Ethan forgot our wedding anniversary for the fifth time. At two in the morning, he pushed open the door. He reeked of alcohol and someone else's perfume, his voice buzzing with excitement. "Sophia's getting divorced! This is my chance!" I stood there, the wound on my left shoulder still throbbing quietly where the sixteen stitches held it together. I had taken that knife for him three days ago. He still didn't know. "Ethan," I said softly, "let's get divorced." He paused, then laughed. "Sure! Even after the divorce, you'll still be my best friend. Oh, and come help me pick out an engagement ring tomorrow. Your fingers are about the same size as hers. Try it on for me." I stared at that completely unbothered face of his and suddenly felt that these twenty-two years of loving him in silence had been nothing but a joke I had played on myself. I slipped the plain silver band off my finger and set it on the table. That ring had cost me next to nothing. I had worn it for five years. Now, at last, it didn't have to lie for anyone anymore.
Jamie's POV Two in the morning. Ethan pushed open the door. I was sitting beside the floor lamp in the living room, a book open on my lap, no pages turned. Today was the fifth anniversary of my marriage to Ethan Foster. It was also the fifth year he had completely forgotten. Ethan smelled of alcohol. When his beautiful eyes landed on me, they curved into a smile. "Jamie! I knew you'd still be up." He walked over, looped his long arm around my neck, and half-collapsed against me, bringing with him a cloud of sweet, unmistakably feminine perfume. "Come on, make me some honey water. My head's killing me." My heart ached so badly I could barely breathe, but I just pushed him off with a tired look. "Ethan, you're almost thirty, not three. Would it kill you to drink less?" "I was celebrating." Ethan threw himself onto the couch, his long legs propped up on the coffee table without a care in the world, his grin bright enough to hurt. "Jamie, she's back." My hand stilled on the glass I was pouring. I didn't need to ask who she was. There was only one person who could make Ethan Foster look that stupidly, helplessly happy. Sophia Whitfield. "Congratulations." I kept my back to him, my voice frighteningly calm. Ethan took a few gulps of the honey water and grabbed my wrist, buzzing with excitement. "She's divorced. Her ex treated her badly. She's been through so much. Jamie, this is my chance!" I looked at this man I had loved for twenty-two years straight. From the time I was five until now, at twenty-seven, I had grown up alongside Ethan. I had stood by him through fights, skipped class with him, and watched him chase after Sophia. And when he blew up his relationship with his entire family over her and hit rock bottom, I had stayed. Right there beside him. His family, desperate to make him move on, started looking for a suitable match for him within their circle. Ethan decided it didn't matter who he married. He even told his father: "As long as it's not Sophia, it's all the same to me." I was the one who stepped forward. I said, "If it's all the same to you, then marry me, Ethan. A fake marriage. When you're free of your family, or when she comes back, I'll give you a divorce whenever you want." Back then, Ethan had held me and sobbed. "Jamie, you're the best person in my whole life. I promise you, you'll always have a place in this family. Nobody will ever make you feel like you don't belong." He kept that promise. For five years, he gave me every privilege and protection. He trusted me more than anyone. The safe combination, the company's most sensitive secrets, even his personal seal. He held nothing back. He was good to me, except for one thing. He didn't love me. "Since she's back, let's get divorced." Ethan blinked. "Already?" "She's back. It's time for me to step aside." I stood up, my downcast lashes hiding everything behind my eyes. "I'll contact a lawyer and have the divorce papers drawn up as soon as possible. I'll pack my things and be out of here quickly." Ethan studied my unnervingly calm expression and hesitated. "Jamie, I'm not going to shortchange you on the settlement. The penthouse in Manhattan, plus one percent of Foster Group's shares." One percent of Foster Group. Worth hundreds of millions. He was, as always, generous. "And don't move too far after the divorce. The house in Beverly Hills is yours too. It's close by. We'll still be best friends. Whatever you need, just say the word. I promised I'd look out for you for the rest of your life." I looked down at the plain silver band on my ring finger. We'd bought it at a roadside jewelry stand on the day we filed the paperwork. Ethan had tossed it to me casually and said, "If we're going to put on a show, we need the right props. Just wear it." That cheap silver ring, I had worn it for five years without ever taking it off. I had worn it so long it left a faint mark on my finger. Best friends? What I felt for him had never been friendship. I slowly slid the ring off and set it on the table. It made a small, quiet sound. "You don't have to do that." My voice came out a little rough. "Ethan, I just want you to be happy." "What's with the formality?" Ethan frowned. "You'll need money when you get married someday..." He suddenly laughed, like he'd just thought of something funny. "Actually, I almost forget sometimes that you're a woman. God help whoever falls for you." Something rose in my throat, sharp and metallic. I forced it back down. "Ethan." I called his full name, my eyes stinging just slightly. "Yeah?" He was already looking down at his phone, texting Sophia, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth, not even glancing up. "...I'm tired. I'm going to bed." The words I have loved you for twenty-two years rotted silently in my chest. "Wait, Jamie." I stopped. And somewhere deep and humiliating, a tiny flicker of hope lit up. Had he remembered? That today was our anniversary? That I had spent five years never leaving his side? "There's a charity gala tomorrow night. Come with me."
