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 my boyfriend yet.

comments had been

Selfish. Cruel. Heartless.

leading him on, of being too much of

And the worst part?

They were right.

my future, I chose my

truly considered

was, but

And yet...

about it, Pax's act had

there, thin and almost imperceptible,

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

Pax had.

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

had handled the situation, smooth and composed, as if confrontation was something he had been raised to

he turned to me, gaze flickering over my

"Are you okay?"

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

have known

unconscious authority-it

smiled, easy and unbothered,

just a scholarship kid

he had been wearing? Borrowed from set, he

agency needed a background actor to play a rich heir. Lucky me, huh? This is

I had

was even naïve enough to help him look for more part-time jobs, thinking I was helping