Space. The word hit a nerve. In my past life, he'd begged me on his knees to set him free. The memory left a bitter taste.
"I was here meeting a client. Trust me, nobody wants to watch you make out with your drummer."
He went rigid, eyes wide.
"What... what did you just say?"
I looked straight at him, then at Letitia beside him, barely concealing her satisfaction. Every word landed clean and deliberate.
"I said I have zero interest in watching you date someone else."
Corey's chest heaved. The color drained from his face, then flooded back.
Something snapped in him, and he doubled down, righteous as ever.
"Yeah. Letitia gets me. She knows what I need."
"But you, Caroline? All you've ever done is nickel-and-dime everything down to the last dollar. Do you understand what our band stands for? Do you have any idea what I'm chasing? No. You don't know the first thing about it."
His eyes were full of disappointment.
"Let's get a divorce."
My heart lurched.
Damn it. He beat me to it.
I didn't hesitate. I nodded.
"Fine."
The speed of my answer caught him off guard. He stared at me, visibly stunned.
"Noah stays with me. I'll have a lawyer split everything fifty-fifty. You won't get shortchanged."
I pulled out my phone and texted the divorce attorney I knew on the spot.
His eyes went wide with disbelief.
"Even now, it's still about money? Caroline, do you even have a heart? Did our marriage mean nothing to you? Almost ten years, and this is what I get?"
Ten years didn't even begin to cover it.
Counting my past life, my marriage to Corey Vance had spanned close to seventy or eighty years.
And in all those decades, I was never as happy as the world assumed.
After he quit the music scene, he used his "bad moods" as an excuse and never shared a bed with me again.
She'd locked herself away in that room for years, burying herself in housework and trivial chores, as if she were hiding from life itself.
Then came the diagnosis. A serious illness, and at her age, there was no cure.
When the doctor delivered the news, Corey actually looked relieved.
The money she'd earned had kept them comfortable for the better part of their lives, yet he still stuck her in a six-bed ward. Night after night, she lay awake, unable to sleep through the beeping monitors and the restless stirring of strangers.
It wasn't until the day he walked in with divorce papers that she finally understood. He had hated her all along.