He'd left in a rush.

"Madison needs me. I have to go take care of her. You can get yourself home, right?"

That night, walking home alone, I realized someone was following me.

I was shaking so hard I could barely keep moving.

I made it as far as a convenience store and ducked inside, and the clerk took pity on me, called the police, and saw me home afterward.

By the time I got there my clothes were soaked through.

The rain left me with acute pneumonia.

While I was in the hospital, he stayed at Madison's side the whole time. Not even a text.

The day I was discharged, I called him.

I'd meant to tell him we should break up. In the end I said nothing at all.

A year ago, on a business trip, I got caught in a robbery at the airport.

Hands trembling, I called him.

"Can you come pick me up?"

He was in the kitchen at the time, making soup for Madison, and all he said was,

"Just grab a cab home. Madison wants chicken soup, I can't get away."

What he didn't know was that not far from me, a man with a knife was attacking people.

One dead, one wounded.

The injured man was less than two hundred yards from where I stood.

I walked out of that terror by myself, and he never even asked whether I'd made it home safe.

It's not that it didn't hurt.

But I loved him.

And because I loved him, I always found more room to forgive.

He'll get better with time, I told myself.

Then I lost the baby, and I finally couldn't keep lying to myself.

I answered my friend calmly.

"You're right. He's the one who doesn't deserve me."

All along, my love had been pure and fierce.

He was the one who could never hold it. He took everything I gave, every sacrifice, as his due, and left every hurt and every grievance of mine to rot.

So I'm done with him.

My life went on the way it always had, steady, unremarkable.

The only difference was that I stopped resisting matchmaking dates.

I started letting myself meet different men, get to know all kinds of people.

Back when I was with Adam, I didn't have a single male friend.

I never wore the floral dresses and short shorts I liked, only because he didn't like them.

Now I lived entirely on my own terms.

A month slipped by just like that. I thought it would stay this way for good.

Then one day I was having dinner at a restaurant with a man I'd recently met.

I looked up and saw Adam, not far off.

The man across from me was gently settling on a time and place for our next meeting.

Adam came over with a thunderous face and stopped right in front of us.

"So you couldn't wait to line up your next guy."

Seeing him again, hearing something that ugly, my face went cold.

"It's none of your business."

He let out a scornful laugh.

"Deborah, are you done throwing this fit?"

He held out a box.

"I brought this back from Iceland for you. See if you like it."

The mention of a gift struck me as bitterly funny.

"Is it another thing Madison didn't want?"

He blinked, thrown.

He probably hadn't expected this blunt, sharp side of me.

He reined himself in and spoke.

"Deborah, I know I've neglected you lately. I'll do my best to—"

I cut him off, impatient.

"Adam, we've already broken up. You don't need to say any of this to me."

His patience ran out completely.

"How long are you going to keep this up?"

"You know perfectly well Madison's young and doesn't think things through, and you still have to hold it against her."

"Calling off the wedding, getting rid of the baby, you don't think you're being unreasonable? You want me to just abandon Madison, leave her to fend for herself? You know that's impossible."

I looked at him, and almost wanted to laugh.

He had always known. He knew exactly what I really minded, and he hadn't cared.

In his heart, no one had ever mattered the way Madison did.

Whatever Madison did, she was young, she didn't know better. Whatever I did, I was making a scene over nothing.

"I'm serious."

"Adam, I don't love you anymore."

"Deborah, we've been together for years. We were so close to getting married. If you really can't make room for Madison, I'll send her abroad to study, and once she's grown up a little, the two of us can—"

"I'm me, and you're you. There is no 'us'."

I looked at him without warmth and said it slowly, one word at a time.

"Adam, your clinging is genuinely exhausting."

The air went solid all at once.

The last bit of warmth drained out of his face, and his eyes turned sharp on me.

His voice came out cold as ice.

"Fine."

"Deborah, you think I can't live without you?"

"If you hadn't gotten pregnant before the wedding and backed me into a corner, do you think I'd ever have wanted to marry you?"

