At eighteen, Asher Vance shielded me with his body, letting a group of thugs beat him until he was bloodied and half-dead. Lying on a stretcher, someone asked him if he regretted it. He was barely conscious, but he laughed, wild and unrestrained. “Regret it? What’s a couple of broken legs?” “I’ve got a wife now, don’t I?” At twenty-eight, I slid the wedding ring from my finger and placed it on the table, along with the pink hair tie I’d found in his pocket. He picked up the hair tie, the one the little girl had used to taunt me. Leaning against the wall, he watched me with a smirk. “Joanna, sweetheart. You don’t really think this little drama is going to change my mind, do you?” 1 I didn’t answer, just kept packing my things. The hair tie was a soft, bubblegum pink, the kind that would perfectly suit a young, vibrant girl. Asher slipped it onto his own wrist with a soft click of his tongue. He smiled, as if the simple object conjured a sweet memory, the curve of his lips softening. The old me would have been screaming by now. A hysterical, raging mess, demanding to know if he was thinking about that little tramp again. But now, I just pushed the wedding ring closer to him. “Let’s get a divorce,” I said, my voice perfectly calm. Asher didn’t respond. He just maintained that casual, indifferent posture, though his smile was now laced with contempt. I knew he didn’t believe me. Because I had said those two words countless times over the past few years. The first few times, he had panicked, just as I’d wanted. He’d sworn to me with tears in his eyes, promising it would never happen again. He’d used every trick in the book, begging me not to leave. Until the time the girl he was keeping got a high fever. I was on the verge of a complete breakdown. I told him if he went to her, we were done. It was my birthday. Asher didn’t come home. When the girl sent a video to my phone—a calculated, taunting clip of them in bed—I actually thought about ending it all. I stood by the open window, the wind chilling me to the bone. In the end, I turned back, collapsing onto the floor in a heap of pathetic, ugly sobs. When Asher finally came home, he crouched in front of me, his smile dripping with scorn. “Sweetheart, I thought we were getting a divorce?” he’d purred. “So why are you still here, waiting for me like a good little dog?” 2 “Asher, this time it’s for real.” I finished packing the last of my things and took a deep breath. He was starting to look annoyed. But just then, his phone rang, playing a melody that could only belong to a teenage girl. Asher straightened up, his features softening the moment he answered. He shot me a triumphant smirk and began to flirt, completely ignoring my presence. “What is it now, my little princess?” “Hmph, you have to ask? It’s Valentine’s Day!” “All the other girls have their boyfriends with them, and mine is stuck with some old hag.” The girl’s voice was young, vibrant, and undeniably sweet. Asher melted under her pouting. “Alright, alright. I’m on my way.” He hung up, the affectionate look still lingering in his eyes as he turned to me. But the words that came out of his mouth were ice cold. “Joanna, you’re not hitting menopause early, are you? What’s with all the drama?” I watched his retreating back and let out a soft sigh. I had loved him too desperately for too long. Now that I truly wanted to leave, no one would ever believe me. 3 After Asher left, a notification popped up on my phone from a contact named “Lily.” [Aunty, didn’t I tell you Asher would spend Valentine’s Day with me?] [Hehe. Looks like I was right.] Her provocations were childish, but they were effective. In the past, they would have sent me into a blind rage. But I knew exactly where her confidence came from. When Asher first started cheating, he wasn’t this brazen. He hid Lily’s texts, soothed me, begged me, and promised he would end it. I was in agony, unable to believe that the boy who had loved me so fiercely could be the one driving a knife into my heart. Like so many betrayed wives, I did all the cliché things. I stormed into his office, screaming about his infidelity in front of his entire staff. I tried to find the woman who was destroying my life, to make her suffer. But Asher had built a fortress around Lily. Until the day Lily, too impatient to wait, came to find me herself. I didn’t even have a chance to fight back. She slapped down a stack of photos—intimate, graphic pictures of her and Asher in bed—and my world shattered. “Aunty, Asher said it was love at first sight with me, but he told me he doesn’t date high schoolers.” “So he waited until I graduated to make me his. And right after, he took me on a trip to Europe to celebrate.” “Yeah, that’s right. It was while you were back home, dealing with your father’s funeral.” “See? That’s how much he loves me.” Lily stood there, her ponytail bouncing, smugly recounting Asher’s devotion. I lost my mind. I grabbed a glass and threw it at her. Then I picked up a shard and raked it across her face, wanting to destroy her perfect, mocking smile. Asher arrived in a flurry, pulling a sobbing Lily into his arms. He looked at me, his voice colder than I had ever heard it. “Joanna, I’ve let you get away with too much over the years.” “So much that you actually thought you had the right to touch what’s mine.” 4 After that day, Asher stopped hiding Lily. He brought her to company events, to dinners with friends, showing her off, their affection on full display for the world to see. He turned me into a joke. No matter how much I screamed or cried, he remained a detached, indifferent spectator to my pain. During that time, I felt like a zombie, a walking corpse. My nerves were constantly frayed. I was a madwoman. When did I finally decide to give up on him? It was probably the day my mother was in the hospital for a major surgery. I was exhausted, running back and