After we got back together, Nathan became clingy. What I ate, what I drank, who I saw—he needed a full report on everything. One day, he called, his tone a careful probe. "Zack brought some girls over. We're heading to the spa." I just said, "Oh. Have fun." The line went dead. Twenty minutes later, he was blocking my doorway, his voice a raw whisper. "You'd just let me go off with someone else?" I took a step back under his intense gaze. "Isn't this the 'boundaries' you wanted?" My words hung in the air, and he froze. 1 "Are you done?" I asked, my voice flat. "If you're done, you can go. I really don't mind." Fearing he might misunderstand, I added a thoughtful assurance. "Don't worry, I'll play my part perfectly for your parents tomorrow." Nathan's face instantly darkened. "Aria," he bit out, "you're really something else." He slammed the door on his way out. The commotion had completely shattered my drowsiness. I curled back into bed and scrolled through my phone. At two in the morning, a few photos arrived from an unknown number. A young woman, clad only in a bikini, her pale skin gleaming, was straddling Nathan. Steam curled in the air around them. His arm was wrapped casually around her waist, only a thin slip of fabric separating their bodies. Hey wifey, I'm scared of the water so Nate's holding me tight ;) So jealous you have such a caring hubby!~ I stared at the screen, considering my options. Should I get up and go catch them in the act? But it was so late, my driver was off for the night, and getting a ride would be a nightmare. Well then... maybe write a long, scathing essay tearing Nathan apart? The weather was too cold; my fingers would freeze. Maybe I could just copy and paste one of my old rants from our chat history. As I scrolled through the archives of my own fury, I somehow drifted off to sleep. No wonder Nathan never read them. When you strip away the emotion, the words are just long, rambling, and utterly exhausting. Turns out, they’re a pretty effective sedative. The next day was New Year's. We were at the Vanderwood family estate. I was making small talk with the elders when the doorbell chimed. When the door opened, the girl from last night's photos stood there, a picture of shy audacity. She was clutching a pair of men's underwear. "This... he left this at my place yesterday." The style was young, bold. There was only one man in this house they could possibly belong to. The scene was painfully familiar. The year we got engaged, another girl had shown up just like this. I’d gone ballistic, grabbing her hair and throwing her to the ground. Nathan had pulled me off her and left with the girl without a second glance, leaving me in a crumpled, humiliated heap on the floor. That night, the estate was in chaos. No one had a happy New Year. The old folks always say you shouldn't start the year on a bad note. Sure enough, that was the year Nathan and I fought the most viciously. The living room fell silent. Everyone was waiting for my reaction. I immediately plastered on a smile and smoothed things over. "Oh, that's my cousin. She grew up abroad, you know how wild they can be. We were all together for New Year's Eve last night." Nathan's father let out a sigh of relief, but his mother's eyes were sharp with suspicion. "Really?" "Of course," I insisted, pulling the girl inside and shutting the door. The last flicker of hope in Nathan's eyes died out. 2 On the drive back, I pulled the underwear from my pocket and tossed it at Nathan. He stammered out an explanation. "Last night wasn't what you think. That girl is Zack's sister, and I was drunk, I didn't do anything..." I tore open a sanitizing wipe and began meticulously cleaning my hands. "You can just drop me here. I'm meeting Nancy for a poker game." Nathan's Adam's apple bobbed. His voice softened. "I can pick you up when you're done?" "No need," I said, pushing the car door open. "You go do your thing." I didn't want to know what that pair of underwear had been through. I just didn't want to be contaminated by any of it. At Nancy's place, I took a long, hot shower and changed into a fresh set of clothes she’d laid out for me. Only then did the tight, suffocating feeling in my chest finally begin to dissolve. Nancy watched Nathan's car drive away, then raised an eyebrow at me. "So, how was the battle? What was the body count? And why didn't you call for backup?" I sank into her sofa. "There was no battle. Scaring away the man is a small loss, but what if I scare away the money tree?" That New Year's Day years ago, the Vanderwood estate had been a war zone. Several elders had been so upset they ended up in the hospital. As I lay on the cold floor, it was Nancy who had finally come for me, bundling my mud-stained self into her sports car. As she turned the key in the ignition, she couldn't resist a bit of dark humor. "Trying to live out a childhood dream, were we? Making mud pies at the Vanderwood estate?" The moment I opened my mouth, tears streamed down my face. "Nancy, how did it get like this?" She panicked, fumbling to wipe my tears away, but she had no answer. No one could have predicted that Nathan and I would end up in such a toxic mess. We were childhood sweethearts, friends since we were in diapers. To get into the same university as him, I’d woken up before the chickens and gone to bed after the dogs, pouring every ounce of my being into my