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

had been

Selfish. Cruel. Heartless.

future with him, of leading him on, of being too much of a coward

And the worst part?

They were right.

future, I chose my

had never truly considered

wanted to laugh at how absurd it all was, but my lips wouldn't move, frozen in

And yet...

about it, Pax's act had never been

been there, thin and almost

customer grabbed my wrist, pulling me closer with the kind of entitlement that came

Pax had.

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

handled the situation, smooth and composed, as if confrontation

he turned to me, gaze

"Are you okay?"

I even had a chance to answer, he had taken my phone, punched in

should have

he carried himself—the quiet confidence, the unconscious authority-it wasn't

had smiled, easy and unbothered, and

scholarship kid trying to get

suit he had been wearing? Borrowed

a background actor to play a rich heir. Lucky me,

I had believed

him look for more part-time jobs, thinking I was helping him the way he