Derek had not always been the kind of man who needed an audience to hurt me.
That was what made everything harder to understand.
When I met him, I was thirty and running client strategy for a live-event production company in Raleigh. My work was chaotic: corporate launches, medical conferences, luxury fundraisers, hotel openings.
Derek managed operations for a commercial equipment distributor.
We met because one of my events needed emergency power equipment after a vendor backed out forty-eight hours before setup.
Derek solved the problem.
No flirting.
No performance.
He showed up with three technicians, stayed until midnight and sent me a message the next morning:
Hope the event went well. You looked like you hadn’t slept in a week.
I replied:
Only four days. Very different.
We started dating two weeks later.
He was funny without being loud and attentive without feeling possessive.
When I worked late, he brought food.
When my flights were delayed, he never accused me of choosing work over him.
He loved that I was ambitious.
At least I believed he did.
Paige Mercer first appeared in our relationship as a harmless piece of history.
She and Derek had dated from age twenty-two to twenty-seven.
“She wanted a different life,” he told me.
“What kind?”
“Quieter.”
According to Derek, Paige wanted marriage early, predictable weekends, children, family dinners.
He wanted to build his career.
Eventually they separated.
No cheating.
No dramatic betrayal.
“Sometimes two good people are wrong together,” he said.
I admired the maturity of that answer.
What I didn’t know was how often Derek rewrote history depending on the audience.
The house came before our wedding.
It was a brick three-bedroom home on a tree-lined street west of downtown, with an ugly green kitchen, original hardwood floors and a screened porch that had begun sinking on one side.
I loved it immediately.
My grandmother, Evelyn, had died the previous year and left me $92,000.
She had spent forty years running a small accounting practice from the front room of her house.
When I was a teenager, she once told me, “Everybody should own something that doesn’t require another person’s permission to keep.”
I used part of her money and my savings for the down payment.
The mortgage was approved using my income.
I closed eighteen months before Derek and I married.
The first afternoon Derek walked through the empty house, he kissed me in the kitchen.
“This place is incredible.”
“The kitchen is the color of canned peas.”
“We’ll fix it.”
I noticed the word we’ll.
I liked it.
I wanted him to feel at home.
When he moved in after our wedding, we replaced the kitchen cabinets, rebuilt the porch and converted the smallest bedroom into my office.
But the deed stayed in my name.
One evening Derek found the closing documents in a cabinet.
“Still just you?”
“Yes.”
“You never considered adding me?”
I looked up.
“To the deed?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
His expression tightened.
“Okay.”
“I owned it before we married.”
“I know.”
“If we buy something together later, that’ll be different.”
He smiled.
“Relax. I’m not trying to steal your house.”
I laughed.
I wish I hadn’t.
The first regret came six months after our wedding.
We hosted Thanksgiving because Derek wanted to prove our place was “finally big enough to do something properly.”
There were fourteen people squeezed around two tables.
After dinner, his cousin admired the house.
“You two did well.”
Before I could respond, Derek said, “Maren did well. I just married into it.”
People laughed.
Then his uncle said, “Smartest deal you ever made.”
Derek raised his beer.
“Not sure about that. I might reconsider the marriage part.”
More laughter.
I smiled because I didn’t know what else to do.
Later, while washing serving dishes, I asked why he had said it.
“You seriously thought that was funny?”
“It was obviously a joke.”
“It embarrassed me.”
“So now I have to clear jokes with you?”
“No. I just don’t want our marriage turned into a joke.”
He kissed my forehead.
“You’re too serious.”
That was number one.
Number two came eight months later at a neighborhood cookout.
A woman asked how Derek managed living with someone who traveled as much as I did.
Before I could answer, Derek said, “I didn’t know what I was signing up for.”
Someone laughed.
Derek added, “If I’d known, Paige might’ve gotten a ring.”
My stomach dropped.
That night I asked him never to compare me to her again.
He apologized.
Then he explained why it wasn’t really an apology.
“You need to understand the point I was making.”
“What point?”
“Paige was more present.”
“There it is again.”
“I’m not saying she was better.”
“You literally compared us.”
“You’re twisting it.”
Eventually I apologized for “escalating.”
That became the pattern.
He cut.
I bled.
Then somehow I apologized for getting blood on the floor.
And because I loved him, I kept adapting.
