My Husband and Son Left Me on the Highway for His First Love

Claire's POV

I had the Christmas binder open on my knees when the phone rang.

It was a red three-ring binder with plastic sleeves, and Daniel had laughed at it in October when I started building it. Hotel confirmations in the front. Jack's ski school schedule behind that, with the instructor's name highlighted in yellow. Dinner reservations at the steakhouse Daniel liked, the one with the leather booths. And in the very back, the confirmation for Christmas dinner at the lodge, which I'd booked three months ago because the good tables sold out by Halloween.

I'd been flipping through it for the last forty miles, mostly so I wouldn't think about my stomach.

It had been off since breakfast. Not sick, exactly, just a slow, sour twist that got worse every time Daniel took a curve too fast. I'd finally dug the bottle out of my purse and swallowed one of the pills dry, and I was still tasting the chalk of it when the dashboard screen lit up.

**LILY GRANT**

Daniel's first love from college.

Daniel's phone was synced to the car. I didn't even have time to ask who it was before he tapped the wheel and her voice filled every inch of the space around us.

"Danny?" She was crying. Not delicately, either. Wet, hiccupping crying. "Oh my God, thank you for picking up. I didn't know who else to call."

"Hey. Hey, slow down." Daniel's voice went soft in a way I hadn't heard in a while. "What happened?"

"My flight. They canceled it, and then they said maybe tomorrow, and then they said maybe not, and I'm just sitting here at Denver with my bags, and everybody's got somewhere to go, and I don't..." She broke off into another sob. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I know you're with your family."

I looked at Daniel. He didn't look at me.

He was looking at the road signs.

"Where are you in the terminal?" he asked.

"By the United counters. Near the big snowman thing."

"Okay. Stay there. Charge your phone. I'm going to call you back in two minutes."

"Danny, you don't have to..."

"Two minutes," he said, and ended the call.

The car was suddenly very quiet. The wipers went back and forth. Somewhere behind me, Jack's tablet made a cheerful little chime.

Daniel leaned forward and squinted through the windshield at a green sign coming up through the snow. I watched his eyes go to the exit numbers, then to the GPS, then back to the road.

"Daniel."

"Give me a second."

"We've been driving for six hours."

"I know how long we've been driving, Claire. I'm the one driving."

"Denver's behind us. The airport isn't even on our route." I closed the binder over my thumb to keep my place. "We'd be going back two hours, minimum. In this."

"She's stuck."

"She's at an airport. Airports have hotels. Airports have shuttles."

"On Christmas week? Everything's booked." He said it so fast that I knew he'd already thought it through. Maybe not in the last two minutes. "She's alone, Claire."

"The lodge has a late check-in cutoff." I opened the binder again and turned the page so he could see it, as if paper might help. "Ten p.m. If we turn around now, we don't get there until after midnight. And Jack's lesson is at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. I paid extra to get him in the beginner group with the kids his age."

"So we call the lodge."

"It's Christmas Eve tomorrow. They're not going to..."

"Is Lily coming skiing with us?"

Jack had unbuckled enough to lean between the seats. His cheeks were flushed from the heater, and his eyes were bright, the way they got on birthday mornings.

"Buckle up, buddy," I said automatically.

"But is she? Is Lily coming?"

I stopped.

It took me a second to understand what was wrong with the question. It wasn't the words. It was what he didn't ask. He didn't ask why Lily was calling. He didn't ask who she was. He didn't ask why a woman crying at the airport was Daddy's problem.

He asked if she was coming, like that had always been one of the options.

"Why would Lily come skiing with us?" I said carefully.

Jack glanced at his father. Just a quick flick of the eyes. Then he shrugged and slid back into his seat. "I dunno."

"Jack."

"Leave him alone," Daniel said.

I turned around anyway. Jack had pulled his feet up, and his new ski boots were sitting on the floor mat behind Daniel's seat, bright blue with orange buckles. He'd shown them to me last week, hugging them against his chest in the kitchen. *Daddy bought them. They're real ones, not rentals.*

I'd thought that was sweet. I'd thought Daniel was finally paying attention.

The price tag was still looped through the top buckle. Jack had refused to let me cut it off because he said it made them look new. It had flipped over at some point, and now, under the dome of light from his tablet, I could see the back of it.

