Part 1The Boy Who Broke His Legs for Me

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?”

* * *

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?”