Chapter 3

The unsigned divorce papers had been on my desk for three hours when Wyatt finally called.

For a few seconds, I just watched it ring. Then I answered.

“Hello?”

“Ken.” Wyatt sounded tired.

My fingers tightened around the phone. “What did he say?”

“He agreed.”

I looked down at the amended conditions spread across the desk. “All of it?”

“Yes.”

My heart stumbled. “Even the airport?”

A brief pause. “Even that.”

I closed my eyes. I had gotten what I asked for. So why did it feel so much like losing?

“He didn’t argue?”

“No.”

A humorless laugh slipped out of me. “Of course he didn’t.”

“Ken…”

“I know. He’s giving me what I asked for.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

I stared at the platinum band around my finger. “It doesn’t matter.”

Wyatt was quiet.

“I’ll send the amended agreement,” he finally said. “Once you both sign, everything can move forward.”

“Thank you, Wyatt.”

After the call ended, I sat there until the silence became unbearable. Then I opened my laptop.

I pulled up the manuscript I’d shelved months ago. The name at the top of the document read:

Kelsey Vance.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard for only a second before they started moving. Words poured onto the page as if I could force every feeling I refused to cry over through my fingertips instead.

On the page, a woman stood before people demanding that she surrender the one thing she believed in to keep a man beside her. She refused.

I stopped typing.

For years, I had found it easier to give fictional women courage than to claim any for myself.

My hands returned to the keyboard. This time, I didn't stop.

The following weeks passed quickly. The settlement was transferred. The house was converted into cash. Sterling Tech processed my resignation.

Garrison handled every detail as promised. Efficiently and cleanly. As if separating two lives that had shared the same bed for four years was simply another transaction waiting to be completed.

I made my own arrangements.

At night, I searched for places where the Sterling name meant nothing.

Small towns. Quiet streets. Houses where I could wake up without wondering whether Garrison would come home.

One evening, I found photographs of a village in southern France—stone houses, narrow streets, green fields stretching beyond shuttered windows.

I saved three listings.

I still didn't know where I was going. I only knew I couldn't stay here.

A few days before the divorce became final, the front door opened while I was working in the library.

Footsteps crossed the hall. I knew them immediately.

I closed my laptop just as Garrison appeared in the doorway.

Immaculate charcoal suit. Crisp white shirt. Perfectly controlled expression. For one second, my body reacted to him before my mind could stop it. Four years didn't disappear simply because someone signed a document.

“Ken.”

“Garrison.”

His eyes rested on me for a moment. “I came to pick up some things.”

“Alright.”

I reached for my laptop. “I’ll get out of your way.”

“You don’t have to.”

My hand stopped. The words were ordinary. Still, something about hearing them now scraped against me.

Garrison glanced at the laptop beneath my palm. “What were you doing?”

“Writing.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You write?”

I looked at him. The surprise on his face was genuine after four years of marriage.

“Yes.”

“For work?”

“No.”

His gaze dropped back to the laptop. “What do you write?”

“Books.”

That earned a longer silence. “You write books? For how long?”

“Years.”

A faint crease appeared between his brows. “You never told me.”

“Well… You never asked.”

I wished I had stopped there, but four years pressed at the back of my throat.

“You knew I took my coffee without sugar. You knew I hated sleeping with the windows closed. You knew where to touch me when you came to my bed.”

“But you didn’t know I wrote.”

“Ken…”

“It’s fine.”

“It doesn’t sound fine.”

I laughed softly. “No. I suppose it doesn’t.”

“I’ve kept that part of my life separate,” I said.

His gaze shifted to the laptop again. “Why?”

I almost gave him an easy answer: habit, privacy, embarrassment. Instead, I told him the truth.

“Because it was mine.”

Silence settled between us. Garrison looked like he wanted to say something, but for once, the man who always had an answer couldn't seem to find one.

Finally, he said, “I hope you keep writing.”

My fingers tightened around the laptop. “I will.”

His eyes returned to mine. “Wyatt told me about the airport.”

My pulse jumped. I hated that he could still do that to me with one sentence.

“Okay.”

“I’ll take you. Saturday. Nine?”

I nodded. “Nine.”

Neither of us mentioned the rest. The silence did, though.

Garrison looked at me for another second before turning toward the door. “Ken.”

He seemed to reconsider whatever he had been about to say. Then his expression closed again.

“I’ll see you Saturday.”

He walked away. I listened to his footsteps disappear upstairs.

That night, I sat alone at the library desk with the final piece of paperwork in front of me.

My legal name change application.

The pen hovered above the signature line.

Kendra Sterling.

The name had opened doors. Filled closets. Put a ring on my finger and a man in my bed.

But Kelsey had been there in the quiet hours, beneath all of it. She was the part of me that kept making something out of nothing. The part that still wanted more.

I lowered the pen and signed:

Kelsey Vance.

Then I slipped off my wedding ring. I held it in my palm for a moment before placing it beside the papers.

Tomorrow, Garrison will drive me to the airport. And then I’ll leave.