For a long second, no one moved. Ashley stared at me wide-eyed while Wyatt collapsed into his chair, staring at nothing as though someone had emptied the air from his lungs. David turned to me. It’s done. You’re officially divorced. Every request granted. I nodded. Not joy, not pain, just clarity. A clean, definitive piece. Like a heavy book finally closing on the exact page it needed to.
I walked past Wyatt without slowing, without meeting his eyes, without a single word. No need. The court had spoken for me. Felicity caught up to me in the hallway outside the courtroom. Are you happy now? She hissed through her teeth. You destroyed him.
I stopped, turned, and looked straight at her. I didn’t destroy anyone, Felicity. Wyatt did that himself. I just stopped funding him and your family. She opened her mouth to fire back, but I had already turned away, walking toward the elevator with David.
We stayed silent the entire ride down. Outside, the morning sun was bright and warm. Late spring, Charleston. The trees so vividly green, they felt like a reminder that some things keep living, even when you’ve just closed an entire chapter of your life. I was unlocking my car when I heard footsteps behind me.
Addison. I turned. Wyatt stood there looking smaller, deflated, like a wrinkled version of the man who’d lived beside me all those years of marriage. You think you won? His voice shook, not with anger, but with despair, barely hidden under shredded pride. This isn’t over. You’ll regret it.
I looked at him, truly looked, for the first time in weeks, and felt nothing. No anger, no sadness, no longing. Just the detached observation of someone staring at a stranger behind ICU glass. It ended the day you abandoned me in the hospital. Wyatt, I said softly. You’re just the last one to figure it out.
