Put a Leash on My Ex-husband 
Elena had once believed that silence could mean safety. That a gentle hand and a warm cup of tea placed quietly on her desk every morning could be a form of love. Lucien was never cruelānot in the obvious ways. He remembered how she liked her eggs, noticed when she swapped her perfume, and sent flowers on days he knew she wouldnāt expect them.  
He raised her like one would raise a petāsoftly, without question.  
And Elena, foolish in the way only the very lonely can be, mistook his quiet affection for devotion.  
She told herself he was reserved. Mysterious. That love didnāt always wear its heart on its sleeve.  
But when the old flame returnedāthe one who spoke his language without needing to tryāElena saw it.  
The difference.  
He looked at her like a man who had found his lost religion.  
And Elena? She had simply been convenient.  
No tears, no scene. Just papers on the breakfast table, beside the eggs he cooked perfectly. She didnāt accuse or beg. She only asked for freedom.  
He didnāt sign. He chuckled. A soft, dismissive sound.  
āA cat raised indoors doesnāt know how to survive on the street, Elena. Youāll come back."
But she didnāt.  
She disappeared, like smokeāexcept she didnāt vanish, not really.  
She lived.  
She wore colour again. Laughed at bad jokes. Let strange men hand her coffee and ask for her number. Lucien? He watched. He watched her become someone without him.  
And it drove him mad.  
The night he cornered her outside the gallery, rain in his hair and desperation in his eyes, he looked like a man undone.  
"Elena," he breathed, "please. Look at me. Just once."
She did. Calm as ever, and her love already gone.