Chapter 3

As I sat in the back of the cab, my thoughts started spiraling, unraveling the calm façade I’d tried so hard to maintain while chatting with the driver.

Why?

Why had I been the one standing by Ethan all these years, and yet he still couldn’t forget Summer?

My fists clenched involuntarily. The sharp sting of my nails digging into my palms was the only thing anchoring me to reality, holding together the fragile pieces of my composure.

And then it happened.

A truck, out of control and going the wrong way, barreled onto the road. It came out of nowhere, veering straight toward us.

The driver saw it too late. There was no time to react.

The collision was instant and deafening.

In that split second, it felt like the world dissolved into nothingness.

The noise around me faded into a distant hum, like static on a broken radio. My body felt weightless, as if it were floating in the air. Even pain seemed to disappear, leaving only an eerie, hollow silence.

I didn’t know how much time passed before sensation returned, but when it did, it came back all at once.

The pain hit me like a tidal wave, sharp and unrelenting, driving me to the brink of unconsciousness. Every nerve in my body felt like it was on fire.

I barely registered the people around me, their voices muffled as they worked to pull me from the wreckage. They lifted me carefully and placed me on the waiting stretcher.

The ambulance doors slammed shut, and as we sped toward the hospital, a faint vibration in my pocket broke through the haze of pain.

My phone.

It was still intact, somehow, miraculously surviving the crash. And now, it was ringing.

I didn’t need to look to know who it was.

Ethan.

Even though I couldn’t move, I just knew.

“Please,” I croaked, my voice barely audible. I turned my head toward the nurse, desperation thick in my tone. “Please, answer it for me. Please.”

Something in my plea must have moved her, because after a moment of hesitation, she picked up the phone and held it to my ear.

I wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to tell him I was hurt, that I needed him, that I missed him so much I could barely breathe.

But before I could say anything—before I could even whisper a single word—his voice came through, cold and biting.

“Annie,” he snapped, his tone laced with irritation, “what stupid stunt are you pulling now? You’re late.”

3

Tears streamed down my face, hot and uncontrollable.

The pain from the crash was unbearable, but it was nothing compared to the ache his words left behind.

What was I to him, really?

His partner?

A convenient distraction for his loneliness?

No, I was less than that. I was air.

Invisible, unnoticed, but always there. In the years when Summer was gone, he’d needed me—not because he cared, but because I was just there, filling the empty spaces she left behind.

Now that Summer was back, I had become carbon dioxide. Something he couldn’t wait to exhale, discard, and forget.

I forced out a bitter, hollow laugh, though it felt more like a gasp.

“Hang up,” I said, my voice raw and cracked.

The nurse looked at me, her face a mixture of pity and hesitation, but I nodded weakly. She ended the call.

I had come to the courthouse not to finalize our divorce but to see him one last time.

I wanted to beg him to stay, to give us another chance.

But his cold indifference had shattered the fragile dream I’d been clinging to.

The truth, raw and brutal, stared me in the face.

Ethan did not love me.

He never had.

Reality hit me like a freight train. My dream of a life with him—of being his wife, of mattering to him—was nothing more than a cruel illusion.

I felt the nurse’s sympathetic gaze on me, but I didn’t care. I broke down completely, sobbing uncontrollably in the back of the ambulance.

The people around me whispered, their voices hushed.

“Poor girl,” one of them said. “She must be in so much pain. That crash was brutal.”

I wanted to laugh at the irony, but the sound wouldn’t come.

The tears fell harder instead.

Yes, I was in pain.

But it wasn’t the crash that was killing me.

No, this was a pain that went deeper than broken bones and torn skin.

It was the pain of a thousand dull knives carving through my chest, ripping apart everything I thought I knew about love.

Every blade stripped away another piece of my dignity, my pride, my self-worth.

And yet, in its cruel, merciless way, the pain also woke me up.

It forced me to see the truth I had been too blind to face.

Ethan never loved me.

And now, I needed to stop loving him.

For the first time in years, I felt something stir deep inside me—a spark of clarity, of resolve.

I would crawl out of this endless cycle of heartbreak.

I would let him go.

I would find myself again.