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:

seven days. I haven't told my boyfriend yet. How do I break it to

comments had

Selfish. Cruel. Heartless.

of never planning a future with him, of leading him on, of

And the worst part?

They were right.

future, I

had never truly considered

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

And yet...

it, Pax's

thin and almost imperceptible,

night we met, I was working a part-time shift at a bar when a drunk customer grabbed my wrist, pulling me closer with the kind of entitlement that came from knowing no one would

Pax had.

the man's fingers off my arm, his presence alone enough to make

handled the situation, smooth and composed, as if

he turned to me, gaze flickering over my

"Are you okay?"

had a chance to answer, he had taken my phone, punched in his number, and

have

confidence, the unconscious authority-it wasn't something a struggling college student could

he had smiled, easy and unbothered, and

scholarship kid

expensive suit he had been wearing? Borrowed from set, he

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

I had believed

naïve enough to help him look for more part-time jobs,