters circled overhead in celebration.
Below, a sea of cameras waited to capture the moment he proposed to me again.
I wore the couture gown he'd designed for me himself, stitched by his own hand, every bead and seam.
I stood there in front of the entire city's envious gaze, waiting for him to appear.
But Clark never came.
The auspicious hour passed. One hour late.
Clark still never came.
The envy in the eyes around me curdled slowly into bewilderment.
And the last thing those eyes held, as they watched me standing there alone, was naked, undisguised ridicule.
“Ha, what do you think Harbor City's richest man is up to? Why wouldn't he show?”
“Let me tell you a little something. He's got a gorgeous young thing at home. His wife isn't exactly getting any younger—how's she supposed to compete with that?”
“Ha! All I want to know is, if he never shows up, what's his poor wife going to do standing up there all by herself?”
