Chapter 3

I didn't catch a red-eye flight home. Instead, I checked into a nearby hotel.

After taking a shower and lying in bed, my mind felt hazy and numb.

Two years of dating. Ten years of marriage.

Just like that, Carter and I had spent twelve long years together.

Maybe even Carter himself had forgotten how desperately hard he fought to marry me a decade ago.

His love back then was so fierce, so honest, that I truly believed he would cherish me for a lifetime.

Back when we were long-distance, he used to sneak back on red-eye flights two or three times a week,

racing against the nighttime stars and the morning sun just to hold me.

My heart ached for him.

He would run his fingers through my hair and murmur that his little crybaby was waiting at home, and he couldn't bear to leave me alone.

Later, as his career took off and work consumed his life, I learned to adapt to the distance.

Until one midnight, he knelt before me covered in road dust, pulling out a diamond ring.

"Nora, from now on, I will be by your side every single night."

And so, we tied the knot.

I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him through his startup days, surviving our hardest, broke times.

It wasn't until I got pregnant that I finally stepped back to rest.

Yet I lost my babies, one after another.

In the end, I was stripped of my ability to ever carry a child again.

To say I never doubted our future would be a lie. I had offered him a divorce back then.

But Carter held my hands tight, his eyes overflowing with adoration and guilt.

"Nora, it's my fault for not protecting you better. For the rest of my life, I will pamper you like my own little girl."

I buried my face in his chest and wept, thinking I was the luckiest woman in the world to have found such a devoted man.

Even so, I had told him, "Carter, if you ever change your mind, you have to be honest with me."

Carter had solemnly promised.

Only today did I realize that while I was still recovering from my third miscarriage,

right when Carter was swearing his undying love to me,

his child with Vivian had already been born.

All these years, I had never once questioned his loyalty.

Yet trust, just like love,

is like sand sealed inside a glass bottle. Once it shatters, it blows away forever.

...

It was well past midnight when Carter finally found me in the hotel room, half-conscious from crying.

When he walked in, he still carried the pungent smell of hospital disinfectant.

He shed his coat and tucked my freezing feet into his warm chest.

For a brief, agonizing second, I felt as if we were thrown ten years back in time,

to when we were dirt poor, but madly in love.

Whenever I cried in our damp basement apartment, Carter would rush home and gently wipe away my tears just like this.

I gently pushed his hands away, a sharp, throbbing pain stabbing through my chest.

"Carter, let's get a divorce."