A cold laugh escaped me. I slammed my foot on the gas and tore out of that suffocating space.
In the rearview mirror, Dustin's silhouette ducked into another car. We drove off in opposite directions—our lives splitting further apart with every mile. And yet he assumed I'd always be standing right where he left me.
After all, I once loved him enough to give up everything.
By the time I arrived at what used to be "home" with the divorce papers in my bag, night had already fallen.
I'd poured my heart into this house when we got married. I'd designed it myself—handpicked every material, supervised every detail. Every vintage brick, every light fixture, every potted plant, chosen to make it exactly the way I wanted. I'd believed this would be the castle where Dustin and I spent the rest of our lives together.
Then Alice moved in as the lady of the house, and I lost even the right to walk through the front door.
I swallowed the bitterness churning inside me and punched in the door code.
Wrong. I tried again. Wrong. And again. Wrong.
I paused. Then, with something close to masochistic certainty, I keyed in Alice's birthday.
The door opened.
The cold hit me like being thrown into a frozen lake.