Bye, Husband. Hello, Freedom!Chapter 1
The phone barely rang twice before my best friend Rain picked up.
"Rain," I whispered into the receiver, my voice barely holding steady. "I need your help. My divorce will be finalized in five days. Can you come pick me up then?"
There was a pause, and then the sound of shuffling. “Wait, what? Divorce?” her voice rose sharply. “Alicia, finally! You’ve come to your senses. I told you—you don’t deserve that bastard.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. “Yeah… I didn’t.”
Denver had stopped deserving me a long time ago. But still, this decision didn’t come easy.
Not until the accident. Not until I lost our baby.
It happened two weeks ago. I was behind the wheel with my adopted sister Patricia in the passenger seat, and I’d had a glass of wine—just one, not even enough for me to be drunk. Still, I didn’t want to drive that day, but Patricia had forced me to do it. And that’s when everything changed. A car bumped into us, too late for me to even turn to save ourselves.
When I woke up in the hospital, I was told two things.
One: Patricia had a fractured leg and a broken arm, but she’d recover.
Two: I had lost the baby. My baby. The only heartbeat I had been holding on to, hoping it would keep our marriage.
But instead of comfort, instead of support—I got blame. I was sure that it wasn’t even my fault. It was the car that collided with us, but because Patricia told them I had a glass of wine—they thought it was my fault for drunk driving.
“You should’ve let Patricia drive,” Denver had growled at my bedside, eyes burning. “She had a conference to attend for the company. And now look at her? You’ve ruined everything. You just stay at home and do nothing, and then this? What a useless one!”
I remembered blinking up at him, the sterile lights above flickering, and wondering how we had ended up here. When had the man who once held my hand so gently begun to crush it?
And yet, this wasn't the first betrayal. It was just the loudest.
I’d grown up believing love meant giving, bending, sacrificing. I thought if I just gave enough, they’d love me back.