Seven years with Ethan Hayes. Six of them with his number deleted from my phone. Our only communication was through Venmo. One day, I just got tired of it all. When I asked for a divorce, he didn’t try to stop me. He was civil, even when we signed the papers. He calmly divided our assets and said, “You’re the mother of our child. We can let the past be the past.” “And if you’re ever struggling out there,” he added, “there will always be a room for you at the house.” I just smiled. “No, thanks. That wouldn’t be fair to your new girlfriend.” With that, I stood up and walked away, leaving Ethan—always so cool and composed—sitting alone at the table, just staring into space. 1 The tabloids were having a field day. Ethan Hayes, the celebrated director, had just dropped five million dollars on a pink diamond to impress his new lover. The woman on his arm was a young starlet from one of his films. She looked like she’d just graduated college, still a little baby fat on her cheeks, but with incredibly expressive eyes. The internet commenters were ruthless. *“What happened to his taste?”* Someone replied, *“You don’t get it. A man’s true love will always be eighteen.”* Another person pointed out, *“You know, she kind of looks like his wife, back when she was young.”* That sparked a wave of sentimental comments, all concluding that Ethan Hayes was just like every other man. He might play the field, but deep down, his wife was still the one. … I almost laughed out loud. Ever since we’d stopped talking, the only contact I had with Ethan was a single Venmo transaction at the beginning of each month. Five thousand dollars. The memo always read: “Expenses.” In his world, a five-million-dollar diamond was a reasonable price for a new lover’s smile. A five-thousand-dollar payment was all his nominal wife was worth. If that was love, it was a sick joke. Our marriage had been a ghost for six years, but seeing that woman with the five-million-dollar diamond on her finger still stirred something in me. It wasn’t just the money. It was the memory of a much different time. I don’t remember how long ago it was. Ethan had just been cut off by his family, and his monthly paycheck was exactly five thousand dollars. When he proposed, he fumbled with a simple, unadorned ring, carefully sliding it onto my finger. “Claire,” he’d whispered, “I promise, when we have money, I’ll get you a much better one.” I found out later that even that simple ring had cost five thousand dollars. The idiot had spent his entire month’s salary on it, choosing to live on instant ramen just for me. Maybe the five-million-dollar news had knocked something loose in my brain. I opened Venmo, found Ethan’s profile picture, and, for the first time in years, sent him a message. *“So, where’s my pink diamond?”* It was meant to be a joke. But by the next morning, he still hadn’t replied. 2 After a restless night, I finally fell asleep around dawn. At noon, my phone rang. It was the housekeeper from the family estate, gently reminding me that I was late. I checked my calendar. It was my designated day to visit our daughter, Lily. It was also, consistently, the worst day of my month. When I hurried into the estate, Lily was playing on a soft rug in the living room. A young woman was kneeling beside her, watching her with a gentle expression. To an outsider, they looked like mother and daughter. I stopped in my tracks. It was the woman from the news. “What are you doing here?” I asked. She looked up, and her eyes instantly filled with tears. She was an actress, after all. Her timing was impeccable. The first tear rolled down her cheek at the exact moment Ethan started walking down the stairs. He looked like he’d just woken up, a storm cloud of irritation hanging around him. His silk robe was open, revealing a chest covered in faint, red scratches. They were good together, I thought absently. “What are you crying about?” Ethan asked her, his tone surprisingly soft. “Ethan,” the woman said, standing up and looking at him timidly. “I think… Claire doesn’t want me here. I should go.” She made a show of leaving, but before Ethan could say anything, Lily grabbed her hand. “You can’t go! I don’t want you to go!” The young woman scooped her up. “Lily, honey, your mommy’s here now. When she’s here, I have to leave.” Lily scowled at me. “I don’t want Mommy. She’s a bad woman! I only want you.” Then they clung to each other and started sobbing, making me feel like the intruder. I watched for a moment before speaking up. “Maybe I should be the one to leave.” It was a perfectly reasonable suggestion, but Ethan’s face immediately darkened. He looked up, his eyes cutting into me. “Claire, do you think this is a hotel? You can just come and go as you please?” Before I could answer, his mother appeared at the door of the study. “Daughter-in-law,” she commanded, “come in here. I have something to say to you.” In the study, his mother was as severe as ever, her fingers working