- 7.
The TV broke next. Everything worked except
the fitness channels. The housekeeper
regretfully informed me he had to vacuum the living room every morning at 8:00, so I couldn’t
exercise there anymore.
I took a deep breath and started baking. The housekeeper inquired, and I smiled. “It’s nice to see people enjoy something you made.” Ethan stood silently in the doorway, his gaze following my movements between the kitchen
island and the oven. I ate the burnt cookies.
myself, gave the housekeeper a couple of the
good ones, and packed the rest in a paper bag,
tied with a ribbon.
Homemade cookies. Proof positive I was seeing
someone, and I was serious about him.
I went to change. “Ethan, I have a group
meeting. I’ll be out for a bit.”
<
He was leaning against the island, staring at the
empty baking sheet, his expression unreadable.
He looked up.
Was this it? The explosion? The divorce
announcement? My heart pounded.
But he just raised an eyebrow, a smirk playing
on his lips.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
He turned and left.
I walked over to the island and froze. The
cookies were gone. All of them. Even the burnt
ones.
Ethan! I was going to share them with my
professors and classmates! He’d thrown them
away?! I was beyond frustrated.
I furiously texted him while his back was turned.
“Your wife says you’ve been snapping at her a
lot lately. She’s scared. She misses me. She
cried last night.”
“Ethan, why haven’t you filed for divorce yet?
What’s the point of dragging this out? Is
winning that important?”
“She doesn’t owe you anything. Your marriage was a business arrangement, nothing more. You got what you wanted. Why won’t you let her go?”
Ethan: “She cried?”
I stared at the message, speechless. Was that
the takeaway? The point was the divorce!
Another text: “You live in the Upper East Side
too?”
My blood ran cold. How did he know?
Before I could deny it, he texted, “I’m closing in
on you, you lowlife.”
I frantically shut off the phone. Panic set in. I
was running out of time. I had to go all in. No
more playing games.
