Chapter 25: (END)

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The years after the divorce blurred together into a gray smear of rejection letters and unanswered calls.

I tried to find new work. My reputation preceded me—Google my name and Meredith’s videos came up on the first page. Recruiters stopped returning calls. Former colleagues pretended not to recognize me.

I ended up in insurance sales. Commission-based. Cold calls to strangers who hung up within seconds. The kind of job I would have laughed at in my previous life.

Meredith, meanwhile, refused to finalize our divorce. She contested every filing, demanded endless documentation, stretched the proceedings into years of legal purgatory. I couldn’t remarry. Couldn’t move on. Couldn’t escape.

I sent messages to Vivian sometimes. Apologetic ones. Desperate ones. She never responded. Eventually, her number stopped working—changed, probably. I’d become exactly what she said I was: irrelevant.

And then one day, on a street corner in Marsten Bay, I saw her.

She looked… incredible. Healthy. Confident. Happy in a way I’d never seen when we were married. She was meeting someone—a boyfriend, she said—and she couldn’t stay to talk.

“I don’t carry it anymore,” she told me. “You’re just a footnote. Someone I used to know.”

She walked away without looking back. And I stood there, holding my stack of insurance pamphlets, and cried.

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Not for her. Not even for myself, really. I cried because I finally understood—truly understood—what I’d lost. Not just Vivian, but the version of myself that might have been decent. The life I might have had if I’d made different choices.

I think about my father sometimes. He was a good man, by all accounts. Faithful to my mother. Present for his children. He died when I was twenty, before he could see what I’d become.

I wonder if he’d be disappointed. I wonder if he’d even recognize me.

The day I got fired, I saw Meredith gloating outside my office building, and something clicked into place.

I did this.

All of it. Every choice, every betrayal, every casual cruelty—they were mine. I couldn’t blame Vivian for leaving. Couldn’t blame Meredith for being who she always was. Couldn’t blame anyone but the man in the mirror.

I had exactly the life I’d earned.

And I was going to have to find a way to live with it.

Harper finished her dramatic reading of the Nathan Calloway timeline, her eyes bright with vindictive joy.

“So? Isn’t it amazing? He got everything he deserved!”

I took a sip of my coffee. Thought about it.

“It’s not worth celebrating,” I said.

Her face fell. “But—”

“His misery doesn’t make me happier. It doesn’t undo anything. It’s just…” I shrugged. “Sad, really. The whole thing is sad.”

Harper looked like I’d stolen her birthday. Then I smiled and added:

“But you know what is worth celebrating? My promotion. And my raise. So tonight—shopping mall, my treat. You in?”

Her disappointment vanished instantly. “Obviously yes!”

We finished our coffee and headed out into the afternoon sun. Behind us, Marsten Bay stretched toward the ocean, beautiful and indifferent. Somewhere in that city, Nathan Calloway was selling insurance and paying for his choices.

I didn’t wish him well. But I didn’t wish him harm either.

I just didn’t think about him at all.

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THE END

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Message from Noa: Have a beautiful weekend dear readers. Today we have three new novels on gal novels, and I hope you enjoy them. As always… God loves you, and Noa wishes you all the best. („• ֊ •„)੭

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