I called him. No answer. Sent a text. No reply.

At one in the morning, he came through the door.

I pretended to be asleep, listening as he tiptoed into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed for a while before heading to the shower.

I picked up the jacket he'd tossed over the chair.

On the collar, a single long strand of hair.

My hair was short.

I kept that strand for a month. Tucked it between the pages of my journal. Never asked. Never threw it away.

The first real confrontation came in December.

He was in the shower that night when his phone buzzed again. Almost without thinking, I picked it up. The passcode hadn't changed. Still our anniversary.

I opened his messages. Pinned at the top was a contact named "Juliana."

The last message was from her: Thanks for keeping me company today! Next time dinner's on me~

I scrolled up. The history was all there. He'd bought her bubble tea, taken her to the hospital, driven her home late at night.

She'd written: I'm scared of being alone.

He'd written: I'm here.

No explicit words. No inappropriate photos.

But every single message carved into my chest like a blade.

He came out of the shower and saw me holding his phone. The color drained from his face.

"Lydia, let me explain—"

"Explain what?" My voice was steady. So steady it surprised even me. "Explain how you've been playing boyfriend to another woman?"

"She just went through a breakup. She's emotionally fragile. I was just looking out for her—"

"She goes through a breakup, and you're her shoulder to cry on. I'm burning up with a fever, and where are you?"

He froze.

"That night, I had a hundred-and-two-degree fever. You were with her until one in the morning."

His mouth opened. Nothing came out.

I tossed the phone onto the bed, walked into the guest room, and locked the door.

He didn't sleep that night. He stood outside the door, knocking every few minutes. I didn't open it.

The next morning, when I finally unlocked the door, he was still there. Red-eyed, standing in the same spot. "I was wrong. I was really wrong. I've cut her off. Deleted her from my phone. I'll never contact her again. Please forgive me this once."

I looked at him and thought of the boy who'd chased me for a year. The way his voice had trembled so badly during the proposal he could barely get the words out.

"One last chance," I said.

I forgave him because of those five years.

Not because he deserved it. Because I couldn't bear to let go.

But once a heart cracks, no amount of mending can make it whole again.

I started tracking the times he left the house. Counting the nights he claimed to work late. Watching his face whenever he checked his phone. I nodded at everything he said, but the thorn lodged in my chest only drove itself deeper.

In January, he said his department was having a dinner. I drove to his office building and found him sitting alone in his car. No dinner.

In February, he said he was on a business trip. I checked his flight. His name wasn't on any manifest.

I didn't argue. Didn't make a scene. I just opened that journal every night before bed and took out the strand of hair to look at it.

Everything finally shattered in early March.

It was his birthday. I'd reserved a table at a restaurant and invited a few of his closest friends for a surprise. At five o'clock I was waiting at the restaurant when he texted that traffic was bad and he'd be late.

Five-forty. Still no sign of him.

I called. His phone was off.

I called his office. A coworker said he'd taken the afternoon off and left hours ago.

I sat in that restaurant until eight, then packed up an entire table of food and brought it home. When I walked through the door, he'd just gotten out of the shower, hair still dripping.

"Where were you this afternoon?"

"Working late."

I stared at him, and then I laughed. Something about that laugh must have been unsettling, because he flinched. "What's wrong?"

"Clay, did you know that when someone lies, their eyes wander?"

He said nothing.

Silence.

"Fine. Don't want to talk? Forget it." I walked into the bedroom and shut the door.

He followed me in, grabbing my arm. "Juliana's in the hospital. I went to see her. She had an appendectomy. She's all alone in Graystone City with no one to take care of her. What was I supposed to do, just ignore that?"

I turned to look at him.

"Your birthday comes every year. She's only having this surgery once."

He said it like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

All at once, I didn't want to fight anymore. I was tired. So goddamn tired.

"Okay." I nodded. "Go take care of her. You should."

He hadn't expected me to say that. He just stood there, frozen.

That night I slept like the dead. No dreams.

The thing that truly killed whatever was left in me came in April.

I'd been having stomach pains for a while. I didn't think much of it—figured it was just a bad stomach.

The morning of April tenth, the pain bent me double. Clay was still asleep.

I shook him awake. Told him I needed to go to the hospital.

He glanced at his phone. "I've got a meeting this morning. Can you take an Uber? I'll come find you after it's done."

I said okay.

I went alone. Registered alone. Paid alone. Waited for the results alone. The doctor held my chart, his expression grim. "You're pregnant, but it's ectopic. You need surgery immediately."

I couldn't move.

"Where's your family?"

"In a meeting."

The doctor frowned. "We need a family member to sign the consent form. Call someone. Now."

I called Clay. No answer.

I sent a message: Ectopic pregnancy. Need surgery. Get here now.

Read. No reply.

I waited forty minutes. The nurse came to check on me three times. In the end, I signed the consent form myself. Walked into the operating room alone.

Lying on that table, I stared up at the overhead light. It was blinding, searingly bright.

If I die here, I thought, what would he be doing? Sitting in his meeting? Or sitting with her?

The surgery went fine. I didn't. A nurse wheeled me back to my room, got me settled, and left. I lay in bed shivering, unable to speak.

At eight that evening, Clay showed up.

The second he pushed the door open, I knew where he'd been.

He'd changed his clothes. He'd left the house that morning in a blue dress shirt. Now he was wearing a white T-shirt. His hair was freshly washed too—I could smell the shampoo from across the room.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, the meeting this afternoon was really important, my phone was on silent, I didn't hear it—" He walked toward me, reaching for my hand.

I looked at him. "Where were you today?"

"The meeting, I told you, that project—"

"Clay."

"You're not wearing the same clothes you left in."

He froze.

"You changed. Your hair's wet." I held his gaze. "Where were you?"

He said nothing.

"Today's her birthday, isn't it?"

The color drained from his face.

"You remembered her birthday. You made sure you were there to celebrate it with her. And while I was lying on an operating table, your phone was off." My voice was steady. Perfectly steady. Like I was talking about someone else's life. "Clay. We're done."

"Lydia, just listen to me—"

"Get out."

After I was discharged, I moved in with a friend.

Clay came looking for me a few times. He'd stand outside the entrance to my friend's apartment complex, just standing there for hours. I never went down.

At the end of May, I went back to the apartment we'd shared to pack my things. When I opened the door, he was there.

He'd lost a lot of weight. His jaw was covered in stubble, and the skin beneath his eyes was bruised a deep purple-black.

"Lydia." He stepped in front of me. "Let's talk."

"About what?"

"There's nothing between me and her. We're just friends—"

"Just friends." I laughed. "You spent her birthday with her. I was having a miscarriage, and you were by her side. That's what you call 'just friends'?"

He went quiet.

I pushed past him and walked into the bedroom to pack. He trailed behind me like a child who knew he'd done something wrong.

"I know I messed up. I really do. You can hit me, yell at me, anything. Just don't leave, okay?"

I ignored him.

"I cut things off with her. I mean it. She quit yesterday. We'll never talk again. Will you come back? Please?"

I zipped the last piece of clothing into my suitcase, pulled it upright, and turned to face him.

"Clay, do you know what I was thinking on that operating table?"

He stared at me.

"I was thinking that if I died right there, that would be fine. Nobody was waiting for me anyway."

His eyes went red.

"Don't cry." I grabbed the handle of my suitcase. "You don't deserve those tears."

What happened after that, I heard from other people.

After Juliana quit, she moved to another company. Clay went after her, waited outside her new office building, and got chased off by security.

He took an extended leave. Drank every day. Made a major mistake at work and got demoted.

A friend told me that when he was drunk, he'd mumble my name over and over, calling himself a bastard, saying he deserved it.

I listened. Felt nothing.

Not hatred. Just nothing.

That light on the operating table had been so bright, it burned something out of me.

It was June now.

I'd started a new job, far from that apartment. My new coworkers didn't know my past. All they knew was that I was single and didn't like talking about relationships.

Yesterday a guy from the department next door added me on social media, said he wanted to get to know me.

I accepted. Didn't really chat.

It wasn't that I didn't want to start over. I just wasn't in a rush.

I had to let the scar heal first.

Clay texted again yesterday. A long message. I deleted it before I finished reading.

He asked if we could meet one more time. Said he was sorry.

There was nothing to be sorry for.

I was the one who spent five years before I finally saw him for what he was.

Oh, right. I forgot to mention.

The blood on the operating table that day. There was a lot of it. The doctor said if I'd come in half an hour later, it could have been life-threatening.

Clay didn't know any of that.

He didn't need to.

The day I moved into the new apartment, I threw away that strand of hair.

It had been tucked inside my journal for almost six months. By the time I pulled it out, it had turned yellow.

I held it up to the light by the window, then opened my fingers and watched it drift into the trash can.

Like closing a chapter for good.

The new place was small, barely four hundred square feet, but the windows faced south.

In the afternoon, sunlight poured in and pooled on the floor. I stood there watching that patch of light for a long time.

My phone rang.

Mom.

"Lydia, honey, Chloe Chavez's daughter told me you moved?"

"Yeah."

"What's going on with Clay? Aren't you two engaged?"

I leaned against the windowsill. The sun warmed my back.

"We broke up."

"Broke up? Why? You've been together five years. You bought a place together—"

"Mom." I cut her off. "He was seeing someone else."

Silence on the other end. A few seconds.

"That son of a bitch." My mother's voice changed completely. "You sit tight. I'm coming to Graystone City tomorrow. I'm going to give him a piece of my mind."

I almost laughed.

The first time Clay came to the house, my mom had held his hand and said, "What a good boy. I'm trusting you with my Lydia." Now he was a son of a bitch.

"You don't have to, Mom. I'm fine."

"Fine? You lost a baby and that's fine?"

I froze.

How did she know?

"Chloe Chavez's daughter is a nurse at that hospital. She told me. Lydia, something that serious and you didn't tell your family?"

My mouth opened. Nothing came out.

"That's enough. Don't worry about it. I'll be there tomorrow."