I declined two weekend projects.
I hosted his family more often.
I stopped mentioning when his mother arrived without calling.
Every concession bought temporary peace.
Then the target moved.
But Paige was still only a name.
I had no idea Derek was building an entire imaginary marriage with her in his head.
And according to Adam, he had also been building an imaginary marriage with me for everyone else.
One where Derek had paid for my house.
One where my career depended on his sacrifices.
One where I was lucky he stayed.
PART 3 — HOW HE MADE ME SMALLER
Adam asked to meet me the next morning.
We chose a coffee shop near North Hills because I didn’t want him coming to the hotel.
He looked uncomfortable from the moment he sat down.
“I should’ve said something earlier.”
“About what?”
“Derek’s been telling different stories to different people.”
I already knew some of that.
What I didn’t know was the scale.
At work, Derek told colleagues that we had purchased the house together and that he had covered most of the renovation.
To college friends, he claimed he had put “almost everything” into the down payment.
To his family, however, he portrayed himself as a powerless husband living under my roof.
“Why would he tell opposite stories?”
Adam looked down.
“Depends who he’s talking to.”
Of course.
When Derek wanted admiration, the house was his accomplishment.
When he wanted sympathy, it was my weapon.
Adam continued.
“And he talks about your job.”
“What about it?”
“That he put his career on hold so you could build yours.”
I stared at him.
Derek had never put his career on hold.
Not for one day.
“He says your grandmother’s money made everything easy.”
My face burned.
“He knows I worked for twelve years to get where I am.”
“I know.”
“What else?”
Adam hesitated.
“Paige.”
I waited.
“He talks about her a lot.”
“How much?”
“Enough that people think he’s still in love with her.”
The third regret suddenly made more sense.
It had happened after one of the hardest weekends of my career.
Our company produced a technology conference for nearly four thousand guests. A lighting rig failed during rehearsal, one keynote speaker changed his entire presentation fourteen hours before doors opened, and a storm delayed half our freight.
I got home Sunday evening exhausted.
Derek had ordered dinner.
He watched me remove my shoes and said, “You know, Paige used to make Sundays feel like Sundays.”
I stopped.
“What does that mean?”
“She knew how to slow down.”
“Then you should’ve stayed with Paige.”
He looked at me.
“Maybe I should have.”
Number three.
I slept in my office.
The next morning, he called me childish.
Number four came because of his mother.
Marjorie had begun treating our house like a second property.
At first she came over when Derek was home.
Then I discovered he had given her the garage code.
One Thursday I returned from a client lunch and found her in my office.
Drawers were open.
Two boxes of confidential event materials sat in the hallway.
“What are you doing?”
She smiled.
“Helping.”
“With what?”
“Derek said this room could be useful when family stays.”
“This is my office.”
“You have an office downtown.”
“I work here too.”
She waved dismissively.
“You young people need a room for everything.”
I asked her to leave.
That night Derek exploded.
“You humiliated my mother.”
“She went through my workspace.”
“She was organizing.”
“She had no permission to be in there.”
“There’s always a rule with you.”
“Yes. One of those rules is that people don’t enter my house and empty my desk.”
“Our house.”
“Fine. Our home. My desk.”
He laughed bitterly.
“Paige never made my family feel like intruders.”
I stared at him.
“Call her.”
“What?”
“Call Paige.”
“Maren.”
“If you need her in every argument, invite her into the conversation.”
“God, this is exhausting.”
“No. What’s exhausting is competing with a woman who isn’t here.”
He pointed toward my office.
“You know what? Sometimes I regret marrying someone who has to control every square inch of her life.”
Number four.
For four days, he barely spoke to me.
On the fifth, I apologized.
That fact embarrassed me more than almost anything else.
Number five happened after I won the largest contract our company had ever secured.
A national hotel group hired us to produce twelve major openings and investor events across the Southeast.
My team celebrated.
My boss announced that I would become a partner the following quarter.
Derek said congratulations.
Privately.
Publicly was different.
We went to dinner with his friends.
Adam raised a glass.
“To Maren, corporate empire builder.”
Everyone cheered.
Derek smiled.
“She has help.”
I looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
Adam said, “She earned it, man.”
“I didn’t say she didn’t.”
Then Derek leaned back.
“Sometimes I just wonder whether I’d have been happier with somebody who cared more about building a family than building a résumé.”
