Chapter 3

Nathan and I had met through mutual friends at a business networking event. We liked each other immediately, and by the second month of dating, we had gotten married.

Not long after the wedding, Nathan told me he was ready to leave his corporate job and build something of his own.

I heard his plans to start a tech company and I was genuinely moved by his vision and ambition. I left a well-paying position at a Fortune 500 company, brought my project management expertise and every dollar of my retirement savings, and helped him launch Sinclair Group from.

For the first few years, I didn't take a salary at all. When the company finally started turning a profit, I kept my pay modest so we could reinvest in growth. Even now, eight years later, with the company preparing to go public, I was still making less than half what I'd earned at my old job.

Over the years, other companies came after me constantly, offering salaries five times what Nathan paid. I turned them all down.

It wasn't just because I'd helped build the company from nothing. It was also because of what happened during our second year—I had been hospitalized and couldn't work for three months. In order to cover the surgery I needed, Nathan had called in every favor he had, practically begging investors and contacts to keep the company afloat so he could pay my medical bills.

He'd sat by my hospital bed every night for two weeks, holding my hand and promising we'd get through it together.

Back then, I believed him when he said we were a team. That what was mine was his, and what was his was mine.

Then Sienna started working for him, and everything changed.

He humiliated me in front of others for her sake. The man who had never once cared about splitting a dinner bill suddenly started suggesting we divide household expenses evenly down to the cent.

Last spring, my laptop—the one I'd used for five years—finally crashed beyond repair. I didn't have quite enough cash on hand, so I temporarily transferred twelve hundred dollars from our joint savings account to buy a replacement.

When Nathan found out, he was openly displeased. He made pointed comments about me "spending irresponsibly," and then, without telling me, changed the account password on the joint account.

"I know some of that money is technically yours, but we're still building our future, and there's so much ahead of us that's going to cost money. Are you really going to keep pulling from our savings every time you want something?"

"How did you become like this? I liked the old you so much better—the one with drive and ambition."

He made pointed remarks about women who relied on men, and then I found out that for Sienna's birthday, he had bought her a custom-designed diamond bracelet worth fifteen thousand dollars. When I confronted him about it, he told me it was a performance bonus

And yet in all these years, when I stayed up three nights in a row to secure a brutal, high-stakes contract and brought in millions for the company, Nathan's acknowledgment had been a single thumbs-up emoji in the group chat.

In eight years of working for him, the biggest "bonus" I'd ever gotten was a gift card to a coffee shop.

What kind of performance earns a fifteen-thousand-dollar bracelet?

That was when I stopped believing in us.

I'd planned to bring up divorce during our Halloween trip. I thought we could talk it through like adults and end things on decent terms.

Instead…

The thought trailed off, and I let out a short, self-mocking laugh.

On the other end of the line, when they heard I had agreed to accept the job, the excitement was genuine. They sent the contract before the conversation had barely ended and were practically urging me to fly over that same day and start the following morning.

Their sincerity was unmistakable.

"Our CEO has been trying to recruit you for over a year now. He means every word of it."

I thanked them warmly but still chose to set my start date for after my seven days holiday.

I loved to travel. I loved hiking and open water and cities I'd never seen before. Nathan had once been glad to go with me—but after Sienna arrived, we had never taken another trip together. Each hope I built was followed by its quiet collapse.

This time, Nathan had broken his promise, but I would not break mine to myself.

Even if there was no one beside me, I would still make this journey.

I opened my laptop and started booking flights.

I was halfway through entering my credit card information when a message popped up from Sienna.

"Hey, I know you and Nathan are basically over, and I feel bad about intruding on whatever time you two have left—but this trip was his idea, and I didn't want to let him down."

A second message followed immediately.

"And by the way, since your divorce papers are been finalized and Nathan's birthday is just around the corner. You could give Nathan the papers as a gift. I bet he'd love that. He doesn't love you anymore anyway."

Then came a photo.

Nathan and Sienna on the beach, posed like they were shooting an engagement announcement. He had his arms wrapped around her from behind, and both of them were laughing like they didn't have a care in the world.

I understood what Sienna was doing. She was trying to provoke me.

I stared at the screen for a long moment.

She knew about the divorce, she had been the one who took the divorce paper from my desk and handed it to Nathan for his signature.

"Should I have him sign this for you? I'd hate for you to cry right in front of him when you see him sign."

Her intention had been to humiliate me, to push me into losing my composure.

I'd just looked at her and said, "Sure. Thanks."

Nathan trusted nothing from me—he practically held a magnifying glass over every document I submitted. But Sienna was different. His trust in her was absolute. When she handed him the papers, he signed without even reading them.

I didn't reply to Sienna's message.

Instead, I called the courthouse and confirmed that I could pick up the finalized papers in one week—the day the holiday ended.

Then I went home, pulled every photo of Nathan and me off the walls, packed everything that was mine into two suitcases, and left the rest behind.

I flew out the next morning.

On the first day of the holiday, I went to Charleston.

That had been our travel plan from three years ago. Sienna had just joined the company then, and Nathan said the business was picking up too much momentum. The trip was shelved and never revisited.

On the second day, I stood at the edge of Yosemite Valley and watched the sun set over Half Dome.

Nathan was afraid of heights and had always stalled about going. Eventually, through months of gentle persuasion and a year of working myself to exhaustion to close fifteen major contracts, I got him to agree.

But on the day we were supposed to leave, Sienna called in tears saying a client was harassing her. He said she had no one in the city to protect her and that as her boss he had a responsibility to be there. The trip was cancelled.

And so it went.

I moved steadily westward. On the last day of the holiday, I arrived at the final stop on my journey—the place we had originally planned to go together: Lake Tahoe.

Only now, looking out at it, did I realize that the scenery I had spent three years longing for—and never quite reached—had only taken seven days to see in full.

I extended my hotel reservation by two extra nights and had the divorce papers couriered to the inn.

The holiday was ending. I was ready to step into my new life. I had no intention of looking back.

And no intention of seeing Nathan one last time.

But I hadn't counted on coincidence.

That evening, when I stepped out to join the lakeside bonfire gathering, I spotted them—Nathan and Sienna—in the crowd.

The two of them sat together by the fire, sharing a plate of grilled food.

He had his arm draped casually over her shoulders, and she was leaning into him, laughing at something he'd just said.

He lifted a freshly grilled skewer and held it to Sienna's lips, and she took a bite directly from his hand.

Then—this man who used to refuse to share a water bottle with anyone—he picked up the cup she'd been drinking from and took a long sip without hesitation.