Don't Cherish My Love, I Decided To Leave

Tommy stood there, stunned. His eyes widened in disbelief as he tried to process my words.

"What did you say?Why didn't you tell me earlier?" he demanded, his voice tinged with confusion and anger.

I paused, my hands gripping the edge of the suitcase. "I did, Tommy. I told you. But you were too busy with Lolly. Too busy with everything else to care."

The realization seemed to hit him like a blow. He took a step back, the color draining from his face. "Laura, I—"

I let out a bitter laugh, one that seemed to echo off the walls of the room. I turned to leave, but Tommy blocked my path, frantically pulling out his phone, scrolling through it as if searching for something. I glanced over and saw something that didn’t surprise me anymore—he had blocked my number long ago.

Tommy looked up from his phone, trying to make excuses. "It was Lolly… She was just joking. You know she’s young. She gave me her first time and…"

I cut him off, my voice sharp and cold. "If the first time is so important, then why don’t you marry her? Why are you still with me? I didn’t care that it wasn’t your first time. So why does it matter to you?"

Tommy’s face froze. He hadn’t expected me to talk back, not after years of enduring his insults and belittlement. “You can’t compare yourself to me!” he finally barked. “I’m a man! It’s a matter of male dignity!”

I felt something inside me snap, like a taut wire breaking under too much strain. “You have the nerve to talk about dignity? You call yourself a man?” I spat back.

Tommy’s face twisted in fury. In a sudden fit of rage, he grabbed a plate from the table and hurled it against the wall. The ceramic shattered and a sharp fragment flew past, cutting my hand. I stared at the blood pooling on my palm, more stunned by Tommy’s outburst than by the pain.

For a long moment, I couldn’t speak. The room was filled with the sound of my labored breathing, the tension so thick it was suffocating. Finally, the words I had held back for so long burst out of me. “Tommy, what right do you have to yell at me? Do you think I don’t know about the things you do behind closed doors? The things you never want anyone to find out?”

A flash of panic crossed his face, but he quickly masked it with indignation. “Don’t talk nonsense! I have nothing to hide!”

The day my grandmother passed away, I uncovered the secret Tommy had buried deep in his heart—a secret that had killed any love or hope I had left for him.