All Chapters of 30 Days To Divorce Mr Malcolm : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

I watch the video three more times unable to stop myself.Soren was laughing, holding a glass of whiskey... whiskey!He's broken his own rule.He leaned into Elizabeth and calls her by a nickname I'd heard in passing many years ago. That makes her giggle and his gray eyes seem to light up at the sight of it.Six years I've known Soren sober, controlled, careful with everything he does. Six years without a single drink in this house. And yet there he is, laughing loud enough that I can hear it through my phone speaker."Welcome home, Liz," he says in the video, arm out, pulling her into the group like she never left. In every memory I have of him, he's calm, steady, and his warmth never once reached his eyes.He's never smiled at me like that. Never used that tone on me, not once. So it isn't that he doesn't know how to be warm. He just never wanted to be, not with me.I bite on the inside of my cheek and try to suppress the ache that spread through my chest.That video drags me into a

I stare at his name, heart pounding so hard I felt it in my throat.I decline the call without a second thought.How can he think to call me after what he did?A message follows a second later.Soren: Stop sulking. It's late, come home now.I groan and try to block out the image of of him waiting at home for me, I archive his message and try turn off my phone when my thumb taps on the gallery icon.At the top of it is a memory it signifies from seven years ago, a video I recognized from just the thumbnail.I held my breath and tapped it.It's me, twenty-one, standing under a spotlight that made the whole world feel like it was finally starting. My voice fills the room, clean and bright, hitting a note I haven't tried to reach in six years. My hair is down. My face is unmarked. I remember exactly what it felt like walking out under those lights without once wondering how anyone was looking at me, chin lifted, shoulders back, no hair to hide behind. I watch myself take the final bow, fl

I turn and find my favorite professor from university standing behind me, drying her hands on a paper towel, face lighting up like she's stumbled onto the best surprise of her week."Venice! It really is you!" She crosses the restroom in two quick steps and pulls me into a hug before I can get her name out. Her perfume is the same one she always wore during my lessons, floral and warm, dragging me straight back a decade to a rehearsal room with mirrors on every wall."Professor Hale." My voice cracks, and I clear my throat to cover it, blinking against the sudden sting behind my eyes. "It's good to see you.""How are you?" She pulls back to look at me properly, hands still on my shoulders, studying my face the way she used to study my posture before a performance — chin up, shoulders back, don't you dare slouch on my stage. Her thumbs press lightly into my collarbones, an old habit from years of correcting my posture backstage. "I heard you accepted the coaching position. I'm the one

I leave while he's still frozen, taking the one second his shock buys me and running with it.It's the first time in six years I've used my own scar as a weapon against him. The thought sits strange in my chest the whole ride home, not quite guilt, not quite satisfaction, a tangle of both twisting low in my stomach. My hands won't stop shaking against my knees. Streetlights smear gold across the window. I press my forehead to the cool glass and let the city blur.For six years I hid it carefully. Tucked my hair over it before he woke. Avoided mentioning the fire, the surgeries, the pain that never fully left. All so he wouldn't feel any guiltier than he already did, so maybe, eventually, we could pass for an ordinary couple. I swallowed every flinch, every stare, every whisper in restaurants, just to spare him a discomfort he never once tried to spare me.But reality never goes the way you wish it would.Back home, alone, I sit in the walk-in closet with the lights off, staring at a w

"Did I wake you?"I blink up at him, still half caught in sleep. Soren stands in front of the mirror, fingers working the knot of his tie, tugging it loose and starting over when it comes out crooked. Third time, judging by the small crease already worn into the silk."You haven't tied this for me in two days." He says it lightly, like he's remarking on the weather, not on the fact that I haven't touched him since the parking lot, since I showed him my scar, since any of it.I sit up, pulling the sheet with me, watching as his long fingers worked the material but feel no pull to help, or assist for the first time in years. "You have hands, Soren."He almost smiles at that, like I've made a genuine joke instead of just stating a fact. "It's never quite right when I do it myself.""Then wear a clip-on." I push my hair back from my face, not bothering to reach for it this early in the morning.He gives the knot one last tug and turns to face me, expression softening into the version of g