Nobody spoke.
I knew what was coming.
He said it anyway.
“Paige always understood that.”
There were six people at the table.
I asked, “Do you regret marrying me?”
He looked directly at me.
“Sometimes?”
Number five.
That was the night we finally had the argument we should have had two years earlier.
At home I stood in our kitchen and asked:
“Why does my success make you angry?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Yes, it does.”
“You think everything is about you.”
“You lie to people about paying for this house.”
His face changed.
“How do you know that?”
“Because your friend mentioned it tonight.”
“It’s nobody’s business.”
“You made it their business when you lied.”
He paced away.
“You don’t understand what it feels like.”
“What?”
“To walk into every room as your husband.”
I went still.
He continued.
“People know the house was yours. They know you make more. They know your grandmother gave you money. They know your company puts your name everywhere.”
“So?”
“So I look like I’m riding behind you.”
“Who said that?”
“Nobody has to.”
Finally, the truth.
“You’re embarrassed by me.”
“No. I’m embarrassed by how people see me next to you.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, Derek.”
I stepped closer.
“You don’t want me to fail. You just need me to succeed less.”
He stared at me.
“That is not fair.”
“Then explain Paige.”
“She was easier.”
There it was.
Not better.
Smaller.
Less threatening.
Easier.
I said, “You don’t miss Paige. You miss the version of yourself you imagine you were when you were with her.”
He left the house.
The next morning he returned with flowers.
He admitted he was insecure.
He promised to stop using Paige’s name against me.
I believed that apology because I desperately wanted to.
Three months later came his birthday.
Number six.
And after Adam finished telling me how thoroughly Derek had rewritten our marriage to everyone around him, I thought I finally knew everything.
I was wrong.
Because at 6:43 that evening, a woman I had never spoken to sent me a message.
Maren, this is Paige Mercer. I think you and I need to talk.
PART 4 — THE WOMAN I WAS SUPPOSED TO HATE
I stared at Paige’s message for nearly five minutes.
Then another appeared.
I’m not contacting you to defend Derek. I’m contacting you because I learned he’s been using my name in your marriage, and there are things you deserve to know.
My stomach tightened.
I called her.
Her voice was calmer than I expected.
“Thank you for answering.”
“What has he told you?”
“Very little directly. Most of it came through mutual friends.”
“Did you know he talks about you constantly?”
“No.”
A pause.
“I suspected something was wrong when he contacted me last spring.”
I sat upright.
“When?”
“April.”
Seven months earlier.
“What did he say?”
Paige exhaled.
“He sent me a message saying he’d been thinking about the past.”
My fingers went cold.
“Did you respond?”
“Yes. I thought somebody in his family had died.”
Despite everything, I nearly laughed.
“What happened?”
“He said marriage had been difficult. He asked whether I ever wondered what would’ve happened if we stayed together.”
Exactly the language he used at dinner.
“What did you tell him?”
“That I didn’t.”
Silence.
“I’m engaged, Maren.”
That surprised me.
“Derek knows?”
“He does now.”
Paige continued.
“He asked whether I was happy. I said yes. Then he said you two were basically separated emotionally.”
I closed my eyes.
“We were not separated.”
“I figured that out.”
“How?”
“He started talking like the victim in a story that didn’t make sense.”
“What story?”
“That you cared more about work than him. That the house was always held over his head. That you made major decisions without him.”
I gripped the phone harder.
Paige’s voice softened.
“I recognized it.”
“Recognized what?”
“The story.”
Then she told me something Derek had never told me.
Their relationship had not ended because Paige wanted a quiet domestic life while Derek chased ambition.
It ended because Paige was accepted into a physician-assistant graduate program in Virginia.
Derek resented it.
“He told you I wanted to settle down?”
“Yes.”
Paige laughed once without humor.
“I was twenty-six. I wanted grad school.”
She explained how Derek became increasingly critical during her application process.
He complained that she talked too much about school.
He said she was becoming self-important.
He accused her of abandoning their future.
Then he began comparing her to another woman.
A coworker named Kayla.
“Kayla was fun,” Paige said. “Kayla didn’t overthink everything. Kayla made time for people.”
I stopped breathing for a second.
“He did the same thing to you.”
“Yes.”
“When I finally left, he told everyone distance broke us up.”