Someone had written on it in purple ink. Round, looping letters, with a heart over the i.

*Love, Aunt Lily.*

I stared at it for so long that Jack noticed.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing." My voice sounded strange. "Nice boots."

I faced forward again. The pill was sitting in my stomach like a stone.

Aunt Lily. Jack didn't have an Aunt Lily. Jack had an Aunt Grace, who lived in Littleton and let him eat frosting out of the can. He had never, as far as I knew, spent more than ten minutes in the same room as Lily Grant.

As far as I knew.

I looked at the binder on my lap. All those plastic sleeves. All those confirmations I'd printed and highlighted and hole-punched at the kitchen table while Daniel worked late. I had planned every hour of this trip. I'd known the name of Jack's ski instructor and the dress code at the steakhouse and which room at the lodge had the better view.

And I was the only person in this car who hadn't known about the boots.

"Daniel," I said quietly. "When did Jack meet Lily?"

"Can we not do this right now?"

"It's a simple question."

"It's not a simple question. It's you, starting something." He reached for his phone in the cupholder. "Look, she's a friend. She's had a terrible day. I'm not going to leave her sitting on the floor of an airport on Christmas."

Three years ago, on our first trip out here with Jack, we'd gotten caught in a whiteout outside Georgetown. Jack had been four and asleep in his car seat. I'd been so scared I couldn't stop shaking. Daniel had pulled over, unwound his gray scarf from around his own neck, and wrapped it around mine, tucking the ends into my coat like I was the child.

"Hey," he'd said, pressing his forehead to mine. "I would never leave you alone on any road. Okay? Never."

I'd believed him. I'd kept that scarf. It was in my suitcase right now, in the back of this car.

The exit sign was a quarter mile ahead.

"Please," I said. "I'm not feeling well. I took something an hour ago, and I just want to get there. Call her a car. Pay for it on my card, I don't care. Just don't turn around."

Daniel let out a long breath through his nose, the one he used when he wanted me to know how patient he was being.

"Claire, it's one detour. Stop making everything difficult."

Behind me, Jack kicked his new boots against the floor, happy.

Daniel's hand left the wheel. I watched it move to the stalk on the steering column, watched his fingers settle there without any hesitation at all.

The turn signal began to click.

"Daniel, I don't feel well."

I said it slowly, the way I'd say it to Jack when he wasn't listening. "I'm not trying to start anything. My stomach's a mess, and I just took a pill, and I want to get to the lodge and lie down. Lily can call a car. That's all I'm saying."

The turn signal kept clicking. He didn't answer.

"Did you hear me?"

"She doesn't like being alone in a city she doesn't know," he said.

He said it the way you'd mention someone's peanut allergy. A known fact, already accounted for. Like it was printed somewhere in a binder of his own.

I stared at him. "She's thirty-four years old."

"So?"

"So why can't a thirty-four-year-old woman with a phone and a credit card order an Uber from the airport? People do it every day. I did it at twenty-two, alone, in Chicago, in January."

"Not everybody's like you, Claire."

"What does that mean?"

"It means some people actually let themselves need other people." His thumb tapped the wheel. "It's not a character flaw."

Before I could answer, Jack started to cry.

Not tired crying. Angry crying, the kind that came with kicking. His boots thudded against the back of Daniel's seat, and he threw his old ski goggles onto the floor. They were the cheap red ones from Target with the scratched lens, the ones he'd worn last year without complaining once.

"You're ruining it!" he wailed. "Lily said she'd buy me new goggles. The mirror kind, like the real skiers have. She promised."

"Jack, honey..."

"If she doesn't come, Christmas is gonna be boring!" He scrubbed his face with his sleeve. "It's gonna be boring with just you!"

I turned all the way around in my seat. My seatbelt dug into my neck.

"Jack. Look at me. When did Lily promise you goggles?"

He sniffed hard, chin wobbling, and glared at me like I was the one who'd broken something.

"Dad already said she could come."

The car went silent.

Even the tablet had stopped making noise. All I could hear was the wipers and the turn signal, clicking, clicking.

"Buddy, that's not what I said." Daniel's voice came out fast and too cheerful. "Jack's mixing things up. I said maybe we'd see her sometime. He gets excited and hears what he wants to hear. You know how he is."

"I'm not mixing it up," Jack muttered.

