MY EX-HUSBAND WANT ME BACK BY ALL MEANS

Rachel pulled the last shirt from the drawer and folded it without looking at it.

She had been moving this way for the past two hours hands working, mind somewhere else, the way you operated when feeling everything fully would stop you from doing what needed to be done. She couldn't afford to stop. Not tonight. Not in this house where every corner held something she had once believed in.

The room was dark except for the small lamp on her side of the bed.

Lucas' side was empty. He had not come upstairs after the argument. After Fiona's smile from the staircase. After Rebecca's words landed in the room like something thrown rather than spoken. Rachel had come up here alone and started packing with the quiet discipline of someone who had already made every decision and was simply executing them now.

She was almost finished.

The suitcase held her clothes not all of them, just the ones that had been hers before this marriage. The second bag held her art supplies. Her brushes. Her worn sketchbook. Three small canvases she had been working on before life in this house had made painting feel impossible. She would not leave those behind for anything.

Everything else could stay.

The furniture. The silk. The closet full of expensive things Lucas had chosen without asking her what she liked. None of it was hers in any way that mattered. She had arrived in Shantel City with two bags and a direction. She was leaving the same way.

She sat at the small writing desk and opened her laptop.

The divorce papers her lawyer had drafted three days ago were saved in a folder she had titled simply done. She opened it and sent it to the printer. Four pages came out slowly, one after another, the machine hum filling the quiet room. She picked them up and read each page once. Her lawyer had been careful and fair no claims on his assets, no demands, nothing that would extend this any longer than necessary. Just the legal fact of an ending.

She signed her name four times.

Rachel Everton.

She pressed down hard each time. She didn't know why. Maybe because she needed the pen to feel real. Maybe because she needed something about tonight to leave a mark.

She folded the papers and carried them out of the bedroom.

The hallway was dark and still. She passed the family portraits without looking at them. She had stopped looking at them eighteen months into the marriage when she realized her face would never appear in any of them. At the time that had hurt. Now it just seemed like the house had known something she hadn't been ready to admit yet.

The stairs were silent under her feet.

Lucas' office door was open a few inches. She almost walked past it. Then she stopped.

She pushed it gently and looked inside.

He was at his desk, head resting in his arms, asleep. A glass sat beside him, half full. The office lamp was still on, casting everything in a low amber light that made him look younger than thirty. Less defended. More like the man she had believed she was marrying before she understood the full picture of who came with him.

Rachel stood in the doorway and looked at him for a long moment.

She thought about the morning he had driven forty minutes across the city to find the specific brand of tea she had mentioned liking once. She thought about the afternoon he had sat beside her on the studio floor for two hours just watching her paint, not speaking, just being present in that particular way of his that used to make her feel less alone in the world than she had ever felt before.

She thought about Fiona's voice on that call.

About the pills.

About months of taking something she believed would help her while it was quietly doing the opposite.

She placed the divorce papers on the desk beside his hand.

He didn't stir.

She looked at him one last time.

Then she walked out.

The front door opened silently. The night air came at her all at once cold and sharp and clean in a way the air inside that house hadn't been in a very long time. She breathed it in slowly. Held it. Let it out.

Aria was at the gate.

She was standing with her arms crossed against the cold, her blonde hair pulled back, her face carrying the careful expression of someone working very hard not to ask questions. She had received Rachel's message two hours ago car, gate, no calls, no knocking. She had arrived without a single word of protest, which was the truest thing about her.

"That everything?" Aria asked, looking at the two bags.

"That's everything," Rachel said.

Aria lifted the heavier bag without being told and put it in the boot. Rachel set the second one beside it. They got into the car and Aria started the engine and they drove away from the Thompson mansion in complete silence.

Rachel kept her eyes on the road ahead. Not the rearview mirror. Forward.

The streets were empty at this hour. The city between midnight and dawn was a different place stripped of its noise, its performance, everything it put on for the daylight hours. She had always thought this was the most honest version of any city. When nobody was watching, when it was just the roads and the dark and the people who had somewhere urgent to be.

She pressed her palm flat against her stomach once, under her coat, where Aria wouldn't see.

The baby was a secret.

It was going to stay that way.

"Flight is confirmed," Aria said gently after a while. "I checked an hour ago. You're on the seven-fifteen."

"Good," Rachel said.

Aria glanced at her sideways. "Rachel. Whatever happened in there you're doing the right thing. I can feel it even without knowing the details."

Rachel nodded.

She didn't trust her voice enough to say more than that.

Aria pulled up to the hotel. Rachel took her bags and went up alone. She sat on the edge of the bed in the dark without turning on the light. She pressed both hands over her stomach this time and just breathed.

I'll take care of you, she thought toward the tiny quiet thing growing inside her. You won't need anything from anyone else. I promise.

Her phone lit up.

She reached for it expecting the airline confirmation.

Unknown number. A message.

Rachel. Do not get on that flight. There are things you don't know things that will completely change what you believe happened in that marriage. I'm sending you something. Please look at it before you leave.

She almost put the phone down.

Then the photograph arrived.

She opened it.

And her breath left her body entirely.

Because the photograph showed Lucas not with Fiona, not at any location she recognized from their marriage but sitting across a table from her father. Both of them leaning forward. Papers spread between them. Both of them signing.

The date stamp in the corner read four months before her wedding day.

Her father.

Who had never once mentioned knowing Lucas Thompson.