But I wanted to fight with him even less.

Victor, of all people, should have known that my parents died in a car crash because of an argument, and that it had haunted me my whole life.

The thing I feared most was fighting.

"Where are my things?"

I turned and yanked open the drawer, digging through it for a long time. Nothing.

Every single thing that belonged to me was gone.

"What things?"

"My earrings, the pearl pair, and that thin gold chain."

I could let everything else go.

But that one pair of earrings—

they were the only thing my mother had left me.

Victor frowned and tilted his head toward the living room.

"Kathleen said she just wanted to borrow them for a few days. Don't be so petty."

"Give them back."

My voice came out ice-cold.

Victor looked a little taken aback. "Once she's worn them enough, she'll definitely give them back to you—"

"I said now. Give them back to me right now!"

Hearing the urgency in my voice, his expression darkened too.

"Kathleen, where are those pearl earrings?"

Kathleen shrank her neck in like some pitiful little rabbit, her eyes already going red.

"I'm so sorry, Marie."

"I was going to give the earrings back to you when I came home today, but by the time I noticed, they weren't in my ears anymore. I lost them—"

"Lost them where?"

My face fell, my voice sharpening along with it.

"What good is an apology? If you know it's wrong to lose someone else's things, then go find them right now."

Kathleen cast a timid glance toward the window.

"But it's dark out now. I'm scared—"

I kept my eyes locked on her.

"That's all I have left of my mother. I don't care if it's dark out, I don't care if it's hailing or raining knives—you're going out there to find them."

Tears spilled down Kathleen's face. She stamped her foot and made to run outside.

"Kathleen, don't go."

Victor's expression turned cold as he pulled her behind him. "Marie, are you done making a scene?"

"It's just one cheap pair of earrings. Is there any need to be this aggressive?"

I studied the anger on his face and let out a slow, amused smile.

"Victor."

"Did you sleep with her?"

He choked, his face flushing red. "What kind of nonsense are you spouting?"

"Kathleen's just staying for a few days. A pipe burst at her place and it's being fixed. She's just a young girl, soaked through and miserable. I couldn't stand the thought of her checking into a hotel—"

"So you brought her back to our marital home, let her sleep in our bed, wear my clothes, put on my jewelry, eat out of my bowl. Is that right?"

"And then, because she mentioned a germ phobia,"

"I got driven out of my own home like some miserable stray dog with nowhere to go."

Victor's expression shifted again and again. "Could you not be so snide?"

"Did I ask you to come back early?"

"You just had to come home today, walk in on this, and make a scene. What's the point?"

Listening to him scold me without the slightest hesitation, I went numb.

Tomorrow was Victor's birthday.

To get back early and put together a birthday surprise for him, I'd pushed myself to the brink all week on that business trip, racing to stay ahead.

A workload that should have taken seven days, I'd crammed into five.

Tonight I'd even turned down my coworkers' get-together and the celebration dinner.

I'd flown back overnight.

Only to see this.

Only to see the "surprise" Victor had prepared for me with his own hands.

Sensing my silence, Victor finally noticed the birthday gift box I'd put together myself, sitting beside the suitcase at the door.

"You... you rushed back early to celebrate my birthday?"

It used to be.

But not anymore.

Victor's tone softened a little. "I'm sorry. I lost my temper just now and said things too harshly."

"You've been on edge ever since you got back today. You're my girlfriend, and Kathleen is a guest—more than that, she's my advisor's daughter."

"If you make her cry, my advisor and all the guys in the lab are going to want my head the next time I see them."

Victor came closer, reached out, and wrapped his arms around me from behind.

"Come on, Marie. Stop making a scene."

"Kathleen's only staying a couple more days. Once the pipes at her place are fixed, she'll move out. You'll just have to put up with a hotel for a little while."

There was a time when Victor pulling me into his arms like this would have left me smug, riding the high for ages.

But now his embrace felt like it was covered in thorns.

"Victor." I broke free of his hold. "When it comes right down to it, you still want to throw me out. Throw me out of my own home. Is that it?"

Victor knotted his brows and stared at me for a long moment, then sighed.

"If you don't want to move out, that's fine too."

He raised his hand and pointed toward the study and the storage room. "You can lay out a mat in there. Rough it for a few nights."

People really do laugh when they're past words.

I looked down and let out two short laughs. "So you're the one who changed the door code. Right?"

Victor froze for a second, then nodded.

"The old one was too simple. Kathleen said it wasn't very safe, so I changed it."

"Then why didn't you send me the new code?"

I was the owner of this place, and I didn't even know what the new code was.

Victor paused. "Sorry, I was so busy with my experiments I forgot. I'll send it to you now."

My phone buzzed twice.

Victor put his phone away. "There. Nothing else now, right?"

He pointed at the dog bowl sitting on the floor.