"Jack. Enough."

Jack shut his mouth and turned toward the window.

I faced forward again. My hand had gone still on the binder, flat against the front cover, right over the label I'd printed in October. *MERCER FAMILY CHRISTMAS.*

I should have argued. I'd been arguing for ten minutes. But my mind had gone somewhere else, back through the last month, and it was picking things up one at a time and setting them side by side.

The week after Thanksgiving, I'd reached for Daniel's wallet to grab cash for the pizza guy, and he'd taken it out of my hand. *Don't touch the company Amex, it messes up my expense reports.* I'd laughed. Then he'd said it again two weeks later, when I hadn't even been near it. Sharper that time.

Last Tuesday, Jack at the kitchen counter, swinging his legs, eating apple slices. *Mom, does the hotel have two bedrooms? Like, another one besides yours and Dad's?* I'd told him the suite had three, and one was all his. He'd looked a little disappointed. I'd thought he wanted to share with us.

Three days ago. Daniel standing in the doorway of the laundry room while I folded his undershirts. *Send me the reservation number.* I'd told him it was in the binder. *Just text it to me, Claire. I want it on my phone.* He'd waited right there until I did.

None of it had meant anything at the time. A man who was particular about expense reports. A kid who was curious about hotel rooms. A husband who, for once, wanted to be involved.

Now they didn't look like separate things at all.

They looked like a list.

"How long?" I said.

"How long what?"

"How long has she been coming with us, Daniel?"

He didn't answer. He took the exit.

But it wasn't the exit back toward Denver. It was the one just before it, the ramp curving off into a service area. A gas station, a squat building with a Subway sign, a row of trucks idling with their lights on. Snow had been plowed into dirty gray banks along the edges of the lot, and the pavement in between was black and shining with slush.

He pulled into a spot near the curb and put the car in park.

"What are you doing?"

"You said you're sick." He unbuckled his seatbelt. "So rest. There's a restaurant inside. Get some tea, sit down, and when you're feeling better, call a car to the lodge. You love calling cars, apparently."

"You're joking."

"I'm being practical. You don't want to go back to Denver, and I'm not leaving Lily at the airport. This way everybody gets what they want."

"Everybody," I said. "You mean you."

He sighed and rubbed his eyes, a man exhausted by me. Then he looked at me, and his face was calm. Not angry. That was worse.

"If you can't handle one change of plan, maybe you shouldn't come at all."

I waited for him to take it back. In nine years, there had always been a point where Daniel took it back. He'd get quiet, then he'd reach over and squeeze my knee and say, *Okay, I'm being a jerk.*

He didn't reach over. He opened his door and got out.

I watched him through the window as he walked around the back of the car. He was making a point, I told myself. He was doing what he did when he lost an argument at dinner, getting up to stack the plates too loud, wanting me to come after him and apologize. He'd stand out there in the cold for a minute, and then he'd get back in, and we'd drive to Denver in silence, and I'd hate it, but we'd still be in the same car.

The trunk popped open behind me. Cold air rolled forward between the seats.

"Daddy, what are you doing?" Jack asked.

I twisted around.

Daniel was lifting my suitcase out. The navy one with the yellow ribbon I'd tied around the handle so I could spot it at baggage claim. He didn't struggle with it, didn't hesitate, didn't look up to see if I was watching. He set it down on the curb beside the snowbank, and one of the wheels slid off the edge into the slush. It tipped against the pile of gray snow and stayed there.

Inside that suitcase, folded at the very bottom, was his gray wool scarf.

Daniel brushed his hands off on his jeans and shut the trunk.

The sound went through the whole car.

Jack picked his old red goggles up off the floor and held them in his lap, looking from his father to me. I still had my hand on the binder. I hadn't moved it once.

Outside, the snow was already starting to settle on top of my suitcase.

I don't remember deciding to get out of the car. One second I was sitting there with my hand on the binder, and the next I was standing under the gas station awning with the cold biting through my coat, watching my husband walk back to the driver's side like he'd just dropped off a package.

He didn't look at me. He stomped the slush off his boots, opened his door, and slid in behind the wheel.

The engine was still running. Exhaust curled up white behind the bumper.

My suitcase sat on the curb where he'd left it, tipped against the snowbank. A thin layer of snow had already collected on the top, and the yellow ribbon on the handle was soaked dark.