Jamie's POV "I'm not going." If we were getting divorced, I had no business showing up at public events anymore. I wasn't going to lay the groundwork for Sophia. I wasn't going to become the laughingstock of the whole city. "You have to." Ethan dropped the warmth from his voice, his expression matter-of-fact. "Sophia just got back. Her situation is delicate. If you're there, nobody will dare say anything." "You need to show up as my wife and make it clear she's welcome. That way, when we get together, there'll be less pushback." He wanted me to appear as his wife. To publicly embrace his first love. To personally pave the road for their true romance. How could a person be this cruel without even knowing it? And yet Ethan looked completely at ease, as if his request was perfectly reasonable. "Does it really have to be this way?" I looked up at him. My eyes were threaded with red. Ethan paused. He seemed caught off guard by how worn out I looked, though he chalked it up to work stress. He softened his tone and slipped into the easy, coaxing voice he always used when he wanted something. "Jamie, please. Just this once, the last time. You know Sophia. She's sensitive. The smallest thing can hurt her." "Do this one last thing for me. Okay?" Okay? For twenty-two years, every time he asked me something that way, I had never once said no. I closed my eyes. Swallowed the bitterness. "Fine. The last time." Ethan exhaled like a weight had lifted. "Thanks, Jamie. Having you in my life is the best thing that's ever happened to me." He hummed cheerfully to himself as he headed upstairs. I stood in the middle of the living room, staring at the abandoned ring on the table. It seemed to stare back, coldly mocking five years of everything I had felt. That night, I dreamed. There was no Sophia in the dream. Just sophomore year of college. Ethan had twisted his ankle during a basketball game, and I had carried him on my back for nearly two miles in the midday heat to get to the campus health center. Sweat ran down my neck and soaked into my collar. Ethan lay sprawled across my back, talking the whole way. In the dream, he asked: "Jamie, am I too heavy?" Dream-me said nothing. Just clenched my jaw and kept walking, one step at a time. The charity gala was spectacular. I wore a black velvet blazer. When I walked in on Ethan's arm, flashbulbs erupted around us. "Mr. and Mrs. Foster are such a perfect couple, still so devoted after all these years." "Absolutely. Jamie has been the backbone of Foster Group. So much of what the company has achieved is because of her." Compliments closed in from all sides. Ethan smiled his polished public smile and leaned down to murmur in my ear. "See? Everyone says we're perfect together. I keep telling you, I can't do any of this without you." I said nothing. My gaze drifted through the crowd and settled on a figure tucked into the far corner of the ballroom. Sophia Whitfield stood in a white chiffon gown, her hair loose over her shoulders, like a small, trembling flower. The moment Ethan's eyes found her, nothing else existed. He steered me toward her without hesitation. "Ethan..." Sophia looked up at him, and her eyes immediately filled with tears. "Don't cry. I'm here." He reached for her, and I blocked him, smoothly, almost invisibly. "Ethan. Not here." My voice was quiet and precise. He stiffened slightly, then recovered. "Sophia, you remember Jamie. You used to be terrified of her when we were kids." Sophia shrank a little behind him. "Hi, Jamie. Thank you for taking care of Ethan all these years." "No need to thank me. It was mutually beneficial." My tone was flat. A cluster of men drifted over with their drinks, led by a man named Derek. His gaze slid over Sophia with barely concealed interest before landing on me with a smirk. "Jamie! Love the suit. Didn't know Ethan brought a bodyguard tonight." Laughter rippled through the group. Ethan's jaw tightened for a fraction of a second, then he punched Derek in the arm with a grin. "Knock it off. Don't give her a hard time. Jamie's got more presence in her little finger than any of you clowns." It was the kind of defense that sounded more like a joke between friends. It dressed me in armor and, in the same breath, stripped away everything soft about me. Derek dropped his voice, leering at Ethan. "Come on, man, it's gotta be rough, right? A woman should be soft, like Sophia. Something you can actually hold. Jamie's all sharp edges. You afraid she'll