The world rearranged itself.
Paige had never been the perfect woman Derek lost.
She had been the previous woman he tried to shrink.
When that failed, he converted her into mythology.
Then used the mythology against me.
“He contacted me twice after that first message,” Paige said. “I told him both times not to involve me in his marriage.”
“Did he ask to see you?”
“Yes.”
My throat tightened.
“And?”
“I refused.”
She paused.
“I can send you screenshots if you want them.”
“I do.”
They arrived minutes later.
There was no explicit affair.
No love declaration.
But the intention was impossible to misunderstand.
Coffee sometime? Just two old friends.
I keep thinking maybe we got the timing wrong.
Maren and I want very different things.
Sometimes I think life gives you one right person and you realize it too late.
Paige’s replies were short.
You’re married.
Talk to your wife, not me.
And finally:
Stop contacting me like this. I’m not your escape hatch.
I cried after we hung up.
Not because Derek wanted Paige.
Paige was right.
He didn’t.
He wanted a door.
Whenever reality made him feel inadequate, he needed a fantasy where a different woman would have made him powerful.
That night Derek came to the hotel.
I did not invite him upstairs.
I met him in the lobby.
He saw my face and immediately knew.
“Paige called you.”
“She didn’t call me. I called her after she messaged.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“Maren—”
“You contacted her in April.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“You asked whether she thought you got the timing wrong.”
“I was confused.”
“You asked her for coffee.”
“I never met her.”
“Because she refused.”
His face reddened.
“Nothing happened.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
“You’re right.”
He seemed startled.
“Nothing happened because Paige respected my marriage more than my husband did.”
He flinched.
“I was in a bad place.”
“You were always in a bad place whenever I was doing well.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Stop saying that.”
People in the lobby glanced toward us.
I lowered my voice.
“You told me Paige was the woman who would have appreciated you.”
He said nothing.
“She says you punished her for going to graduate school.”
“That’s her version.”
“She still has messages too.”
His eyes shifted.
That was answer enough.
I handed him the printed divorce petition my attorney had prepared.
“I’m filing.”
He stared at the papers.
“Maren, please.”
“I’m done.”
“What about counseling?”
“You should go.”
“With you.”
“No.”
His face crumpled for the first time.
Not dramatically.
That almost made it worse.
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth would’ve been useful three years ago.”
“I was jealous.”
“I know.”
“I hated feeling like I was behind.”
“I know.”
“I thought you’d leave.”
“And your solution was to hurt me until I doubted myself enough to stay.”
He looked down.
“Yes.”
It was the most honest thing he had ever said.
But honesty arriving after destruction is not repair.
Sometimes it is only an autopsy.
The divorce papers were filed the following week.
My attorney handled the property issues carefully. Because the house had been mine before marriage and the original funds were traceable, my position was strong, but we still accounted for shared marital money used on improvements and expenses.
I refused to play games.
I wanted clean numbers and a clean exit.
The house went on the market five weeks later.
On the morning of the first open house, Derek arrived to collect the last boxes from the garage.
He stood in the empty living room.
“You’re really selling it.”
“Yes.”
“I thought I hated this house.”
I waited.
He looked around.
“I don’t.”
“No. You hated what you thought it said about you.”
His eyes filled.
“I ruined everything.”
I didn’t answer.
Because for once, I wasn’t going to rescue him from the truth.
PART 5 — WHAT THE HOUSE WAS REALLY WORTH
The first offer came four days after the open house.
A couple named Brooke and Samuel Hart had toured the property twice.
They loved the screened porch.
They loved the maple in the backyard.
They loved the kitchen Derek once complained was “too much my style.”
Celia called me with the offer while I was sitting at my office desk.
“It’s strong,” she said.
“Send it.”
“You okay?”
I looked through the glass wall at my team preparing renderings for a hotel launch.
“Yes.”
That answer surprised me.
The house had meant independence when I bought it.
Then marriage.
Then conflict.
Selling it felt less like losing a home and more like refusing to preserve a battlefield simply because I had once planted flowers there.
Derek reacted badly when he learned we had accepted an offer.
He called me six times.
I answered once.
“You accepted already?”
“Yes.”
“Without talking to me?”
“My attorney communicated with yours.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“I know.”
He was silent.
Then he asked, “Do you remember the first night there?”
Of course I did.
