How Does Rip Van Winkle End?

The cocktail hour had just ended when I picked up a video call in the bridal suite. It was Ethan, three years from now. By then, time‑travel tech had matured enough to let him contact me three years into the past. After enough specific details, I finally believed it. The man on the screen really was Ethan, three years older. I rubbed my aching ankle and pouted at him through the screen. "Ethan, smiling at all these guests is exhausting. But the second I remember I actually married you today, I'm happy all over again." "We're still happy three years from now, right?" He was leaning back against a headboard, and he didn't answer. His face was flat and unreadable. Then I heard it: a woman's voice from his end, low and breathy, asking to be kissed. I froze for a second, then covered my mouth and laughed. "Is that future me? In broad daylight? Get a room." Ethan turned the camera into the bed. My maid of honor was lying there, naked, sprawled across his chest. Her body was covered in hickeys. He looked straight at me as I started to break, and his voice didn't shift at all. "As soon as the reception ended, I told you I had a client meeting. I went to her room instead." "Jo, now you know what's coming. The guests haven't gone home yet. If you want a divorce tonight, you can have one. Up to you."

My husband is poor. We've already been married for three years, but I've covered all our expenses during that time. Even when I'm interested in a cheap bag when we go shopping, he says it's too expensive. He tells me not to buy it. Later, I discover that he gives his first love a four-million-dollar diamond necklace for her birthday. It turns out he's not broke and heavily in debt—he's the heir to an affluent family with a net worth of billions of dollars.

After five years in a marriage without intimacy, I finally called my wife, Suzanna Jones, the youngest commander in the military, and asked her to spend the night with me. Five hundred and twenty times. That was how many times we had been interrupted over the years. Every time we came close to being together, an urgent call from her widowed brother‑in‑law, Eric Gibson, pulled her away before anything could happen. Then, on our wedding anniversary, Suzanna promised she would finally give me the perfect wedding night we never had. I held her by the waist and was about to cross the final line between us when Eric’s ringtone shattered the moment. “Suzanna… I was injured in an explosion down there. What if I am crippled for life…?” Panic filled her face. She pushed me aside and rushed for the door. I grabbed her wrist and tried to stop her. “Send him to the military hospital first.” She turned on me with anger and slapped me across the face. “Shane! Eric is seriously hurt! How can you be this heartless?” She pulled on her dress and ran out. When I caught up with her, the sight in front of me stopped me cold. The woman who once promised to give me her first night was wrapped around Eric in a position far more intimate than anything she had ever shared with me. When I asked for an explanation, she looked calm and unbothered. “Eric is in critical condition. Was I supposed to stand there and do nothing? It is not that important. If it bothers you that much, I can fix it later.” Something inside me went numb. For five years, I had been the only one trying to hold our marriage together. At that moment, I realized I was exhausted from fighting for something that had ended long ago.

I've been married to Ryland Webster for eight years. In that time, we got divorced nine times. I met every woman he dated after our wedding. Whenever he grew tired of someone and wanted out, I became his favorite excuse. "If you marry him, you'll end up like me," I told them. "Cleaning up his messes, signing divorce papers over and over, and walking away with nothing." On New Year's Eve, I sat beside another woman he'd abandoned, handing her tissues as she cried. Across the city, Ryland was setting off a fireworks display for his newest girlfriend. As I watched her sob through an entire box of tissues, I saw a younger version of myself. For the first time, I asked Ryland for a divorce. He looked genuinely confused. "We'll be remarried in three days," he said. "Do we really need to go through this again?" I smiled and shook my head. No. Not this time. Ryland, I'm done waiting for you.

On the day of Claire Brooks, my wife's funeral, a grieving stranger arrived carrying white lilies. After placing them beside her portrait, he walked straight toward me. "I've envied you for thirty years," he said. Confused, I frowned as his eyes lingered on her photograph. "For thirty years, she gave me everything—her love, her time, her money. She never held anything back." He paused before looking at me with quiet resentment. "The only thing she forbade was letting you know I existed." My heart skipped a beat. "What are you talking about?" He let out a bitter chuckle. "It means that while you were married to her for thirty years, she was with me for thirty years too." Then he walked away, leaving me frozen beside her coffin. I stared after him, struggling for breath. Thirty years of betrayal and lies. The shock sent my blood pressure surging, and I collapsed in the middle of the funeral hall. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day Claire and I were supposed to be married. "Nathan Brooks, will you spend the rest of your life with me?" After a long silence, I took the ring from her hand and, without a moment's hesitation, threw it down the drain.

On the day of my wedding, my fiance suddenly announced that he had already registered his marriage with my sister. The system declared my mission a failure and sentenced me to be erased in a car crash. Just as despair closed in, Wayne Kinsey threw himself in front of me to save my life—and lost the use of his legs because of it. Later, I was given another chance to choose a new target, and I accepted his proposal. But five years into our marriage, I overheard a conversation between him and a friend. "Wayne, your crush already has a husband and children. Your legs are healed too. Aren't you going to come clean with Arden?" "No. Arden will always be a risk. Only if she keeps feeling guilty will she stay away and let Naomi have her happiness." As his familiar but cold voice echoed in my ears, my tears fell like beads of a broken string, and that was when I finally realized the so-called salvation Wayne had given me had been nothing but a lie through and through. In that case, there was no reason for me to keep holding on to this sham of a marriage.