"Eat the cake if you want it, leave it if you don't. Just stop making a fuss."

I didn't say anything. I just turned and started packing my things.

There wasn't much to pack, really. It had all been gathered into one spot already.

As if someone had boxed it up for me ahead of time, leaving only the act of tossing it out the door.

As for the birthday gift box I'd prepared from a thousand miles away.

I never got to give it to him. I dropped it straight into the trash.

I dragged out the storage bin and stuffed clothes in one by one, working fast, the fabric rustling against itself.

The sound caught Victor's attention.

"What are you doing?"

He came over, startled, and pressed his hand down on the lid. "It's the middle of the night. Why are you even pulling out your off-season winter clothes?"

I didn't lift my head. My voice came out cold.

"Let go. I'm moving out."

"Moving out where? This is your home!"

I looked up at him. For an instant there was panic in his eyes, but it was quickly buried under impatience.

"Marie, can't you be a little more mature?"

"I already told you, there's nothing between me and Kathleen. We're just friends. She's my advisor's daughter, and my advisor has helped me out plenty. I can't just let her end up out on the street."

I gave a cold laugh.

"So you can stand to let me, your girlfriend, end up out on the street?"

Victor's frown deepened.

"You've got somewhere to go, don't you? You're a few years older than Kathleen, you travel for work all the time, you're used to hotels. You can adapt. Kathleen can't."

"Kathleen was pampered her whole life. She's a germaphobe. She can't handle living somewhere unfamiliar."

Kathleen padded in from the living room, barefoot.

"Marie, I'm so sorry, I didn't know you were coming back today... Maybe I should just go. I'll stay at a hotel. Please don't fight over me."

Her eyes were rimmed red, and she looked like a startled little rabbit, so pitiful it tugged at the heart.

Victor turned at once, his tone going soft.

"Where do you think you're going? It's freezing out there, and you just got over a cold."

"But..."

"No buts."

He glanced back at me, as if he'd finally found his way out. "I'll just make things clear with her. You go wait in the room, and don't come out."

"Kathleen is my advisor's daughter, and my junior in the program too. Looking after her is the right thing to do."

"Everything I have today, I owe to my advisor."

"Marie, I'm telling you, don't be petty about this."

I refused to give an inch.

"That your advisor did you a favor is your business. It has nothing to do with me."

"Victor, we aren't even married yet. Whoever you want to take in is your affair. Go ahead and bring her to your own place."

"But this is my home. You made it all the way to a doctorate, all that education, and you still don't get something this simple? Don't be generous with what isn't yours."

Just then, Victor's phone rang, and he took the call.

By the time he hung up, his words had changed.

"Fine. Don't bother moving out."

He grabbed his coat, took hold of Kathleen's suitcase, and turned to head out the door.

"I'll go find her another place to stay in a bit."

The two of them turned to leave, one behind the other, but my gaze was fixed on Victor's travel bag.

"So you're going to stay at a hotel with her too?"

"Marie, I already told you, she's my junior in the program. She's just come to my city. There's no way I can leave her to fend for herself."

Kathleen stepped back in to help him gather his clothes into the suitcase, then flashed me a smile.

"Marie, don't worry. I promise I'll take good care of Victor."

"You'll take care of him?"

I let out a cold laugh. "That's what you said last time too, and you ended up taking care of him all the way into the same hotel room, didn't you?"

"Marie!"

There was anger in Victor's voice. "Can you stop stirring up trouble out of nothing?"

"I already told you, that one time was colleagues snapping photos out of context. We were just talking in the same room, that's all. Don't go spreading filthy rumors."

With that, they turned and slammed the door on their way out.

For the two days that followed, Victor never came back.

Before dawn on the third day, Victor sent me a message.

"The lab got an assignment out of nowhere. I'm going out of town on a business trip, a week long. Don't wait up for me."

Any other time, the moment his message came in, I'd have fired back a reply instantly.

But I stared at this text for a long while.

Then I tapped delete.

Before that, I'd already come across Kathleen's social media feed.

The ones going to the same place on this "business trip" were the two of them, traveling together.

Calling it a business trip was generous. It was more of a company-funded vacation, all eating, drinking, and play.

I closed the chat and called an agent right away to put the home up for sale.

I moved fast. In the span of a single day, I scrubbed away every trace of myself from the marital home, clean and complete.

Even when the agent came to view the place,

he praised how the floors gleamed.

You couldn't even tell anyone had ever lived there.

Hearing that, I gave a bitter smile without meaning to.

Just like me. After all these years, I never really made it into his heart either.

"Miss Henson, this place is excellent in every way, the location, the neighborhood, the layout. With a little more time it would sell easily."

"Are you sure you want to rush it like this, sell within a week? I'm afraid the price might..."

"The price doesn't matter."

I said it without a shred of hesitation. "As long as it sells, the faster the better."