poke you?" The words were designed to humiliate. I tightened my grip on my glass and watched Ethan. Waiting. I was his wife. Whatever our marriage was in private, in public he was supposed to protect my dignity. That was the bare minimum. Ethan glanced at me. My face was unreadable, my posture straight. Maybe he was too used to me being "strong." Maybe he was worried about what Sophia might read into it. Whatever the reason, he just smiled lightly and said: "Alright, enough. Jamie and I aren't like that. Don't talk about her that way." My heart sank all the way to the floor. Then the doors of the ballroom burst open, and a group of masked men stormed in wielding bats and blades.
Jamie's POV Guests screamed and scattered. Glasses shattered. Tables crashed over. "Where's Ethan Foster?! Tell him to get out here!" The leader swept the room with wild, violent eyes. These were hired men, brought in by a bankrupt rival of the Foster family to settle the score. Chaos swallowed the room whole. "Ethan!" Sophia crumpled to the floor, shaking. Ethan's expression shifted. On instinct, he scooped Sophia into his arms and lunged toward the emergency exit. "Jamie! Come on!" He looked back and shouted. And that's when I saw it. One of the men raised a blade and swung it straight at Ethan's back. He was holding Sophia. He couldn't dodge. I didn't think. Twenty-two years of instinct kicked in. I kicked off my heels, grabbed a solid wooden chair, and in the split second before the blade landed, I swung it as hard as I could into the attacker's wrist. The crack was loud. The blade bit into a marble column instead. "You want to die?!" The man's eyes went red. He turned on me. "Go, Ethan, RUN!" I shouted and smashed a wine bottle across another attacker's head. Ethan looked back. Behind him, I stood like I was holding the line, feet planted, eyes clear. Sophia sobbed into his chest. "Ethan, please, I'm scared. Let's just go." "Jamie, hold on! I'll get her out and come straight back!" He yelled it. Then he turned and ran, Sophia in his arms, and disappeared into the emergency exit without looking back. He left me with the danger. Again. He had always believed, completely and without question, that I was invincible. I watched his retreating back, and a hollow smile crossed my lips. One moment of distraction, and a knife punched deep into my left shoulder from the side. Thud. White-hot pain flooded my body. I grunted, grabbed the attacker's arm by reflex, and threw him over my shoulder onto the floor. Security finally surged in, swarming the room to get things under control. I pressed my hand to my shoulder. Blood soaked steadily through the black velvet. The dark fabric hid it well. Just a warm, wet patch. I leaned against the wall, my face the color of paper, cold sweat breaking across my forehead. Everyone around me was too busy surviving to notice. Ten minutes later, Ethan came crashing back in with a team of security guards. "Jamie! Jamie!" I forced myself upright. I steadied myself. I didn't want him to see me like this. I didn't want him to think I was using an injury to make him feel guilty. That was my last shred of pride. Pathetic as it was. "I'm here." My voice was thin, but steady. Ethan rushed over. I was standing straight, face pale but otherwise apparently intact. He let out a long breath and punched me in the right shoulder. "God, you scared me! Jamie, that was insane. You were incredible!" The impact jolted through to my left side. The wound tore. I bit down on my lip until it bled, and made no sound. "Is Sophia okay?" I asked. "She's shaken up pretty bad. She's crying in the car. She scraped her hand, so I need to get her to the ER." Ethan was already moving toward the door as he spoke. "You're good to handle things here, right? Talk to the police when they arrive and deal with the press. We can't let this tank the stock price. I have to take Sophia. She needs me." Then he was gone. I stood there, looking at the blood on the floor. My blood. Though Ethan would probably assume it belonged to one of the attackers, if he noticed it at all. A scraped hand. Needs the ER. I looked down at my own soaked side. And for the first time, I felt it, not pain, but the pure, flat absurdity of twenty-two years of this. "Mrs. Foster, you're bleeding!" A sharp-eyed staff member finally spotted the dark stain spreading across my back. I waved them off and refused a hand. "It's fine," I said quietly, staring at nothing. "It doesn't hurt."