"Thank you for calling off the engagement. Now I won't have to wake up every day facing someone I got sick of a long time ago."

With that, he dropped the gift box straight into the trash without a second's hesitation.

Then he turned and strode off.

He walked away, his posture cold and absolute, without a trace of reluctance.

I sank back against the chair.

My fingers were trembling slightly.

He thought my pregnancy had been a setup, a scheme to force him to marry me.

In his heart, that was the kind of person I was.

I clenched my fingers hard and held on to the surface calm, refusing to come apart in front of anyone.

Only my heart felt like someone had run a knife through it, raw and bleeding.

Not long after, a close friend of mine got married.

I hadn't wanted to go, afraid I'd run into Adam.

But she begged me.

"Debbie, please, I'm still short one bridesmaid. I'm begging you, help me out."

"Adam already said he's away on business next month, so he can't come to the wedding."

"Don't worry, you won't run into him."

I thought it over, and agreed.

The day of the wedding, the whole place was alive with noise and celebration.

I was hurrying across the banquet hall when my eyes unexpectedly locked with someone else's.

Adam stood a little way off, a glass of champagne in his hand.

He looked at me, his gaze calm and still.

My friend came over, full of apology.

"Debbie, I'm so sorry, I don't even know how this happened."

"Adam swore he wasn't coming to the wedding, and then just now he said his work schedule changed last minute, so he could make it after all."

I shook my head.

It was fine. As long as I kept my distance, it didn't matter.

There were so many people at the wedding. There'd be no reason for our paths to cross.

Soon the mood swelled to its peak.

A few of the women guests kept glancing toward Adam, and one of them finally worked up the nerve to walk over to him.

"Hi. Do you have a girlfriend? Can I get your Instagram?"

Every eye in the room turned in that direction.

Adam's cold gaze swept over the girl in front of him.

The next second, it settled on me, certain and deliberate.

I knew what he meant.

He was telling me that if I bowed my head and gave in now, he would still give me one more chance.

Otherwise, I might really lose him for good.

I didn't move. I just quietly ate a piece of candy.

And Adam went on staring at me, stubborn about it.

Until the smile on that girl's face could barely hold, on the edge of turning into embarrassment and humiliation.

Someone finally stepped in to smooth things over.

“Come on now, Adam just broke up. Bringing this up isn't right.”

“You've got to give him time to get over the last one. His ex is standing right here, after all. If he took you up on it tonight, by tomorrow he'd be the heartless cad who dumped one girl and jumped straight to the next.”

I let the candy dissolve slowly on my tongue and spoke without any heat at all.

“We've already broken up. No one needs to worry about me.”

“I've already found someone I love. I hope everyone finds someone they love too.”

The air froze in an instant.

Adam stared at me, something like a storm gathering under that calm gaze.

“You have someone you love?”

One of our friends, already a few drinks in, blurted it out, wide-eyed.

“So does that mean you'll be getting married soon too?”

I nodded.

“Maybe. When there's good news, I'll be sure to send you all an invite.”

“Right. No one moves faster or more efficiently than Deborah.”

Adam's voice came cold, edged with a sneer.

“She got pregnant on purpose to force me into marrying her, then the second she didn't want it anymore she rushed off, got rid of the baby, and called off the engagement. And now she's already got someone she loves. After all these years together, this is the first time I've realized you can know someone's face without ever knowing their heart.”

Every word was meant to paint me as the one who'd been two-timing all along, the one playing both sides, the one who strayed first.

He wiped himself clean of all of it without breaking a sweat and dumped every fault onto me.

Once, those words would have gone in like the sharpest needles and left me bleeding.

But now none of it touched me.

“Yes. Being with someone you don't love is too painful. I'm not going to force it.”

“Starting today, there's nothing between us anymore. From here on, we live our own lives.”

Silence settled over the room. No one said a word.

Adam looked livid. He shoved his chair back, stood, and walked straight out of the banquet hall.