studies. The day I got my acceptance letter, my mother was amazed. "If I'd known all it took was Nathan to make you work this hard, why did I spend a fortune on all those tutors?" Everyone just assumed that Aria and Nathan were meant to be. A package deal for life. But just as we finally grew up, no longer needing to share a single order of street-cart fries, he was the one who let go of my hand. He resented his family for mapping out his future, for forcing him to abandon his dream of music to take over the family corporation. That resentment found a new target in me when I joyfully accepted the engagement. Back then, I was too blinded by my own happiness, too caught up in the fantasy of finally marrying the man I loved, to notice that the love had long since vanished from his eyes. After the engagement, he was never home. I’d wake up to a phone flooded with "concerned" messages from well-meaning friends. Nathan had dropped a fortune on some model; Nathan was on a yacht surrounded by women; Nathan had thrown a mock wedding for himself somewhere... The messages were like mold in the rainy season—impossible to scrub clean. I used to scream, to demand answers, to lose my mind and make a scene for everyone to see. All it earned me was a deeper layer of Nathan's disgust. "Can't you have some goddamn boundaries? You don't like it? Then go tell my mother to call off the engagement!" Nancy once accurately described our relationship as less like a married couple and more like a rebellious teenager and his overbearing mother. One desperately trying to escape, the other clinging on for dear life. I thought I would be tangled up with him like that forever. But then, somewhere in the middle of all the fighting, I just got tired. Friends like Nancy don't need words. A single look is enough. Seeing my strange calm, she asked softly, "So, what's the plan?" I took the warm water she handed me. "The London project... both our families have invested a lot. I'm going to go oversee it myself." "For how long?" "Tentatively, three years." She wrapped her arms around my neck, not wanting to let go. "Before you leave, we're going to party hard. My treat." "Don't you worry," I leaned against her shoulder with a smile. "You won't get out of it." 3 I was jolted awake late that night by the doorbell. Nathan was slumped against the doorframe, drunk, his tie hanging loosely around his neck. I glanced at my phone. The Do Not Disturb notification showed 99+ unread messages in our chat. So, he couldn't reach me and just came over. A year ago, I would have been flattered that he'd even thought to come home while drunk. I would have bustled around, helping him inside, getting him water, fussing over him for half the night. But now? My hair was freshly washed and fragrant, my apartment was spotless, and the last thing I wanted was the stench of a drunk man tainting it. He saw I had no intention of letting him in and asked, his voice hoarse, "You're just going to leave me out here?" "You're at the wrong place," I said calmly. "This is my apartment, not our marital home." "I'll call someone to pick you up." As I looked down to find a number, he shamelessly pressed closer. "Aria... I want the soup you make." I took a deep breath, pushing down the last lingering sting in my heart. "Really? You'll leave right after you have the soup?" He nodded eagerly. I opened the DoorDash app and held my phone out to him. "Pick whatever kind you want." He froze, the alcohol seeming to evaporate from his system. "Aria, you never let me eat this stuff..." He was probably remembering the early days of our engagement when I, determined to be the perfect wife, had hired a chef to teach me how to cook, starting from the very basics of chopping vegetables. But he never even glanced at the food I made, let alone tasted it. I would secretly post pictures of my carefully prepared meals on Instagram, hoping the likes and comments from our mutual friends would tempt him to come home for a taste. Instead, I overheard him laughing with his friends at a bar. "If you had a stage-five clinger like Aria, you'd think my life was a tragedy too. Why would I eat her pig slop when I have a world of delicacies waiting for me outside?" Amid the roar of laughter, I ran home and cried for three days straight. Nancy was both furious and heartbroken for me. "My darling girl, you're the type of person who'd rather starve than turn on a stove! Why are you learning to cook for a man?! He's out living it up while you're turning yourself into a ghost!" That was my wake-up call. I never cooked for him again. "Mine doesn't even taste good," I said, pushing the phone closer to him. "Just order something." He sighed and took the phone. As his fingertips brushed my palm, his other hand instinctively moved to wrap around my shoulder. I recoiled violently, my back hitting the door with a dull thud. In the dead silence that followed, he lowered his head and lit a cigarette. The tiny flame flickered in the dark, illuminating the sharp lines of the face I once adored. "Aria, I'm your fiancé, not a walking biohazard." "You never know," I countered, taking another half-step back. "I need to sleep. I have work tomorrow." I don't know when he left. The next morning, the hallway outside my door was littered with cigarette butts. 