Jamie's POV Late at night at a private hospital. When the doctor cut open my clothes, she went quiet. The knife had gone in deep, close enough to the nerve that it had nearly done permanent damage. Worse, because I had waited so long, the wound had bonded with the fabric fibers. Cleaning it out was going to be brutal. "Ms. Shaw, I need to give you a local anesthetic before I suture this." "Don't." I stared up at the surgical light. My voice was weak but absolute. "Just stitch it." "But..." "I need to feel it." I needed this pain, clean, physical, undeniable, to finally cut me loose from twenty-two years of something that had always been a dream. The pull of needle and thread through skin was precise and awful. I gripped the edge of the table until my knuckles went white. I bit through my lip. I didn't shed a single tear. I thought about being five years old, pushed into a cold swimming pool, flailing in the water, certain I was going to die. And him, arriving like the whole sky had opened up, pulling me back from the edge. I thought about being fifteen, kneeling on the hard ground outside because I hadn't done my stepsister's homework. My stepmother's punishment: no dinner, no coming inside. And him, climbing over the wall with a paper bag, pressing a warm macaron into my hands, his voice fierce: "Anyone who touches you, you tell me. I'll make them sorry." Those moments of warmth had been the only light in a very bare life. But they had also built the cage. Woven it wire by wire, year by year, until I had walked in willingly and called it love. Now it was time to walk out. The doctor wanted to keep me for observation. I declined, took a car home to the house that technically still had my name attached to it, and let myself in. Every light was on. Ethan was on the couch on a phone call, his voice liquid-soft: "Okay. Don't be scared, I'll come over soon. Don't get the bandage wet, and make sure you use the ointment the doctor gave you... you're not bothering me. Stop saying that. When have I ever found you annoying?" He looked up when he heard the door. "You're back." Casual. His eyes swept over me once. I'd put on a dark coat before leaving the hospital. It covered everything. He noticed nothing. "Yeah." I slipped off my shoes. Every small movement sent fire shooting across my back. "How'd it go? Did you get the press handled?" He stood up and moved toward me, reaching out to clap me on the shoulder out of habit. I stepped back without thinking. His hand hung in the air. His brow furrowed. "What's wrong? Are you mad? Are you seriously upset that I left with Sophia?" He looked genuinely baffled. "Jamie, you're not usually like this. The situation was critical. Sophia has never been through anything like that. She nearly had a panic attack. You've handled things like this before. I trusted you to manage it, that's why I left it with you." Trust, again. I looked up at him. My eyes were perfectly still, like a lake with no wind. "Ethan. If that blade had hit my head tonight, I would be dead." He stared at me. Then laughed a little. "Don't be dramatic. You're fine, aren't you? And honestly, the way you took that guy's wrist out with a chair? You're not dying anytime soon. You're too tough for that." He was still smiling. "Hell would send you back." Still laughing. Still treating the whole night like a minor plot point. Still utterly certain that I was built to absorb whatever the world threw at me. I looked at his handsome, familiar, completely foreign face and felt a tiredness so deep I had no words for it. I was done explaining. Done justifying. Some people, you can't wake them up. They have to stay asleep. Maybe it was guilt about earlier. Ethan reached into his jacket pocket and tossed me a velvet box. "Here. Picked this up at an auction a while back. I thought the necklace was nice. You never really wear jewelry. Think of it as hazard pay for tonight." I opened it slowly. An emerald necklace. Antique design, clearly expensive. But the style was heavy, ornate, old-fashioned. The exact kind of thing my stepmother always wore. "What do you think? I'm good to you, right?" Ethan looked pleased with himself. "My mom used to wear something similar, very elegant. You