Chapter 10: Nothing Left for Him to Win

The divorce between Isla and Damien became public before it became final.

Someone leaked the courthouse filing, and by lunchtime the Farrow name was everywhere. Headlines called Damien her secret husband. Gossip accounts dug up photographs from the bar. Old pictures of Isla and me were posted beside screenshots of Damien's social media.

For years, Isla had guarded her reputation with frightening precision.

Now strangers were dissecting the part of her life she had tried hardest to hide.

I expected her to call me in a panic.

She didn't.

Instead, her lawyer released a short statement confirming that the marriage was ending and asking for privacy.

My name wasn't mentioned.

That mattered more than I expected.

Two days later, I attended the prenatal appointment Isla had told me about.

I arrived separately and sat at the opposite end of the waiting room.

She looked at me several times but didn't move closer.

When the nurse called her name, Isla stood and asked quietly, "Do you want to come in?"

I nodded.

The examination was ordinary, almost painfully so.

The doctor discussed measurements, blood pressure, nutrition, and upcoming tests. Then the room filled with the rapid sound of a heartbeat.

I stopped breathing.

Whatever existed between Isla and me, that sound was innocent of it.

I looked at the monitor.

Isla was crying silently.

She didn't reach for my hand.

I was grateful.

Afterward, we sat in the hospital cafeteria with untouched coffee between us.

"Thank you for coming," she said.

"I said I would."

She nodded.

"I know."

Her phone buzzed repeatedly. She turned it face down.

"Damien?" I asked.

"Reporters. And my family."

"How are they taking it?"

She gave a humorless laugh.

"My father thinks I embarrassed the Farrow name. My aunt thinks I should have paid Damien to disappear quietly. My mother hasn't spoken to me."

I studied her face.

"And what do you think?"

She looked at the coffee.

"I think I spent too much of my life being afraid of looking abandoned."

I waited.

"When I was a child, everyone knew I was the unwanted one. The illegitimate daughter. The girl who could be sent away if she became inconvenient. Then I met you."

Her voice softened.

"You never made me earn your staying."

My chest tightened.

"Damien did the opposite. He always needed something. Money. Advice. Protection. A ride. A signature. Every time I solved one problem, there was another. I mistook being needed for being important."

"And me?"

She looked at me with red eyes.

"You loved me without making me prove my usefulness. I became so secure in that love that I stopped protecting it."

I looked away.

"That's a painful lesson to learn after seven years."

"I know."

She didn't ask me to forgive her.

That was new.

We left the hospital separately.

At the entrance, Damien was waiting.

He looked thinner than the last time I saw him, but the moment his eyes landed on Isla, anger replaced exhaustion.

"So this is what you're doing now?"

Isla stopped.

"Damien, leave."

"You bring him to appointments while your husband gets served legal notices?"

Several people turned to look.

I started walking away. Whatever existed between them was no longer mine to referee.

Damien called after me.

"Nate! You think she's innocent? Ask her whose idea the marriage was!"

I stopped.

Isla's face tightened.

Damien smiled bitterly.

"Tell him."

"Damien, don't."

"Why? You're all about honesty now."

He looked at me.

"I asked for a fake excuse from school. She was the one who said a legal marriage would be cleaner because the administration could verify it."

I looked at Isla.

She closed her eyes.

"Is that true?"

"Yes."

The answer hurt, but not in the way Damien wanted.

It was simply another fact.

Damien continued eagerly. "She picked the courthouse. She bought the rings. She told me not to worry because you'd understand eventually."

Isla's face went white.

"I never said he'd understand the marriage. I said I'd explain."

"Same difference."

"No, it isn't."

Damien stepped closer.

"You loved having me depend on you. Don't pretend I forced everything."

Isla didn't deny it.

She looked at me instead.

"He's right about one thing. I suggested making it legal. I told myself it was paperwork and nothing more."

I nodded slowly.

"Thank you for telling me."

Damien stared at me.

"That's it?"

I almost smiled at the familiar question.

"What else should I do?"

"Get angry!"

"I already left her."

His mouth opened, then closed.

"You keep trying to give me new reasons to end a relationship that's already over," I said. "There isn't anything left for you to win."

Damien's face twisted.

"She'll always love you more."

"That's something you'll have to make peace with, not me."

I walked away.

Behind me, Damien raised his voice at Isla.

"You ruined my life for him!"

Isla's answer was calm.

"No. You and I made choices. We're both responsible for them."

I stopped for half a second.

Then I kept walking.

That evening, I received an email from the wedding venue.

Our ceremony date was approaching, and they needed final confirmation or cancellation.

I stared at the message for several minutes.

Seven years of plans lived inside that reservation.

I called the coordinator.

"I'd like to cancel."

She asked whether I wanted to transfer the booking or postpone.

"Neither."

There was a cancellation fee.

I paid it.

Then I canceled the florist, photographer, and band.

Each call hurt less than the one before.

The final call was to the officiant.

When it ended, I sat alone at my parents' kitchen table.

My mother placed a cup of tea beside me.

"How do you feel?"

Canceling the wedding also forced me to confront dozens of tiny decisions I had outsourced to the future. There was a honeymoon reservation under both our names, a furniture order scheduled for after the ceremony, and even a box of engraved favors sitting unopened in the condo.

I spent the next morning dealing with them one by one.

The honeymoon was the hardest. Isla and I had chosen a quiet coastal town because years earlier she had told me she wanted one week where nobody knew the Farrow name. I had imagined us waking up late, eating breakfast near the water, and laughing about how exhausting the wedding had been.

The travel agent asked whether I wanted to keep the reservation for different dates.

I stared at the itinerary.

"Cancel it too."

When the refund confirmation arrived, I expected grief to knock me flat. Instead, I felt the same strange steadiness that had followed every honest decision I'd made since leaving Damien's apartment.

I wasn't erasing the good years.

I was simply refusing to let memories make decisions for me.

That afternoon, I packed the last personal items from the condo while Isla was at work. I found our engagement photo behind a stack of books. For several minutes, I sat on the floor holding it.

We looked happy because we had been happy.

That mattered.

The betrayal didn't magically turn every earlier memory into a lie. Isla had loved me in the ways she knew how. I had loved her completely. We had laughed, traveled, fought, made up, cared for each other through illnesses, and built routines that had once felt permanent.

Accepting that made leaving easier, not harder.

I didn't need to prove that all seven years had been fake in order to justify ending them.

Something could have been real and still become unhealthy enough to leave.

I wrapped the photograph carefully and put it in a box instead of destroying it.

Then I taped the box shut and wrote OLD HOME across the top.

For once, that phrase didn't feel tragic.

It felt accurate.

I thought about it.

"Sad."

She squeezed my shoulder.

"Anything else?"

I looked at the confirmation emails filling my screen.

"Free."

For the first time, the word didn't feel like a betrayal of the life I had wanted.

It felt like permission to build another one.