Chapter 4

The cold light of my phone screen reflected on my face. Chloe’s messages kept coming, and she was clearly panicking.

I wondered if Ethan knew that the person house-sitting for his new wife was his own girlfriend.

Without another thought, I grabbed my keys and ran out.

The man was gone, but the money was still mine to make.

Following Chloe's panicked instructions over the phone, I had to lean half my body out over the balcony gap. Using a broom handle and a T-shirt as a makeshift net, I carefully scooped up the trembling Ragdoll cat.

As soon as Pudding was safe, he buried his head under my chin, meowing softly.

I snapped a photo and sent it to Chloe to let her know he was okay.

The next second, she FaceTimed me.

On screen was a gorgeous girl crying her eyes out. "Thank you so much! Thank you!" she sobbed, her eyes red. "If anything happened to Pudding, I don't know what I would have done."

I held the cat, listening in silence.

She kept crying, letting her emotions pour out to me. "Pudding was the first gift my husband gave me. He gave him to me when we first started dating."

"He said even though he’s severely allergic to cats, he’d do anything as long as it made me happy."

"So Pudding means everything to us. Thank God you were there today!"

Chloe was a talker. Once she started, she couldn't stop sharing how touched she was when her allergic husband had shown up holding a kitten.

Every word of her sweet love story was a knife twisting in my heart.

"No problem," I cut her off. "The cat is fine. I have to go now."

I hung up, put Pudding back in his bed, checked all the windows, and left that apartment without looking back.

Back at our rental, I dragged out three heavy-duty trash bags and started packing Ethan's things.

His shirts, his sneakers, every single thing he had bought since moving in.

When I finished, I scheduled a courier service. I addressed the package to his parents' house.

Once, Ethan had asked me to mail some medicine to his parents, so I still had their address saved in my app. I used to think we would be family one day, so I never deleted it.

Thank God I hadn't.

After the courier picked up the bags, I sent Ethan one last Snapchat message.

[Ethan, let's break up. I've mailed all your stuff to your parents' house.]

Send. Block. Delete. I did it all in one smooth motion.

Staring at the half-empty apartment, I suddenly remembered when we first moved in a year ago.

Ethan had hugged me from behind, resting his chin on my head.

"Luna, this is our home now."

Having grown up with divorced parents who both abandoned me, my eyes had welled up. "Can I really have a home?"

He kissed my forehead, promising solemnly, "Of course. I will cherish you forever and give you a real home."

What a joke.

I opened Chloe's Twitter profile and scrolled all the way back.

I scrolled to a year ago, on the exact day Ethan had promised to "cherish me forever."

On that day, Chloe had posted a picture of her hand wearing a diamond ring.

The caption read: [Engaged to my childhood sweetheart. Here’s to forever.]

The "home" he had promised to build for me was built on another woman's foundation from the very beginning.

I remembered something else.

Shortly after we started dating, I found a stray orange kitten downstairs.

I brought it home, thrilled, but Ethan immediately started coughing and sneezing violently, his face covered in hives.

He told me he had severe asthma and allergies and couldn't be near cat hair.

Terrified, I cried and gave the kitten to a friend that very night.

After that day, he treated me even better, holding me and apologizing, saying he wished his body would let him raise a cat with me.

I had been touched for a long time, thinking that even though his health didn't allow it, his heart was in the right place.

Now I finally understood.

It wasn't that he couldn't make compromises.

It was just that I wasn't the one worth compromising for.

For Chloe, he could endure his allergies and raise three cats.

But for me, he couldn't even tolerate the existence of one.

His love had always been strictly categorized and prioritized.