4 On the way to the office, waiting at a red light, my mind drifted back to the night I finally broke things off. Nathan had locked me out that night, too. But that was at our marital home. He and a crowd of people were partying inside. He'd even changed the security code. The deep winter wind cut like a knife. I pounded on the door, my hand instinctively cradling my stomach, my voice choked with sobs. "Nathan, open the door... something's wrong... my stomach..." It was the same girl from the spa who answered me through the intercom. "Hey, you out there! Nate said the one he has to marry is the Vanderwood family, not him. You should probably go. He said you need to learn about boundaries." I froze for a second, then started hammering on the door like a madwoman. The people inside must have found it amusing. They recorded me through the security camera. In the background, I could hear the spa girl's sweet, cloying voice. "Nate, she says something's wrong?" His voice, slurred with alcohol and thick with annoyance, came through crystal clear. "Ignore her. She's just playing the victim." In the video, I looked like a deranged mess, crying and screaming. Eventually, I stopped, picked up my suitcase, and stumbled away, disappearing around the corner. That video made the rounds in our social circle. Nathan only found out after a full day of people looking at him with expressions that screamed, You're a real piece of work. He finally, confusedly, clicked on the link. He didn't think it was a big deal. So what? He was having a good time at home and didn't want her to come in and ruin the mood. But the Vanderwood elders were furious. They said his actions were disgraceful and had brought shame upon both families. So he came to me, wearing the sullen expression of someone forced to apologize. "I didn't know you would... walk out alone so late. I heard about the video." He looked at me, as if assessing whether I'd learned my lesson. "People are talking... saying I drove my own fiancée out onto the street... Aria, stop being so dramatic and come home." He never knew what happened in the darkness after the video cut off. And I was done trying to explain. Lying on the hospital bed, I wearily turned over. "It's not your fault." On the surface, it seemed we had reconciled. But from that day on, I stopped caring where he slept or if he ever came home. I quietly moved out of our marital home and back into my own small apartment. 5 Saying it wasn't his fault was a lie. I'm no saint. Giving up on someone you've loved for so, so long feels like tearing a part of yourself from your own flesh and bone. When the withdrawals hit, I'd lie awake all night, a gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be, the icy wind from that winter night howling through it. Besides, my family's fortune and the Vanderwoods' were already deeply intertwined, like the roots of two ancient trees. Tearing them apart would have consequences neither side could bear. I knew better than anyone that in the face of family interests, the squabbles of two young people were as light as a feather. Maybe the pressure from his family scared him. Maybe he belatedly realized he'd gone too far. Whatever the reason, Nathan started to rein it in. No more all-nighters. No more ignoring my existence. Instead, he began reporting his every move to me, in excruciating detail. One day, I was in the middle of a high-stakes negotiation, finalizing the core terms of a nine-figure project. We were at the final impasse over profit-sharing. You could hear a pin drop in the conference room. All eyes were on me, waiting for my response. And that's when his messages started flooding my phone screen, one after another. Something about an appointment with a famous wedding dress designer; he needed to know what style I wanted. When I didn't reply, he started calling. Again. And again. The buzzing of my phone was deafeningly disruptive. The lead negotiator on the other side said sympathetically, "Please, take your time. It might be urgent." I maintained a polite smile, nodded my apologies, and ducked into the restroom before finally answering, hissing into the phone. "What the hell do you want? Why are you blowing up my phone over something so trivial? Are you that bored? Can't you have some goddamn boundaries?!" After my tirade, the line went dead silent. I was the first to snap out of it, rubbing my temples wearily. "I'm sorry. I've been pulling all-nighters for this project, I'm just exhausted. The style... you can just pick one for me." On the other end of the line, Nathan was quiet for a long time before he finally managed a strained, "Okay." 6 The car pulled up in front of the Vanderwood Corporation headquarters. I was here to consolidate some resources before heading back to my own company. In the breakroom, I overheard some colleagues gossiping. "Did you see? Mr. Vanderwood came in with her again this morning." "I know! I heard he even left his underwear at her place last time..." "What is with that? Isn't he engaged?" "Please, everyone knows how much he can't stand Miss Aria. He's always saying he wishes she would just disappear." ... Thanks to Nathan's strict policy of never acknowledging our relationship at the office, I, Miss Aria herself, was privy to all the juiciest gossip. I lowered my eyes and sipped my coffee, feeling nothing. This little scandal was nothing. These people were amateurs. They'd never seen a female delivery driver show up late at night wearing a matching set of