always dress so plainly. This might help." I looked at the necklace. He had never once known what I actually liked. "Thank you." I closed the box. "Oh, and..." Ethan shifted gears, and something new crossed his face, a rare, slightly shy smile I had almost never seen on him. "Are you free tomorrow? I want you to come somewhere with me." My fingers tightened on the edge of the velvet box. "Where?" "To pick out a ring." His smile deepened. "I want to propose to Sophia. Properly. I owe her that and more after five years. And you have the best taste. You know what she'd love. She's going to say yes." Even though I had known this was coming, even though I had prepared myself for every version of this moment, I still heard it. The sound of something cracking. Like ice splitting, one sharp, clean sound, and then the whole world breaking apart.
Jamie's POV I know what she'd love? No. I knew what Sophia would love because I had spent years quietly finding out, digging through her friends for information so I could hand Ethan the perfect gift every single time. I had pushed him into another woman's arms and then handed him a map to her heart. "Okay." The next afternoon. The most prestigious custom jewelry boutique in Manhattan. The consultant spread tray after velvet tray across the counter. Diamonds caught the light from every angle. Ethan studied each one with the focus he rarely applied to anything else. More serious than when he reviewed a billion-dollar contract. "Too small. Not for her." "Too fussy. Sophia likes clean lines." "This one..." He picked up a pink diamond ring and turned to me. "Jamie. Give me your hand." I instinctively pulled my hand back. "For what?" "To try it on." He said it like it was obvious. "Your fingers are about the same size as hers. Your hands are rougher, she takes better care of hers, but the bone structure is the same. Come on." I looked at him. The boy who had taken up every corner of my youth. Standing here now, holding a ring he had chosen for someone else, asking to use my hand as a stand-in. And noting, while he was at it, that my hands weren't as soft as hers. Of course they weren't. Sophia's hands were made for piano keys and oil paintings. Mine were made for sorting his files, managing his crises, and once, to make a project deadline, hauling equipment on a construction site. "Ethan." My voice wavered. "Come on, hurry up." He was already impatient, completely unaware. "What are you waiting for?" I held out my left hand. He slid the pink diamond onto my ring finger. A perfect fit. The stone caught the light against my pale skin. The whole thing felt like a punchline I'd been building toward for twenty-two years. "Beautiful!" Ethan's face lit up. "Yeah, you really do have to see a ring on a hand to know. Your hands aren't exactly model material, but the diamond's flashy enough to carry it. It's going to look even better on Sophia." He handed the ring to the consultant, satisfied, and asked her to box it up. I looked at my bare finger. Then at Ethan, beaming as he took the small white box, completely at peace with the world. I smiled. Faint. Sad. "Ethan." I said it to his back, quiet as a sigh. "The divorce papers are signed. I left them on your desk." He stopped. Turned. And smiled, the wide, easy smile of a man whose life is suddenly coming together. "Jamie, seriously, thank you. Dinner tonight, on me. We can celebrate finally being single again!" I didn't respond. I was thinking about the winter of junior year in high school. Sophia had been obsessed with a burger place near campus, but the lines were always impossible. So Ethan dragged me out of class to go stand in it for her. It was freezing, the wind cutting right through everything. My hands were so cold they cracked and blistered. Ethan pulled off his scarf, and for one second I thought he was going to wrap it around me. Instead, he bundled it around the bag of burgers, tucked the whole thing against his chest. "This way they'll still be warm when Sophia gets them." I came down with a fever that afternoon. Ethan patted me on the back. "Your immune system is terrible. You need to toughen up." The memory wrapped around my chest like a thorned vine and squeezed.