I walked past it.

Jack's window was right there, fogged around the edges from his breath. He was sitting in his booster seat with something round and white in his lap. I knocked twice on the glass.

He looked at me.

I honestly believed he would open the door. He was seven. He still came into our bed during thunderstorms. Last month he'd cried for twenty minutes because I was late picking him up from a birthday party, and when I finally got there, he'd run across the bounce-house place and wrapped himself around my legs like I'd come back from war.

So I waited for his hand to go to the handle.

Instead, his arms tightened around the thing in his lap, and I saw what it was. A ski helmet. Glossy white, with a little cartoon fox sticker on the side. The tag was still on the strap, and I didn't need to read it to know whose handwriting was on the back.

"Jack, honey," I said through the glass. "Open the door."

He didn't. He leaned forward between the seats instead, toward his father.

"Daddy, hurry," he said. I could hear him perfectly through the window. "Lily said she'll buy me the red skis if we get there before dinner."

"I'm on it, buddy," Daniel said.

"Jack." I pressed my palm flat to the glass. "Jack, look at me."

He looked. For one second, something moved in his face, like he wasn't sure what was supposed to happen next. Then he turned his head and stared straight ahead at the back of Daniel's seat, hugging the helmet against his chest.

The car rolled forward.

I stepped back without thinking, and the rear tire went through a puddle of gray slush right where I'd been standing. It hit me from the knees down, cold enough that I felt it in my teeth. Wet salt and grit soaked through my jeans and ran into my sneakers.

Daniel didn't slow down. The brake lights flashed once at the edge of the lot, then the car swung onto the on-ramp and the snow swallowed it.

I stood there with the slush seeping into my socks.

The old version of me would have run. I knew exactly what she would have done. She would have chased the car to the end of the lot, waving, then called him over and over until he picked up, and she would have apologized for something just to make it stop.

I didn't move.

After a while, I went back to the curb, pulled my suitcase upright, and brushed the snow off the top with my sleeve. The wheel that had gone into the slush was packed with ice and wouldn't turn, so I dragged it. It scraped and bumped all the way across the lot to the convenience store.

Inside it was too bright and too warm. The place smelled like burnt coffee and hot dogs turning on rollers. A teenage cashier in a Santa hat glanced at my wet jeans, then at my suitcase, then went back to his phone.

I parked myself by the window next to a rack of beef jerky and took out my phone. My fingers were stiff. I opened the lodge's app, figuring I'd check the shuttle schedule from Frisco, or at least find out whether they'd hold the room past the cutoff. I could get there myself. I'd been getting myself places my whole life.

The screen hadn't even finished loading when a banner dropped down from the top.

**Aspen Peak Lodge: Reservation Updated**

An automated email. I almost swiped it away.

I opened it instead.

It was our confirmation, the same one I had printed and slipped into the second plastic sleeve of my binder. Alpine Suite, three bedrooms, December 23 through 28. The guest list sat underneath, the way it always had.

Mr. Daniel Mercer.

Mrs. Claire Mercer.

Jack Mercer, child, age 7.

And under that, a fourth line I had never seen before.

**Ms. Lily Grant.**

*Added: December 9.*

I read the date three times. Then I opened the calendar on my phone just to be sure I wasn't confused from the pill or the fever creeping in behind my eyes.

December ninth. Fourteen days ago.

I kept scrolling. Under Room Configuration, the second bedroom, the one I'd planned to set up as Jack's, with the bunk-style twin beds and the window over the slope, had been changed.

*Bedroom 2: Upgraded to adult occupancy. King bed. Modified December 9.*

Then the spa section. I hadn't booked anything at the spa. I'd thought about it, a facial maybe, but it was expensive and I'd figured I'd decide once we got there.

Someone else had decided.

*Couples Massage — Fireside Suite, 90 minutes. December 26, 4:00 p.m.*

*Booked by: Daniel Mercer & Lily Grant.*

The cashier's phone made a little video-game noise. The hot dogs kept turning.

I stared at the dates until the letters stopped looking like words.

Two weeks. Not this afternoon. Not a canceled flight and a crying phone call and a man too kind to leave a friend alone at an airport. That call had been a performance, and I'd been the only one in the car who didn't know it was a show.

Lily had been on this trip from the start.

