The nerves were there—that familiar sick feeling, low in my stomach, the one that showed up every time I was about to hold a boundary. Or it was the wine. Probably both.
I slipped my phone under my pillow and closed my eyes.
It was the best sleep I’d had in a long time.
Chapter 4
Nika
For the first time, I could put Finley into perspective.
He was a big man baby.
A thirty-year-old man sat on the couch sulking because I was going on holiday without him. Because I’d refused to fund it. His income was lower than mine—that was true—but that had never stopped him letting me carry the weight of everything else. It wasn’t my problem. Not anymore.
I almost walked into the living room to pat his scruffy hair. It matched his stubble. Both were at that length that suggested not neglect exactly, just a man who’d stopped making effort and rebranded it as a personality.
“So you’re going,” he said. Not a question. His voice was flat and cold.
I looked at him. Then at the carry-on suitcase beside me—the one I’d sat on and bounced on three times trying to get the zip around the corner. The one that was absolutely, definitely within cabin baggage allowance if you held it at the right angle.
“I am.” I nudged it with my foot, tilting it onto its wheels.“I left you meals in the freezer. Labelled.”
His head snapped up.
I went still.
I’d expected sulking. I’d steeled myself for cold silence or a pointed comment about the cost of flights or another reminder that I was being selfish. What I hadn’t expected was what was actually looking back at me.
There was anger, yes. That was there.
But behind it, underneath it—burning and steady and completely unmasked for once—was something that looked a lot like hatred.
I stood in my own hallway and felt the ground shift slightly beneath me.
We weren’t a passionate couple. We never had been—no grand declarations, no dramatic rows, no highs that made the lows feel worth it. But there had been Valentine’s flowers. Every year, without fail. Grocery store bouquets that I’d told myself meant something. That I’d wanted to mean something. Evidence that somewhere underneath the routine and the split bills and the slow drift apart, he cared.
Looking at him now I wondered how long that had been behind his eyes and I simply hadn’t seen it.
“I’d better go,” I said.
I didn’t wait for a response.
The hallway felt very long. I rolled the suitcase to the door, lifted my jacket from the hook, and tried to remember how to breathe normally.
“Fucking bitch.”
Muttered. Low. Just loud enough.
I stopped with my hand on the door.
I thought of my dad. I don’t know why—just the sudden, quiet image of him. And then I understood why. Because in every argument I’d ever witnessed growing up, every frustrated silence and slammed cupboard and raised voice, my dad had never once spoken to my mum like that. Not once. Not even when they thought we couldn’t hear.
This was what settling looked like.
I opened the door and walked out and closed it behind me quietly, because I wasn’t going to slam it. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d rattled anything loose.
The tears came in the corridor.
