Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Whatever else Damon had meant to demand stuck in his throat at how flat I sounded.

As I pulled up to the building, the group chat for Damon’s company suddenly lit up with dozens of messages in a row.

I opened it. At the top was a photo from Fiona: Damon, shirtsleeves rolled up, kneeling on the floor fixing her router.

The caption: Look at our boss! Just looking at this, I’d work overtime for free!

The rest of the office exploded:

“OMG the boss doing manual labor? Isn’t he a total neat freak?”

“Damn, he’s even hotter out of a suit. I’m officially crushing on the boss.”

“Wake up, people. The new personal assistant posted that. She’s marking her territory.”

Before Damon hired an assistant, all of this had been my job—for free.

Then Fiona took over my work, and I forgot to leave the chat.

Expressionless, I tapped Leave Group.

Now that I’d decided to go, watching these people put on their little show felt like watching a cheap circus.

For a moment, I remembered when I’d first started at the company. Damon used to post my day in the group chat every single day.

Candid shots of me making coffee. Writing up his schedule.

There wasn’t a person in the whole office who couldn’t tell he was crazy about me.

But all that changed the moment Fiona showed up.

She took over everything I did. Damon stopped posting about me and favored his new assistant, openly and behind the scenes.

A coworker I’d gotten along with once grumbled privately that Fiona wasn’t as good at the job as Aria, and Damon docked her year-end bonus on the spot.

In the end, I quietly wired her five thousand dollars myself, so she wouldn’t quit in a rage.

Back in the apartment I’d lived in for eight years that still wasn’t mine, I packed up what I’d be taking with me.

My eyes fell on the thick Polaroid scrapbook at the back of the cabinet.

I sat on the edge of the bed and paged through it.

Eight years ago, he’d promised me that when this scrapbook was full of our memories, we’d go get married.

He said he’d win me over with his heart, bit by bit, until I wanted to be his wife.

This scrapbook, built up over countless days and nights, had just one blank page left.

And it had all come to nothing anyway.

I carried it downstairs to an empty patch of ground and set it on fire with a lighter.

I watched the photos inside burn, bit by bit, turning to ash, and with them, eight years of my youth.

That’s when Damon came home.

All the color drained from his face. He ran over, shoved me to the ground, and stamped furiously at the ashes, watching the flames race through every photo, and screamed at me:

“Why are you burning it? Are you out of your mind? All our memories, all of it—you’ve destroyed everything!”