After the Last Tear: Rising from the Ashes of a Broken Marriage By Cassila K

Chapter 66

Pax was gone.

Not just gone erased.

His things had disappeared overnight, vanishing so cleanly that if not for the faint indentation his side of the mattress still held, I might have thought he had never been here at all.

The small, suffocating apartment we had shared for the past two years now felt eerily... spacious.

I stood in the center of the room, staring at the empty space where his belongings used to be. The closet door, once barely able to close from the weight of our combined mess, now hung slightly ajar-hollow, unburdened.

Even his scent, that faint mix of cedar and citrus, was already beginning to fade.

He hadn't left a note.

No message. No half-hearted explanation scrawled on a scrap of paper.

Nothing.

Just silence.

I swallowed, exhaling slowly

So, that was it, a clean break.

A quiet, unspoken ending.

Maybe this was for the best.

This way, at least, I wasn't the one who had to walk away first.

Two days ago, I had posted a question online on Reddit:

in seven days. I haven't told

comments had been

Selfish. Cruel. Heartless.

of never planning a future with him, of leading him on, of being too much of a

And the worst part?

They were right.

my future,

truly

how absurd it all was, but my lips wouldn't move,

And yet...

it, Pax's act had never been

had always been there, thin and almost imperceptible,

at a bar when a drunk customer grabbed my wrist, pulling me closer with the kind of entitlement that came from knowing no

Pax had.

my arm, his presence alone

composed,

he turned to me, gaze flickering over my face,

"Are you okay?"

been calm, steady. And before I even had a chance to answer, he had taken my phone, punched in

have known

himself—the quiet confidence, the unconscious authority-it wasn't something a

smiled, easy and unbothered,

just a scholarship kid trying

suit he had been

to play a rich heir. Lucky me, huh? This is probably the nicest

I had believed

look for more part-time jobs, thinking I