“So you had your father fake being sick, back then, just to trick me into coming home with you to get married?”
I stabbed a finger at Jacqueline's face, rage flooding straight to my head.
Back then she'd agreed to my parents' wishes and stayed in Bayport with me. It was only her father's illness that brought us back here.
And because I couldn't stand to see her hurt, I agreed to settle down here for good.
Later her friends and relatives all called me the freeloading husband who'd married in, and after a while I couldn't be bothered to explain.
Jacqueline never explained a word of it either.
But it never occurred to me that all of it was a lie.
“So what if I did!”
“Ethan, I couldn't handle marrying far from home!”
“You're a man who came along with me. You've got a wife, a kid. What exactly did you lose?”
……
“Ethan, don't take it so hard.”
“Jacqueline didn't mean it like that. You've only been married two years, and you're already fighting like this……”
Nelson made a show of reaching for my hand. I shook him off.
“Nelson, drop the act!”
“We divorce, and you slot right in, don't you?”
Two sentences, and every face in the room changed.
“Don't go slandering people the second you open your mouth. You want the divorce, so you dump your dirty hat on Nelson's head and Jacqueline's.”
Jacqueline grabbed at my hand too, ready to have it out with me.
“Ethan, what nonsense are you spouting!”
She clamped down on my wrist and wouldn't let go, gripping hard enough to crush the bone.
“Let go!”
I flung her off, and she gritted her teeth and shoved me hard.
My back slammed straight into the cabinet, the glass panel shattering.
I reached back on instinct, and my hand came away covered in blood.
“Ethan, you brought this all on yourself!”
“You go and think about what you've done!”
Jacqueline walked out without a backward glance, Nelson with her. They barged into the bedroom and carried off the baby, who was wailing his lungs out.
She didn't even call me an ambulance.
And called it, in fine words, reflecting.
Lying there on the floor, I laughed, tears sliding from the corners of my eyes.
This was the woman I'd loved for eight years, the one I'd defied my parents to marry.
“Ethan, we're at your complex……”
“Ethan……”
My parents' voices came through the phone, but I no longer had the strength to answer.
Early the next morning, uneasy, Jacqueline decided to go back and take a look.
The moment she stepped off the elevator, she found the door wide open.
Looking at the blood smeared across the floor, she panicked in an instant.
“Ethan?”
“Ethan!”
Jacqueline stared at the empty living room and bedroom, her brows knitting tight.
She grabbed her phone and made a call, and the moment it connected she let out a breath of relief.
“Honey, where are you?”