forth, and eventually collapsed from the strain. That night, Asher brazenly threw a party at our house, bringing Lily and all their friends. I dragged my weak, sick body downstairs and heard one of Asher’s friends talking about our past. “Man, Ash used to be so in love with Joanna.” “He was a hell of a soccer player back then. Even got scouted by the national team. The guy had a golden future.” “And then he threw it all away to protect her from those thugs, got both his legs broken. He’s never been the same since.” Lily, overhearing this, pouted and demanded to know the details, refusing to believe Asher had ever been so devoted to me. Her displeasure soured Asher’s mood immediately. Another friend laughed, a sleazy edge to his voice. “It was simple, really. A bunch of guys cornered Joanna.” “They were dragging her into a bar, planning to… you know. By the time Ash got there, they’d already ripped her clothes off, groped her all over.” “She was a wreck. Crying her eyes out.” Lily covered her mouth, but a giggle escaped. She snuggled into Asher’s arms, her voice dripping with malicious glee. “If that were me, I’d have killed myself after being touched by all those disgusting men.” “Besides, flies are only drawn to rotting meat. Who knows, maybe she was asking for it?” “Sounds like she got what she deserved.” But as the words left her mouth, Asher’s face went cold. “Shut up,” he commanded. Lily stared at him in disbelief, her eyes welling with tears. She started sobbing, saying she wanted to go home. “I was just saying I feel bad for you! You got your legs broken for her, and this is how you treat me?” Asher couldn’t stand to see her cry. He immediately started trying to soothe her. Lily stubbornly wiped her tears away, refusing to be placated. She tugged on his tie, her voice thick with anger. “Then say it. Say you regret it. Say that if you could do it all over again, you wouldn’t save that old hag. You’d let her rot!” Asher sighed, raising his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I wouldn’t save her. Fine.” In that moment, it felt like my sick, broken body finally dissolved into nothing. My heart seized with a suffocating, absolute despair. And in that moment, I finally woke up. I realized that Asher was no longer the boy who had loved me. I had to let him go. For his sake, and for mine. So I gave myself one week to learn how to let go. Today was the final day. 5 The past was the past. I took one last, long look around our home. My gaze moved from the wild, carefree smile of the man in our wedding photo to the worn, tarnished ring on the coffee table. Asher had only taken Lily’s hair tie. He hadn’t even glanced at the ring. He must have forgotten that he had placed that ring on my finger himself, right after we graduated high school. His legs hadn’t even fully healed yet, but he had limped to a construction site every day for two months, earning exactly ten thousand, three hundred dollars. Ten thousand for the ring. Three hundred for a bouquet of flowers. He had promised me, his voice thick with guilt, that he would buy me a better one someday, when he had more money. The evening breeze was cool that night as the boy knelt on one knee, his handsome face lit by a smile that would become the cage I lived in for half my life. Later, he became successful. His company went public. He bought Lily a ring worth over a hundred thousand dollars, but he never mentioned getting me a new one. I took a deep breath, grabbed my suitcase, and walked out the door. Then I called my lawyer. “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in about half an hour.” I had contacted the lawyer—an old classmate—a week ago. We sat in a coffee shop, going over the details of the divorce agreement. My name was on some of Asher’s company shares, and all of that had to be settled. The agreement was fair. I couldn’t see any reason for Asher to refuse. “This looks good,” I said, looking up at the man in the impeccably tailored suit. “Thank you.” He gave me a polite, professional smile. As he was leaving, he handed me a coat from the back of his chair. “It’s windy out,” he said. “Be careful on your way.” 6 Asher wasn’t at the office. I had a pretty good idea where he would be. Arriving at Lily’s university, I felt a strange sense of déjà vu. But the sight of her snapped me back to reality. Asher had spoiled her. She was draped in luxury brands from head to toe, surrounded by a gaggle of fawning admirers. She carried herself with an air of arrogant entitlement. A stark contrast to my own college days, when I had scrimped and saved every penny to help Asher fund his startup. When Lily saw me, she frowned. “Ugh, what a buzzkill.” Her friends started whispering, asking who I was. I ignored them and spoke to her directly, my voice cold. “Get Asher. I need to talk to him.” But as I said this, one of Lily’s friends stepped forward and shoved me, hard. I was wearing heels and stumbled backward, my lower back slamming into the metal pole of a basketball hoop. A sharp, radiating pain shot through me. The girls surrounded me, acting like a pack of righteous vigilantes. “Shameless old hag. Are you really trying to steal a college student’s boyfriend?” “Aunty, are you that desperate for a man? Following him all the way to a university?” “Lily and her boyfriend are in love. Stop trying to be a homewrecker.” Lily stood behind them, a smug look on her face. I bit my lip, then I slapped the girl who had pushed me, hard across the face. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she started to curse at me. I didn’t give her the chance. I pulled out the marriage certificate I had brought with me. “Lily, every single thing Asher has given you over the past two years… I’m entitled to half of it. That’s my legal right as his wife.” “I hope you can afford to pay it back.”
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