over a string of pearls, her gaze judgmental. “You’re not well enough to care for Lily yourself. Sophie is the niece of a distant relative. I’ve asked her to come here and look after Lily. Do you have a problem with that?” I shook my head. So her name was Sophie. It sounded a lot like mine. His mother nodded, satisfied. “As for you, you can’t even hold onto your husband and your own child. You’re the most useless type of woman.” I lowered my eyes. “You’re right. I am useless.” Experience had taught me that arguing with her was pointless. Agreeing with her insults was the fastest way to end the lecture. But I wasn’t prepared for what she said next. “Tonight, you and Ethan will sleep together in the guest room in the west wing. You need to get pregnant again. Then you won’t have to worry about raising Lily at all.” I couldn’t believe my ears. “Isn’t Lily enough?” “It would be better to have a boy,” she stated. “In that case, couldn’t Sophie get pregnant?” I heard my own voice, suddenly cold. “As long as it’s a Hayes, does it matter who gives birth?” “She…” For a moment, his mother was speechless, her eyes darting away. “She can’t. Besides, you are still Ethan’s wife. This is your duty.” I should have said, “I understand.” Instead, what came out was, “No.” *Slap.* 3 Five hours later, I walked out of the study, the red mark of her handprint still visible on my cheek. This is what talking back gets you, I sighed to myself. I’ve learned this lesson a thousand times, why can’t I ever keep my mouth shut? It was already dark. They wouldn’t have waited for me for dinner. My stomach rumbled. I was about to go say my goodbyes when I heard a small voice say, “Mommy.” Startled, I saw Lily standing in the doorway, clutching a stuffed bunny. I quickly covered my swollen cheek and knelt down to smile at her. “Hi, sweetie. Did you have dinner?” Lily stared at me for a moment, then tossed the bunny into a nearby trash can. “Why did you do that?” I asked gently. “You have to take care of your toys.” “It’s ugly,” she said. “I don’t like it.” I fell silent. I wasn’t good with my hands; the bunny was lopsided and amateurish. “You’re not allowed to make Aunt Sophie leave,” Lily continued, wrinkling her nose. “I’ve thought about it a lot. I wish… I wish Aunt Sophie was my real mommy.” She gave me a resentful look. “So you remember, if you make her leave, I’ll never talk to you again!” With a flick of her pigtails, she skipped away. I stayed crouched in the doorway for a long time, feeling my body turn to wood, piece by piece. My soul seemed to float out of my body, looking down at the empty shell I had become. I don’t know how I got up, how I left the estate. I was standing on the curb trying to hail a cab when a black car pulled up. The window rolled down to reveal Ethan’s emotionless face. “Get in.” He took me to a small noodle shop we used to frequent. The owner recognized us and greeted us warmly. “The usual? Two bowls of ramen?” Ethan shook his head. “Just one.” As I ate, Ethan took a call. “Sophie? What’s up?” My eyes drifted to his face. He was listening to whatever she was saying, and a small smile played on his lips. His gaze was soft, focused, and gentle. He used to look at me like that. But somewhere along the way, a chasm had opened between us, and our glances had grown cold. The gentle boy from my memories felt like a dream, so distant I sometimes wondered if I’d made him up. But seeing him now, I knew he hadn’t vanished. That gentle side of him was still there. It just wasn’t for me anymore. In that moment, a profound weariness washed over me. What was the point of this marriage? What had we been holding onto for all this time? 4 The thought was so exhausting I could barely hold my chopsticks. I felt a sudden urge to cry, but I refused to do it in front of this new version of Ethan. I wanted to laugh, but instead, a tear fell. Then another. They dripped into my soup, making the broth salty. And in that moment, a ridiculous thought popped into my head: *How does Sophie manage to cry without getting her nose all runny?* A tissue appeared in front of me. Ethan had hung up the phone and was watching me with a frown. “Did my mother give you a hard time again?” He paused. “You know you can just say no to her. You don’t have to make yourself look so pathetic every time.” Through my tears, I looked at him and said, with perfect calm, “Ethan, you were right all those years ago. We would have been better off if we’d never met.” He looked confused. “What are you on about now?” I pulled a tissue from the dispenser, wiped my face, and said the words I had thought a thousand times but never dared to speak. “Ethan, I want a divorce.” 