She'd been in it while I was at the kitchen table highlighting ski schedules. She'd been in it while I was wrapping Jack's stocking stuffers. She'd had a bedroom with a king bed while I was still calling that room Jack's.

Jack, swinging his legs at the counter last Tuesday. *Does the hotel have another bedroom? Besides yours and Dad's?* He hadn't been curious. He'd been checking.

Daniel in the laundry room doorway, waiting until I texted him the reservation number. He hadn't wanted to be involved. He'd needed it to check what he had already changed.

And all those Saturdays this month when he'd suddenly offered to take Jack out alone. *Just grabbing some trip stuff, you rest.* They'd come home with bags from the sporting goods store and Jack giggling about something he wouldn't tell me. I'd thought it was father-son time. I'd been grateful for it.

Those weren't separate lies.

They were one plan.

And I had paid for most of it.

Outside, through the fogged window, the snow kept coming down over the empty spot where our car had been. My suitcase sat at my feet, the snow on its top melting into dark streaks that ran down the sides and pooled on the linoleum.

I wiped my thumb across the screen and called him.

It rang four times. I thought he wouldn't answer. Then the line opened, and I heard road noise, and the faint, tinny music of Jack's tablet in the back.

"What, Claire?" He sounded tired. Put-upon. "I'm driving."

I kept my voice even. I didn't want to cry in front of the kid in the Santa hat, and more than that, I didn't want Daniel to hear me cry ever again.

"How long has Lily been part of this trip?"

Silence.

It lasted maybe two seconds. I counted them. In nine years of marriage, I had learned the shape of Daniel's silences, the ones where he was thinking up a lie and the ones where he'd decided he didn't need one.

This was the second kind.

"Long enough," he said, "that I'm not ruining Christmas just because you're jealous."

I hung up.

I didn't say *that's not fair* or *you know that's not what this is about*. I didn't explain that I wasn't jealous, I was standing in a gas station in wet jeans. I didn't do any of the things I'd done for nine years whenever Daniel handed me a sentence designed to make me defend myself.

I just pressed the red button and watched the call end.

My hand was shaking. I put the phone face down on the little ledge by the window and waited for it to buzz, for him to call back angry that I'd hung up on him.

It didn't buzz.

Of course it didn't.

The cashier glanced over again. I turned my back to him and picked the phone up and opened my contacts. I scrolled past Daniel. Past Daniel's assistant, Daniel's mother, the pediatrician, Jack's school, the pizza place. My whole life was in that list, and almost all of it belonged to other people.

Grace was under G. I'd never moved her to favorites. Daniel thought she was a bad influence.

She picked up on the second ring. "Hey, you guys there yet? Did Jack lose his mind over the mountains?"

"Grace."

That was all I said. Just her name. But she'd been my big sister my entire life, and something in my voice made her go quiet.

"Where are you?"

"The service plaza off I-70. The Copper Ridge one, Exit 195."

I heard keys. A cabinet door. Her dog barking in the background.

"Are you safe?"

She didn't ask where Daniel was. She didn't ask what happened or what I did. She asked the only question that mattered, and for a second my throat closed up so hard I couldn't answer.

"Claire. Are you safe right now?"

"Yes." I pressed my knuckles against my mouth. "I'm inside. It's warm. I'm fine."

"You're not fine. But okay." Something heavy hit the floor on her end, boots, probably. "Stay inside. Don't get in anybody's car. I'm calling you back."

She hung up before I could tell her she didn't have to come.

I stood there next to the beef jerky and watched the snow. Twenty minutes went by. A trucker bought two energy drinks and a bag of sunflower seeds. The hot dogs kept turning. The slush in my sneakers went from cold to numb.

Then my phone lit up.

**Grace: On the road. Chains on. Don't you dare apologize to him.**

I laughed, a short, ugly sound that made the cashier look up again. I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand.

Then I scrolled back up to a name I hadn't touched in four years.

**Rachel Moore — Bennett Family**

The last time I'd called her for anything personal was when Dad died. Since then it had been signatures by email, quarterly statements I opened and didn't read, a Christmas card every year with her firm's logo embossed in gold. Daniel used to joke that she was the only lawyer in Denver who got paid to do nothing.

She answered on the first ring.

"Claire." Her voice was crisp, awake, surprised. "It's been a long time. Is everything all right?"