lacy lingerie underneath her uniform. They'd never had to deal with the mountains of explicit late-night texts on his phone. They'd certainly never been toasted at a family banquet by some random girl who called me 'sis' as if we were best friends. Nathan never said no to anyone outside our home, and I was always the one left to clean up his messes. A pair of forgotten underwear barely even registered on the scale of his transgressions. I fought the urge to go over and say something. Then I looked up and saw that the subject of the gossip was standing right in front of me. The girl from the spa—the one who was "afraid of water"—was clinging to Nathan as if she had no bones of her own. When Nathan saw me, he frowned and told her to stand up straight. I took a second look. Of all his flings, she had certainly lasted the longest. The girl pouted and shoved a file into my hands. "You're the one from his house, aren't you?" I took the file and met her gaze. "And you're the one who sat on him in a bikini at the spa." The breakroom went dead quiet. Her face paled. She bit her lip and demanded, "Can't you just let him go?" I held up my hands in surrender. Don't drag me into this, kid. I'm just trying to get my materials and get out of the country. In a moment of desperate inspiration, my voice rising an octave, I threw Nathan's own excuse back at them. "You call him 'bro,' I call him 'bro.' What's this about letting him go or not?" "Aria." Nathan's warning tone came from behind me. "What nonsense are you spouting now?" I waved the file in my hand and turned to press the elevator button. "Bro, deal with your own drama. Leave me out of it." The elevator doors slowly slid shut, reflecting Nathan's thunderous expression and the hurt look on the girl's face beside him. Were they having another fight? Not my problem. I glanced down at the flight confirmation email on my phone. In twenty-four hours, I would be gone. 7 I'd partied too hard with Nancy the night before, so I was barely holding it together at Nathan's grandfather's banquet. I placed my prepared gifts on the table. The first was a rare bottle of aged whiskey, a toast to the old man's good health. The second was the heirloom sapphire bracelet his grandfather had personally placed on my wrist at our engagement party. Today, I was returning it. The message couldn't be clearer. I stood behind Grandpa Vanderwood and gently massaged his shoulders. "Grandpa, I'm begging you, please grant my request to break off the engagement with Nathan." He grew agitated. "Did that boy force you into this?" I shook my head, my voice soft but firm. "This is my decision. The love is gone. This engagement is meaningless." I added, "I will personally oversee the London project. I won't let the interests of our two families suffer." Grandpa Vanderwood looked at the sapphire bracelet, then let out a long sigh. "The Vanderwood family has wronged you." He paused for a moment, then added, "For the London project, you will have full authority. On top of the original terms, the Vanderwood family will grant an additional five percent of the profits to you personally. Consider it a small token from an old man." "Thank you, Grandpa," I said with a small smile, not refusing the offer. I had earned it. My flight was in two hours. I offered a final toast and made my excuses to leave early. As the car pulled away, I took one last look at the grand estate where Nathan and I had grown up together, from innocent playmates to deeply entangled lovers. Now, the story was over, and I was the only one walking off the stage. As we turned the corner, I saw Nathan's car pulling into the driveway. I could just make out the silhouette of the spa girl in the passenger seat. Our cars passed each other, going in opposite directions. Nathan, I hope you get everything you ever wanted. And I hope my future is limitless. 8 Nathan rushed into the banquet hall, but he couldn't find the familiar figure he was looking for. He sidled up to his grandfather, feigning a casual tone. "What did Aria get you?" His grandfather swirled the whiskey in his glass, then pushed another velvet box toward him. Inside lay the solitary sapphire bracelet. The thing she had treasured above all else, now returned by her own hand. A knot of anxiety tightened in Nathan's chest. "Where is she?" Grandpa Vanderwood took a sip of his drink, his voice betraying no emotion. "Gone. She said she's setting you free. The engagement is off." He glanced pointedly at the spa girl who had followed Nathan in. "You should be happy now." Nathan stood there, stunned. His first feeling was an overwhelming wave of exhaustion. He thought of all his clumsy attempts to change—calling her even when he was drunk, learning to cook for her, even taking charge of the wedding dress selection... He had done so much, had bent so far. And she was still throwing a tantrum. A hot surge of anger, the anger of being played for a fool, rose in his throat. Knowing Aria, she was probably already on a flight to London. He furiously typed out a message to Nancy. [Was it fun playing games with me?] [Did you two get a kick out of watching me run around like an idiot, trying to change for her?] Nancy didn't reply with a single word. Instead, she sent him a link to a surveillance video. It was from a convenience store not far from their marital home.
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