5 If someone had told me ten years ago that Ethan and I would end up as bitter strangers, I would never have believed them. After my father died and my mother drowned herself, I never really had a home. My childhood was a blur of being passed between different relatives. I was always on edge, never knowing when I’d be sent to the next house. Growing up like that, I was not a lovable child. Then I got into NYU’s film school and met Ethan Hayes, the guy everyone orbited around. I never understood why, out of all the beautiful girls at that school, he chose me. All I knew was that first love was the sweetest thing I had ever tasted. And sweetness never lasts. The first time I went to his family’s estate for Christmas, we were thrown out before we could even take our coats off. His parents tossed the gifts I’d brought out into the snow after us. “If you insist on marrying her,” his father had said, “then you are no longer our son.” I stood there in the freezing wind, completely stunned. “What just happened?” “They’re just like that,” Ethan said, not surprised at all. “Control freaks. They want to run my entire life.” Seeing the worry on my face, he poked me in my ticklish spot on my side. I burst out laughing, trying to dodge his hand, and nearly fell into a snowbank. “Don’t worry about them,” he said, taking my hand. “They may be my parents, but I’m their only son. What father is going to disown his only son forever?” The wide street was covered in a thick blanket of snow. Red and green decorations adorned the doors and windows around us. We crunched through the snow, flakes landing in our hair, on our eyelashes, turning us into a pair of snow people. We were homeless, but we just looked at each other and laughed. After a while, Ethan hoisted me onto his back. “I should get down,” I said, worried. “You’re going to slip.” “Nope,” he said. “You’re so skinny, if your shoes get wet, you’ll get sick for sure. And then who has to take care of you? Me.” He mumbled, “Besides, it’s a man’s right to carry the woman he loves.” I blushed. He just grinned at me. “You just work on giving me a little one to carry in a few years, and see if they still have the heart to kick us out.” Embarrassed, I gave his shoulder a playful shove, and in the next second, we were both tumbling into the snow. In the end, he was the one who got sick. We spent the entire holiday break in a cheap motel. On New Year’s Eve, even with medicine, he was burning up, delirious with fever. I kept placing a cool, damp cloth on his forehead, praying his temperature would go down. It wouldn’t break. I was on the verge of tears, and though I wasn’t religious, I clasped my hands together. “Please, God, gods, whoever you are, wherever you’re from, if you just let Ethan get better, you can give all his sickness to me. I’ll take it, I swear.” … Sometime in the middle of the night, his fever finally broke. I was so exhausted I fell asleep slumped over the edge of the bed and slept right through midnight. Much later, Ethan told me that when he woke up that night and saw me sleeping beside him, heard the sound of my soft breathing, he made a promise to himself. For the rest of his life, he would never love anyone but me. “What if you cheat?” I had asked him. He looked at me, his expression serious. “Then may the gods strike that Ethan Hayes dead.” 6 Without his family’s support, we had nothing. Ethan had gone to film school because his father was a famous director. He’d grown up on film sets and had developed a passion for it. But after their falling out, his father had blacklisted him. No one in the industry would hire him. So Ethan worked manual labor during the day and wrote screenplays at night, selling them anonymously for cash. No one would cast me either, so I got a job working the night shift at a 24-hour convenience store. At the end of my shift, I’d bring home the free, nearly expired food for us to share. I was used to being poor, so it didn’t bother me. But Ethan, who had grown up with everything, never complained once. As his scripts started selling for more money, our lives slowly improved. We could afford to go out for hot pot once a week, and we didn’t have to haggle over the price of vegetables at the market. Soon, I was pregnant. Ten months later, Lily was born. Ethan was overjoyed, but I’d often find him just staring at the phone. I knew he wanted to tell his parents. But his pride wouldn’t let him. I secretly got his father’s number and, after Ethan was asleep, I called and told him he had a granddaughter who was almost a month old. His father, who was shooting a film in another state, was ecstatic. He said he’d leave immediately to come see her. I never could have imagined that one phone call would plunge all of us into hell. Maybe he was too excited. On the drive, his car collided with a wrong-way driver on the highway overpass. The car burst into flames and was knocked off the bridge. He was killed instantly. When we got to the funeral home, I still couldn’t believe it. The kind of accident you only see on the news had actually happened to us. Ethan and I knelt before the altar. His mother walked over, said nothing, and slapped me across the face. I didn’t flinch. At that moment, I felt I deserved it. “This is your