Chapter 3

The next morning, the second I'd messaged my lawyer to draft the divorce agreement, my phone started buzzing without stopping.

More than a dozen messages, every one of them from Ivor Gilbert.

"So you're Susannah's husband. I'm sorry we had to meet like this."

"I think you've already seen it. The only person Susannah loves is me. To you, she's just fulfilling an obligation. The truth is, she got tired of you a long time ago."

"Susannah promised she'd give me a wedding. If you'd cooperate, I'd like you to walk away on your own."

Right after that he sent a photo of a ring, the receipt showing a seven-figure price.

"Bought it this morning. Just to make her happy."

I stared at the photo for a long time, and without thinking my fingers brushed my bare right hand.

When she proposed all those years ago, she'd folded a ring out of scrap paper and slipped it onto my finger.

"Rings are for other people to look at. It's the life you live that's yours. No sense chasing luxury until you can't even afford to eat."

Later, when things got easier, I brought it up with her. All she said was that we'd gotten by fine without a ring before.

Now the thing I'd wanted and never gotten, he'd slid onto his finger without a second thought.

I switched off my phone and made myself a black coffee.

Susannah must have come back at some point. She wrapped her arms around me from behind.

"You always hated anything bitter. Since when do you drink coffee?"

She startled me and I shoved her off hard.

She stumbled back a couple of steps but didn't get angry. She let out a soft laugh. "Still not over it?"

Like all we'd done was have a fight.

I looked at the red marks half hidden on her neck, and my voice came out rough.

"Let's get divorced."

Susannah frowned, already starting to lose patience.

"Leo, playing the divorce card stopped being fun a long time ago."

She said it and sank onto the sofa behind her, crossing her legs.

"I admit I have feelings for Ivor. But it's not all my fault."

"After we got married, you changed. Every single day it was bills, the mortgage, money, money, money. I was exhausted."

"Ivor's warm, he's easygoing, he understands what I've been through. When I'm with him I don't have a single worry."

Only when I heard that did it finally sink in.

I'd quit the job I loved for her, given everything I had to keeping this home, and it had become her excuse for cheating.

Susannah pinched the bridge of her nose. "I promised him a wedding."

She paused, then lifted her head and looked at me, her eyes cold.

"I remember you've always had that wedding plan. Give it to Ivor. Call it compensation."

That wedding plan was the best work of my career. I'd sweated over it for three months, gone through more than a dozen versions, wanting nothing but to deliver something perfect.

I'd been saving it for my own wedding with Susannah.

Back when we married we were too broke, and she'd talked me into holding a proper ceremony once we had money.

Now the money was here, and she wanted to use my work at her wedding to another man.

The disgust rose in me and wouldn't stop.

"Why should I?"

She leaned back against the sofa, indifferent.

"The plan's already done. It's just sitting there collecting dust. Better to let Ivor use it and save on a design fee."

"You don't know the cost of running a home until you run one. You've been out of work this long. It's about time you contributed something."

I watched her act like all of it was perfectly reasonable, and something in me kept sinking.

So her thrift, her care for the household, had only ever applied to me.

In her eyes, everything I'd given wasn't giving at all. It was just an expense she could cross off whenever she liked.

"Fine."

If that was how it was, then we were even.