"No." I made myself breathe. "I need you to pull some things for me. Tonight, if you can."

"I can. Go ahead."

"The prenup. Specifically the trust separation clause, everything that keeps my Bennett assets out of the marital estate. I want to know exactly where the line is." I watched my reflection in the window, a pale woman in a damp coat. "Then the joint accounts. All of them. What's in them, who's been moving money, and where it went. Especially the last thirty days."

Rachel didn't interrupt. I could hear her typing.

"The house," I said. "Whose name is on the deed, and what came from my side for the down payment. And custody. I need to know where I stand with Jack."

The typing stopped.

"Claire," she said carefully. "Those are four very different requests that all point to the same place."

"I know."

"Then say it, so I'm not guessing."

I looked down at my left hand. My fingers were red and stiff from the cold, and the ring looked too big on them somehow.

"Prepare the divorce petition."

The line was quiet. Not the empty kind of quiet Daniel had given me. Rachel's silence felt like someone setting down a pen and paying attention.

"Are you sure?" she asked. "I'm not asking because I doubt you. I'm asking because once I start, Daniel's attorney will know within days, and you'll want to have decided before that happens. Not after."

I turned toward the glass.

Behind my reflection, out over the gas pumps, a banner was strung between two light poles. *MERRY CHRISTMAS* in red and green plastic letters. The wind kept catching it, snapping it forward, pulling it back. One end had torn loose from its zip tie, and the whole thing whipped against the pole like it was trying to get free.

I watched it for a long moment. Then I set the phone on the ledge, put it on speaker, and twisted the ring off my finger.

It stuck at the knuckle. I had to work it, turning it back and forth, and when it finally came loose there was a pale band of skin underneath, slightly dented, like the ring had been holding something in place.

I tilted it toward the light. The inscription was still there inside the band, small script letters Daniel had picked out himself at the jeweler's nine years ago. He'd been so proud of it. He'd made the salesman read it back to him twice.

*Wherever the road goes, we go together.*

The road had gone to Denver. I'd stayed here.

My binder was sitting on top of my suitcase. I'd carried it out of the car without even noticing, clutched against my side the whole time I'd knocked on Jack's window. I opened it to the front sleeve, the one with the lodge confirmation, and slid the ring into the clear plastic pocket. It settled into the bottom corner on top of the words *Alpine Suite*.

I closed the binder.

"Claire?" Rachel's voice came small out of the speaker. "Are you still there?"

I picked the phone back up. "I'm sure. File before he gets home."

"Understood." She didn't ask anything else. "I'll have a draft to you by morning."

When she hung up, I didn't put the phone away. I opened my browser and typed in an address I still knew by heart, even though I hadn't used it since before Jack was born.

**NorthPeak Resorts — Board Portal**

The login page loaded white and clean, the silver mountain logo at the top. Username, password, and below that, a third field I'd almost forgotten about. Identity verification. Full legal name, as registered with the trust.

For nine years I'd signed everything Claire Mercer. School forms. Birthday cards. The little label on the front of my binder.

I typed slowly, letter by letter.

**CLAIRE BENNETT**

The screen paused. A small wheel spun. Then the dashboard opened, and there it was, the whole thing I'd walked away from to be somebody's wife. Forty-one properties. Board minutes. A message flag from the CFO I hadn't read since spring.

I clicked into Trust Administration, then into Family Guest Privileges.

His name was the only one on the list besides mine.

**Daniel Mercer — Spouse of Beneficiary**

Under it, everything he'd always assumed was just good luck. Complimentary suite upgrades at every NorthPeak property. Private airport and mountain transfers. Priority concierge access. Every time a front desk clerk had smiled at him and said, *Oh, Mr. Mercer, we've moved you to something nicer*, it had come from this page.

The Aspen Peak Lodge was a NorthPeak property.

I selected all three.

**Revoke privileges for this guest? This action takes effect immediately across all properties.**

I pressed confirm.

The list refreshed. His name was still there, but every line beneath it had gone gray.

Somewhere on I-70, Daniel was driving toward an airport with my son in the back seat, thinking he'd left a sick, jobless wife on the side of the highway with nowhere to go and no one to call.

I slipped the phone into my coat pocket and picked up the binder.

This time, I wasn't waiting for him to come back for me.