I Let You Go

Eight years ago, I broke the heart of the boy I loved. Now, after eight years overseas, Liam Hayes was finally coming home with his new girlfriend to meet his family. That same day, the hospital gave me its final answer. The cancer had won. There was nothing left to treat. Nothing left to try. They sent me home with only time. When Liam saw my mother helping me into a wheelchair, a cold smile touched his mouth. “Eight years,” he said. “And this is what became of you? You can’t even walk anymore?” Disgust laced every word. I only tugged the sleeve of my down coat lower, hiding the cluster of needle marks across the back of my hand. “It’s nothing,” I said quietly. “I fell and broke a bone. That’s all.” Liam gave a short, bitter laugh. “In that case, I’m getting married soon. Why don’t you come be my fiancée’s bridesmaid?” I smiled as if it did not hurt at all. “No, thank you. I’m about to leave for somewhere very far away.” Then I patted the back of Mom’s hand, silently asking her to take me home.

I signed the divorce papers on a Tuesday. No tears. No phone calls. No begging. I just picked up the pen, signed my name, and let Dominic Hartley go. For four years, I tried to be everything a good wife should be. I put my career on hold. I pushed my dreams aside. I made myself smaller so he could feel bigger. And somehow, it still wasn’t enough. He looked through me like I wasn’t really there. I loved him quietly while he built his empire, not realizing he was slowly tearing mine down. When he filed for divorce, I think he expected me to fall apart. I didn’t. I started over. A new apartment. A new job. A version of myself I hadn’t seen in a long time. And for the first time in years, I felt like me again. While he stayed in his perfect penthouse, surrounded by everything money could buy and nothing that felt real, I was finally learning how to be happy. That’s when he noticed me. Of course. Too late. Now Dominic Hartley, the man who never had to chase anything, is chasing me. Calling. Showing up. Saying all the things I used to beg to hear. But I’m not that woman anymore. And I’ve learned what he hasn’t. Love isn’t enough to go back to something that broke you. He wants another chance. I just don’t know if he’s really changed… or if I’m the one thing he can’t get back.

Eighteen and desperate due to my mother's illness, I enter the orbit of Enzo Lombardi, a powerful, feared mafia boss. He treats me with impossible sweetness, and I find myself sinking into his possessive love and lavish spoiling. Everything changes the day a woman named Isabella Gallo shows up. She claims she's the one Enzo truly loves, and she laughs as she slides a two-million-dollar check across the table, demanding that I leave him. I turn down the money. She then suggests we both send him a message at the same time and see who he cares about more. Holding on to one last bit of hope, I text Enzo that I'm in a car accident. Isabella, on the other hand, tells him her plane is about to land. I wait for his reply, but nothing comes. Instead, I watch as Isabella picks up his call. At that moment, I understood it was time for me to go.

I married him when he couldn’t even open his eyes. Four years I sat beside Evanthe Blackwood’s bed. Keeping him alive while his family held their breath. The marriage was a contract. A legal arrangement. Nothing more. Nobody warned me that four years of silence could break a person open. Nobody told me that loving a man who couldn’t reject you was the most dangerous kind of loving there was. Then he woke up. He looked at me like I was a stranger who had broken into his house. To Evanthe I was an opportunist. A woman who had married a helpless billionaire for his name and his money. He decided who I was in the first five minutes and nothing I did was ever going to change that. He kept me anyway. For the heir clause. For the contract. Never for me. I should have left then. Instead I stayed and I hoped and I let myself believe that maybe underneath all that coldness something real was trying to get out. Then Sena came back. His first love. And I watched him look at her the way he had never once looked at me. So I left. No tears. No confrontation. Just his ring on the desk and my signature on the divorce papers. What he didn’t know was that I didn’t leave alone. Now he’s found me. Three years later. Standing at my door with regret all over his face and my daughter’s eyes staring back at him. But is sorry ever really enough?

It was no secret that Lucas, the Alpha of the Redline Pack, had spent ten years pursuing me. He did so patiently and devotedly, never wavering, as if loving me were the only purpose he had in this life. But on the eve of our wedding, one conversation between Lucas and his friend struck me. "You have secretly dated Shane for a while now, but you will Mark Charlotte as your Mate instead?" His friend had asked. "How can the two be the same? How could Shane, a substitute, compare to Charlotte? I might consider keeping her if she behaves herself and doesn't make a scene. Don't worry, Charlotte won't mind," I heard Luca say confidently. But Shane has no intention of behaving. On the day for eh Marking, she stormed the Ritual grounds and pushed me hard making me fall of the center stage unto the grass. Lucas was by her side quickly to protect her not me. Shane had lost all reason from the heart break and had a shard of glass to her her neck. "Choose me or Charlotte right now!" She screamed and I saw Lucas descend into a panic. Shane must have gotten injured in the chaos because I could hear Lucas shouting to clear the way and let him pass, saying he needed to rush Charlotte to a hospital. But I was hurt as well, yet he did not care. "If anything happens to her, you will all pay the price," he had declared. Those words shattered my heart and was the beginning of the end. I now know what to do—booking a ticket and left him forever.

The worst mistake he made was leaving in the first place and the second mistake he made was distrusting her. Maybe he didn't deserve her, maybe he did but all he wants in this life and the next is Amber by his side. With his imperfections and her perfections. 'I need you to stop kissing me.'