Chapter 2

"I wouldn't let you?"

I took another step forward. "Ethan, look me in the eye and tell me: when have you ever voluntarily done any chores?

You come home from work, sit your ass down, and play video games until three in the morning. When I tell you to sleep early, you say you're stressed and need to unwind.

You think you're the only one under pressure?"

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

"Do you know what time I wake up every day? Six. I make you breakfast, and you just eat and leave, leaving your dirty dishes in the sink.”

“After I clean up, I start doing the laundry, vacuuming, buying groceries, and prepping dinner."

"When you're not here for lunch, I eat leftovers. In the afternoon, I keep cleaning because you leave the place in a total mess.”

“You ash your cigarettes in my plant pots, throw your dirty socks on the floor, and leave empty beer cans wherever you please."

My voice started to crack.

"I clean up after you until evening, waiting for you to come home for dinner. I reheat the food over and over again, only to throw it in the trash at midnight because you never show up."

"Ethan, is this the 'comfortable life' you were talking about?"

He lowered his head, not daring to look at me.

His tears froze on his face.

"Stop acting, Ethan. You're not crying because you're sorry. You're crying because I exposed you and you can't play the victim anymore."

I turned around and threw the front door wide open. The cold draft from the hallway rushed in, messing up his hair.

"I'll give you three days to pack up and get out."

He stood there, frozen, as if nailed to the floor.

Suddenly, he laughed. It was a cold, chilling laugh that made my skin crawl.

"Chloe, you think you're so smart buying this condo? Let me tell you, even if the deed has your name on it, I put money into this place every month. That makes it marital property!"

"We aren't married," I reminded him.

His smirk stiffened.

"And," I pulled out my phone and opened PayPal, showing him the transaction history.

"Every single time you transferred that $500, you wrote 'rent' in the memo. Ethan, you wrote that yourself."

His face completely collapsed.

I had seen too many horror stories online, so I had been careful from the very beginning.

When he first offered to support me, I asked him to send me monthly living expenses. He agreed, but every single transfer was meticulously labeled as "rent."

I didn't think much of it back then, but later I realized he was just terrified that I would try to take his money if we broke up.

How ironic.

He was guarding against me, and I was guarding against him. We were like two shrewd merchants, calculating every penny in this relationship.

The only difference was that he lost because of his greed, and I won because I kept a paper trail.

"Get out," I said, my voice flat.

Ethan clenched his fists so hard his knuckles turned white.

He glared at me for a solid ten seconds, his eyes shifting from anger to resentment, and finally to pure hatred.

"You're going to regret this." He grabbed his coat from the couch and stormed out without looking back.

The door slammed shut behind him with a deafening thud.

I slid down against the wall, my entire body shaking.

It wasn't fear. It was anger.

I was shaking so hard, my eyes stinging, but I couldn't shed a single tear.

It felt like my tears were blocked by a lump in my throat, swirling in my eyes but refusing to fall.

In the living room, his dirty ashtray was still sitting on the coffee table, overflowing with cigarette butts.

An unfinished beer can sat next to it. His white shirts were hanging on the balcony, and the shoe rack was stuffed with his sneakers.

His traces were everywhere in this condo, like tiny thorns pricking my skin.

Taking a deep breath, I stood up, walked into the bedroom, and slid open the closet.

His clothes took up two-thirds of the space. My few old T-shirts were squeezed into a corner, wrinkled and looking like forgotten rags.

I grabbed his clothes in handfuls and threw them onto the floor.

Suits, shirts, jeans, socks—I shoved them all into heavy-duty trash bags.

Four large trash bags were stuffed to the brim. I dragged them out to the hallway and piled them up right by the elevator.

I would throw them down the chute first thing in the morning.