We had eaten takeout on the floor because I owned no dining table.
But memory is not a contract.
“Yes.”
“So none of that matters?”
“It mattered.”
My voice remained steady.
“That doesn’t mean it gets to own the rest of my life.”
He cried then.
Quietly.
A year earlier, that would have destroyed me.
I would have reversed course just to stop his pain.
Now I understood something I had learned very late:
Compassion does not require surrender.
The financial settlement took months.
Derek initially pushed for a larger share of the house proceeds.
His attorney argued that marital money had supported improvements and certain housing costs.
My attorney traced everything.
We reached a fair agreement that acknowledged legitimate shared contributions without pretending Derek had purchased half of a property he had not bought.
What shocked Derek most was not the settlement.
It was how little power his emotions had over the process.
The numbers did not care whether he felt humiliated.
Documents did not care who had told what story at dinner parties.
Bank statements did not become different because he had once told Adam he covered the down payment.
Facts were brutally peaceful.
During mediation, Derek sat across from me.
For almost an hour, we discussed furniture, retirement accounts, vehicles and reimbursements.
Then the lawyers stepped out to review language.
Derek and I were alone.
He looked exhausted.
“I started therapy.”
“Good.”
He nodded.
“I finally told somebody everything.”
I waited.
“My therapist asked me why I kept comparing you to Paige.”
“What did you say?”
“That Paige made me feel safe.”
I almost smiled.
“You haven’t learned much.”
“I know.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“That’s what she said.”
Despite myself, I laughed.
It was the first time we had laughed together in months.
Derek’s mouth lifted, then fell again.
“She asked what Paige actually did that made me feel safe.”
“And?”
“I couldn’t answer.”
He looked at me.
“Because it wasn’t Paige.”
“No.”
“It was me remembering a time when I hadn’t decided I was failing.”
That was closer.
“When you bought the house, I was proud of you. At first.”
“I remember.”
“Then people complimented it. Your career took off. You became partner.”
His throat moved.
“And instead of building something I was proud of, I started trying to take pieces off yours.”
I said nothing.
“I thought if you needed me more, I’d feel better.”
“That’s not love, Derek.”
“I know.”
“For a long time I thought if I could just make you secure enough, you would stop.”
He nodded.
“I know.”
“But there was never enough I could give up.”
“No.”
He looked toward the door.
“Paige emailed me.”
That surprised me.
“What did she say?”
“One sentence.”
He hesitated.
“She said, ‘Don’t turn me into the excuse again.’”
I almost admired her.
Derek looked back at me.
“I don’t want Paige.”
“I know.”
“I never did.”
“I know that too.”
He frowned.
“How?”
“Because if Paige had come back to you, eventually you would’ve needed another woman to compare her to.”
His face changed.
That truth hurt.
But he didn’t argue.
A month later, the house closed.
I drove there alone one final time.
The rooms were empty.
In the living room, pale rectangles marked where photographs had hung.
My office looked smaller without shelves.
On the porch, I ran my hand along the railing Derek and I had painted one spring.
I expected grief.
Instead I felt gratitude toward the woman I had been when I bought that house.
Thirty years old.
Unmarried.
Nervous about the mortgage.
Proud.
She had accidentally protected the woman I became.
Before leaving, I walked into the kitchen.
I remembered Derek’s question:
Where am I supposed to live?
At the time it had sounded selfish.
Later I realized it was also revealing.
Derek had thought of the house as security without ever learning how to create security inside himself.
That had been the problem all along.
I locked the door and gave Celia the keys.
Three weeks later, I signed a lease on a downtown apartment.
It was half the size.
No backyard.
No porch.
And for the first time in years, every room felt enormous.
PART 6 — THE LIFE AFTER NUMBER SIX
My divorce became final nine months after Derek’s birthday dinner.
There was no dramatic courtroom showdown.
No judge delivering a speech about respect.
No revenge soundtrack.
Just signatures.
A final order.
Then a phone call from Jacqueline.
“It’s done.”
I sat alone in my office.
For a while, I looked at my own reflection in the window.
I expected to feel triumphant.
Instead, I felt quiet.
Three years of marriage had ended legally in less time than it took my team to build a ballroom stage.
Life is strange that way.
The event company offered me an opportunity soon afterward.
We were opening a second office in Charleston, South Carolina, and the partners wanted me to lead it.