Jamie's POV When Ethan got home that evening, I was in the middle of packing. Two large suitcases lay open in the center of the living room. The things that were mine were quietly disappearing. Half the bookshelf was empty. The flat shoes I always wore by the door were gone. Even the pair of matching toothbrush cups on the bathroom counter had been reduced to one. Ethan stood in the doorway and stared. "Already?" He nudged one of the suitcases with his foot. "You don't have to rush. You can stay. I'm not asking you to leave." "It's better this way." I didn't look up, my hands still moving. "We can't keep living together once the divorce is final. Sophia would mind." Ethan loosened his tie with a mildly irritated tug. "I've already explained everything to Sophia. Our marriage was never real. And you're my best friend. Divorce doesn't change that. What's wrong with taking the guest room?" Family. What a word. I finally set down what I was holding and looked at him. The chandelier above us was bright. It lit up every line of his face, every trace of his easy, unbothered certainty. "Ethan. Men and women can't just be friends." I said it calmly, like a fact he had always chosen not to hear. "Especially not when one of them is about to get married. I don't want to be someone people whisper about. And I don't want to make things harder for you." He blinked. Then almost laughed, like I'd said something absurd. "Who's going to say anything about you? You're VP of Foster Group." Then his voice shifted. "And where would you even go? Back to your dad's? You think your stepmother and your sister are going to roll out the welcome mat?" "I'm not going back there." My lashes flickered. I raised my eyes and looked directly at him. "I'm going to stay with my fiancé." The room went silent. The smile on Ethan's face didn't just fade. It froze, then cracked. "What did you just say?" "I said I'm going to stay with my fiancé." I held his gaze and told the lie as steadily as I had ever told the truth. "He's someone I knew in college. He's been waiting for me. I kept putting things off because of you. Now that you have what you want, it's time I went and lived my own life." Ethan couldn't move. "You can't have a fiancé." I wasn't surprised. Of course he thought that. I had spent every hour orbiting him. My entire world had been his world. "You're making it up," he said, voice going strange. "Jamie, don't joke about something like this. Who is he? What does he do? Does he treat you right? Is he after your money?" The questions came fast, almost frantic. I watched him unravel and felt nothing. No flutter. No ache. Just a quiet, exhausted stillness. "He treats me well. The same way you treat Sophia." I kept my voice even. "He remembers when my cycle is and makes me warm milk. He knows my stomach is bad and won't let me drink cold water. He turned down an arranged match his family set up for me." "Ethan. You're not the only person in the world who knows how to love someone." I let that sit for a moment. "And Sophia isn't the only person in the world worth loving." He opened his mouth. Closed it. "Is that so?" He laughed, but it came out unsteady. "That's great, then. Why didn't you ever tell me? You could have said something. I'm your friend. I can't believe you kept this from me." "Because you never asked." I picked up my bag. "I have to go. Ethan, I hope you and Sophia are happy. I really do." I didn't look at him again. I pulled my suitcase toward the front door. The wheels hummed against the marble floor, and the sound filled the empty house. "Wait!" The moment my hand touched the cold door handle, Ethan crossed the room in a few strides and slammed his palm flat against the door, trapping himself between me and the exit. His eyes were wide and unsteady. Like a child about to lose something he had never thought to value until right now. "Tonight, just have dinner with me tonight. You're leaving. It's the least we can do. Invite them, invite your friend, and I'll check them out for you too." I knew he was just making excuses. I looked down at the hand he had pressed against the door. Long fingers, clean knuckles. Beautiful, even now. "That's not necessary." I gently moved his hand aside. "He doesn't like me staying close with my ex-husband." Ex-husband. That word drew the line. It cut off every way back. I opened the door and walked out. Outside, the night was deep and dark. There was no fiancé. No college friend. The only person I had ever cared about, my whole life, was the one inside that house behind me. And now, I was letting him go. "Ethan," I whispered to myself, "this time, I really mean it. I'm done."
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "NovelMaster" app ? search for "413414", and watch the full series ✨! #NovelMaster