fault,” she said, her eyes vacant. “My son, because he wouldn't listen to me about you. And now my husband, dead because of you.” She stared at me, her voice trembling. “What did you ever do to my family to deserve this?” She lunged at me again, but Ethan pulled her back, holding her tight. The sound of her raw, desolate grief filled the room. Ethan held her, his eyes red, but he never looked at me. He didn’t say a single word. That silence hurt more than any of his mother’s accusations. After the funeral, after everyone had left, it happened to be Ethan’s birthday. I carefully made him a bowl of noodles. He just stared at it until the broth was completely cold. Then his eyes moved, and with a calm, almost joking tone, he spoke to me for the first time in days. “Claire,” he said, “maybe it would have been better if I’d never met you.” 7 The noodles in front of me were cold. I put down my chopsticks. Ethan looked at me, seeming both surprised and not surprised at all. “Are you sure?” he asked. “The debt I owed your family,” I said, “I think I’ve paid it off by now.” Finally saying the words I’d held in for so long made my voice feel lighter. “Besides, there are plenty of women who would love to be the next Mrs. Hayes.” “Okay,” was all he said. He stood up, as if he were being chased, and hurried out of the noodle shop. After the mandatory waiting period, I called him to arrange a time to go to the courthouse. The divorce agreement was settled quickly. “You don’t want Lily?” he asked. “She’ll have a better life with you,” I said. “And besides, she doesn’t want to be with me.” After the lawyers finished, a clerk stamped our papers with a steel seal. And just like that, Ethan and I were no longer legally bound. Maybe it was the finality of it all, but the hard edges Ethan had built up over the years seemed to soften. He was silent for a long time, then he spoke, his voice low. “Claire, you’re her mother. The past… let’s just let it go. And if you’re ever struggling, there will always be a room for you at the estate.” I froze. After all these years, it was the closest I would ever get to an apology from him. But now, it meant nothing. I smiled. “No thanks. It wouldn’t be fair to your new girlfriend.” I added, “And I’m confident I can build the life I want for myself.” I stood up and walked out of the courthouse, my steps light. Ethan was still sitting there, maybe watching me, maybe just staring into space. 8 I moved out and didn’t see anyone from the Hayes family for a long time. After so many years out of the workforce, I quickly discovered how hard it was to get back in. While scrolling through job sites, I’d often see news about Ethan and Sophie. Sophie at a basketball game with him, Sophie on a trip to Japan with him. In the photos, Ethan looked thinner, his eyes colder and more melancholic. Sophie was always nestled by his side, her expression adoring. Someone on Twitter called Sophie a homewrecker, and she replied directly: *“Sorry, but he’s single.”* My old friends called, shocked. To each of them, I gave the same reply: *“Yes, Ethan and I are divorced.”* They all expressed their sympathy, but only one of them, Maya, asked the right question: *“So what are you doing now?”* I told her, *“Looking for a job, but not having much luck. You know of anything?”* Maya’s reply was triumphant. *“I was waiting for you to ask. You let Ethan snatch you up way too early, had a kid right away, and spent years being nothing but the woman behind the man. From now on, you’re working for me. Love, men, relationships… they’re all unreliable. Power and money, that’s what you can count on.”* … I couldn’t help but smile at the long string of texts from Maya. She was a partner at a film production company. I started as her assistant. I worked long hours, and even though my boss was my friend, I was determined not to slack off. On Valentine’s Day, flowers were being delivered to the office all day. I assumed the flurry of romance had nothing to do with me. Then I got a call. I thought it was my lunch delivery and told the guy to just leave it at the front desk. But he insisted. The item was too valuable; he had to deliver it to me personally. It wasn’t food. It was a ring. A black velvet box, lined with deep red silk. In the center sat a pink diamond ring, its facets catching the light and throwing off a blinding sparkle. There was no note, no card. But I knew who it was from. I put the ring back in the box and had the courier return it. A few hours later, a notification popped up on my phone, from the one app I hadn’t blocked him on. A Venmo message: *“I thought you wanted it.”* I stared at the message for a few seconds, then typed back: *“I don’t want it anymore.”* His reply was instant. A single word. *“Hah.”* I didn’t respond. I just blocked him, severing the last line of communication we had left.
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "385170", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel