Carter called at 11:14 AM, two days after Christmas.

I was at the hotel desk with a cup of coffee going cold beside me when my phone lit up with his name. I let it ring twice. Then I picked up.

"What is this?" His voice was flat. Not angry — bored. Like I'd left a dish in the wrong cabinet.

"Divorce papers," I said. "Did you read them?"

"I tore them up." A pause. I heard the faint clink of glassware in the background, the low murmur of another space entirely. "Celine. Stop embarrassing yourself. Come home."

"I'm not embarrassed."

"You're being dramatic." The word landed the way he always intended it — small, dismissive, a hand waved at something unworthy of real attention. "We'll talk when you're done with whatever this is."

He hung up first.

I set the phone down on the desk. Picked up my coffee. It was cold. I drank it anyway.

So he'd torn them up. Hadn't even read them. Just ripped the pages in half and dropped them in the trash the same way he'd dropped every inconvenient thing I'd ever placed in front of him. Five years of that. Five years of watching my words land in his hands and disappear.

I opened my laptop and emailed Vivian Cho's office to request a second set of printed documents.

Then I waited.

---

The messages started at 8 PM.

Unknown number. I almost didn't open the first one. Then I saw the preview text — *just thought you should see this* — and something cold moved through my chest.

I opened it.

Carter, shirtless, standing at a stove in a kitchen I didn't recognize. Sunlight pouring through floor-to-ceiling windows behind him. He was laughing at something off-camera, relaxed in a way I hadn't seen in years — maybe ever. The kind of easy, unguarded happiness he never brought home.

The next message loaded before I could put the phone down.

Screenshots. His texts. *I've been thinking about you all day. I can't stop.* And: *You're the only thing that's ever made sense to me.* His words, his cadence, the exact way he formed sentences when he actually meant something. I recognized the rhythm of it. I'd spent years trying to earn that rhythm.

Then photos of her. Dior, stretched across cream silk sheets, hair fanned out, one bare shoulder catching the light. Curated. Deliberate. She knew exactly what she was sending and exactly why.

The messages kept coming. I didn't scroll fast. I read every one.

The last message was a GPS pin.

*He bought this for me. What did he ever buy for you? 💋*

I stared at my phone.

Thirty seconds. I counted them without meaning to — an old habit, something I did in the years when I used to stand outside Carter's study door trying to decide whether to knock.

Then I opened the Uber app.

I typed in the address from the GPS pin. A black sedan, four minutes away. I confirmed the ride, set the phone face-down on the desk, and put on my coat.

---

The driver's name was Malik Ferguson. The app showed a photo — broad-shouldered, calm-faced, four-point-nine stars. He pulled up exactly on time.

I got in without hurrying.

"Evening," he said. Glanced at me once in the rearview mirror, then back at the road. No small talk. I appreciated that.

We rode in silence for several blocks. The city outside was still wearing its Christmas lights, all that cheerful color draped over everything. I watched it pass and felt very far away from it.

Halfway there, I leaned forward.

"I need to ask you something."

He met my eyes in the mirror. "Go ahead."

"I need you to come upstairs with me. Stand at the door. Record what you see." I reached into my coat pocket and set two thousand dollars in cash on the center console. "That's for your time."

Malik didn't say anything right away. He pulled the car smoothly to the curb, put it in park, and turned around.

He looked at me the way people rarely do — actually looked, taking in the set of my jaw, my hands locked around my phone, my eyes that were dry and had been dry for two days now and intended to stay that way.

He nodded slowly.

"For two grand, I'll hold the door open and film the whole thing." He picked up the cash, folded it once, and slid it into his jacket. Then his voice dropped half a register. "But if somebody swings at you, I'm stepping in for free."

Something loosened slightly in my chest. Not relief exactly. More like the satisfaction of a lock clicking open.

"Understood," I said.

He put the car back in drive.

We didn't speak again. The GPS counted down the blocks. I sat with my hands in my lap and my spine straight and thought about Carter's handwriting on the back of that photograph.

*I will love Dior Guzman for the rest of my life.*

Fine.

Let's go see how that's working out for him.