I make it to the hotel without knowing how. I don’t remember the route the driver took, or getting into the car, or sitting in the back seat… only that I must have, somehow. I don’t remember saying anything that made sense.
Everything after I walked out of our home blurs together. Everything except the sound of the door closing behind me.
And her voice.
Those words that won’t stop echoing in my head. They hurt because they were true, because they showed me exactly how she felt, not howI wantedto believe she did.
Now I’m standing in the middle of a room that smells nothing like home. Sterile. Expensive. Empty. The kind of place made for men like me—men who ruin everything they touch.
I throw the brown envelope onto the coffee table.
I stare at my reflection in the black-mirror screen of the TV. I look like a man who finally ran out of lies.
I used to think I could fix things if I just explained enough, apologized enough, proved enough. But she didn’t want proof. She wanted truth. And I couldn’t give it to her until it was too late.
My feet take me to the bar, where the brandy stares back at me. I open it, reach for a glass, but then set it aside and lift the bottle instead. It’ not even four in the afternoon, but that doesn’t matter anymore. I drink straight from the bottle.
The burn stings my throat hard, and for a second, I think the heat might fill the hollow inside me… but it doesn’t. It just brings her back. Her face. Her resignation. The destruction I left behind.
She wasn’t even wearing her rings anymore. The engagement ring, the wedding band that once meant everything.Had she taken them off before and I just didn’t notice?When did she do it? Did she throw them away, along with everything we built, everything I ruined?
I can feel the weight of mine on my hand, and all I can think about is hers. The empty space where they used to be.
The hurt in her eyes, the ache in her voice, the devastation that didn’t need words. And that calm...threaded with exhaustion, with the kind of acceptance that feels like surrender.
That’s what I can’t shake. Not the anger, not even the grief, just that silent surrender. Like she’d finally stopped fighting for us.
I take another swallow, longer this time, until my chest aches and my eyes sting. The liquor drips from the corner of my mouth, and I don’t even bother wiping it away. Let it burn. Let it mark me.
Because maybe pain is the only honest thing left in me.
The room spins in slow circles. Somewhere out there, life goes on. People keep moving, laughing, loving—making promises they naively believe they can keep.
And here I am, facing what I’ve done, wondering when I stopped being one of them.
“You don’t need to keep waiting, Colin. You just need to sign the papers.”
“It would be a hundred—no, a thousand times easier if I didn't love you anymore,”
“It wouldn’t hurt like this. It wouldn’t take every ounce of strength just to breathe, wishing I could no longer exist some days, if it weren’t for our kids.”
I grip the edge of the counter, trying to breathe.
My knuckles turn white, the bottle wobbling beside me, amber sloshing against glass.
“...it wasn’t one mistake, or two, or three. They were deliberate. Repeated. Daily choices.”
“You didn’t keep any of those promises.”
I let my forehead fall against the counter, but her voice won’t quiet down.
“Where were you the day Alicia was burning with a fever?”
“I’m so sorry, my little princess. So, so sorry.” My voice comes out strangled as the image flashes back. Alicia in that hospital bed, and the worry tearing through me as I tried to understand what had happened.
“Will you compare us in your head, Colin? Wonder if she tasted better? If she was better?”
“Never!” I yell into the empty room.