Old Maren would have spent three weeks wondering what everyone else thought.
Would my father think I was running away?
Would my coworkers assume the divorce had broken me?
Would Derek think I was proving some point?
I accepted in forty-eight hours.
Charleston was unfamiliar enough to feel uncomfortable and close enough to feel possible.
I rented an apartment near the water.
I bought almost no furniture at first.
For six weeks, I ate dinner at the kitchen island because I couldn’t decide on a table.
The emptiness felt luxurious.
Nobody’s mother had a code to my door.
Nobody rolled his eyes when my laptop came out after dinner.
Nobody asked whether another woman would have managed my life differently.
The new office struggled.
Our first major client nearly canceled.
A hurricane warning forced us to postpone a waterfront launch.
One senior producer quit without notice.
But they were my problems.
Real problems.
Problems with solutions.
Not emotional traps where every answer required becoming smaller.
Paige and I spoke twice after the divorce.
Not often.
We were not destined to become best friends simply because the same man had used us against imaginary versions of each other.
But I thanked her.
She married her fiancé the following spring.
She sent me one photograph afterward.
She was laughing beneath a row of oak trees, holding her husband’s hand.
The woman Derek had described as naturally domestic, endlessly accommodating and content with a small life had become a physician assistant, completed another certification and was planning to open a specialized clinic with two colleagues.
Derek had not remembered Paige.
He had edited her.
He had edited both of us.
About fourteen months after my divorce, Derek sent me a message.
I had not blocked him because by then seeing his name no longer changed my pulse.
I ran into Paige today.
I read it once.
Another message came.
You were right.
Then:
I didn’t miss her. I missed who I thought I was before I started measuring myself against everybody.
I put the phone down.
A final message arrived several minutes later.
I’m sorry I made you pay for something you never did.
I did not respond.
Not because I hated him.
I didn’t.
Derek eventually became someone I had once known intimately and no longer knew at all.
That was enough.
Two years after the birthday dinner, I became managing partner of the Charleston office.
We celebrated after closing our largest contract yet.
My team crowded into a rooftop restaurant overlooking the harbor.
Someone ordered champagne.
Someone else made a terrible speech about surviving clients who used the phrase “make it pop.”
I laughed harder than I had in years.
Late that night, I returned to my apartment.
On the console by the door sat a small blue velvet box.
Not Derek’s.
Mine.
That afternoon I had bought myself a watch.
Nothing outrageous.
Nothing symbolic when I chose it.
But now I picked it up and remembered the watch I had left beside Derek’s plate two years earlier.
For a moment, the entire restaurant returned.
His mother smiling.
His father looking away.
Derek saying Paige’s name.
My own hand beneath the table.
Six.
I used to believe the important part of that night was finally having the courage to leave.
It wasn’t.
The important part was understanding why I had stayed through numbers one through five.
I had believed love required evidence.
That if someone doubted my value, I should become more valuable.
If someone felt threatened by my success, I should make success quieter.
If a boundary made someone uncomfortable, maybe I should move it.
If my husband compared me to another woman, perhaps I should learn what she supposedly did better.
I had treated marriage like an audition for a role I already had.
That was my mistake.
Not marrying Derek.
Not buying the house.
Not loving him.
My mistake was believing I could earn permanent safety by becoming easier to diminish.
I put the watch on my wrist.
Then I stepped onto the balcony.
Below me, the city lights reflected on dark water.
My phone buzzed.
A message from one of my associates:
Client approved everything. No changes. Actual miracle.
I laughed.
Then I looked at the time.
11:52 p.m.
Two years ago, I would have worried that working this late meant I was failing someone.
Now it meant there had been a deadline.
Nothing more.
I thought about my grandmother’s old advice.
Everybody should own something that doesn’t require another person’s permission to keep.
For years, I assumed she meant property.
The house.
Money.
A career.
Standing there, I finally understood.
She had meant something much more expensive.
Yourself.
Derek regretted marrying me six times.
Maybe more.
Six was simply how many times he said it where I could hear him.
For years, I thought that was the tragedy.
It wasn’t.
The tragedy would have been hearing number seven and staying.
I lifted my wrist, watched the second hand move beneath the glass and smiled.
There would never be a seventh.
Not because Derek had finally learned to choose me.
Because I had.
