The Lie Unraveling (Part 2)
1426 Words
(Ethan’s POV)
The door shuts behind her with a sound that feels final.
But the silence that follows isn’t quiet, it screams.
I sink into the couch, my head in my hands. The lilies lie crushed on the floor, their petals bruised like my conscience.
For two years, I told myself I’d made peace with losing her.
I built my company, filled my life with numbers, meetings, noise, anything to drown out the echo of her leaving.
But seeing her in that hospital bed, fragile, lost, calling me husband again, it broke something inside me.
I didn’t lie because I wanted to.
I lied because I couldn’t survive the truth.
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Flashback — Two Years Earlier
The fight started like all our others: too late at night, too many words unsaid.
The city glowed outside our penthouse window, and Ava stood in the kitchen, barefoot, holding her phone like it was a weapon.
“You missed dinner again,” she said, her voice trembling. “You promised.”
“I had a meeting,” I replied, tugging at my tie. “It ran late.”
“It always runs late, Ethan! You don’t even look at me anymore.”
“I’m doing this for us,” I snapped. “For our future.”
Her laugh was bitter. “Our future? Or your empire?”
I remember the way her eyes glistened, how she tried to keep her voice steady.
“You don’t get it,” she whispered. “I don’t want your money. I want my husband back.”
And I, arrogant, defensive, blind said the words that ruined everything.
“Maybe you should’ve married someone else, then.”
The look on her face, I’ll never forget it.
That moment, something inside her broke.
She turned, grabbed her keys, and walked toward the door.
“Ava, wait.”
She stopped, her back to me. “Tell me one thing, Ethan. If I disappeared tomorrow, would you even notice?”
I didn’t answer.
Not because I didn’t care but because I didn’t know how to prove it anymore.
She walked out.
And that night, I lost the only thing that ever mattered.
-------
Back to Present
I close my eyes, forcing the memory away. But guilt has claws. It doesn’t let go.
When she left, I tried to fix it. Flowers, apologies, lawyers, all too late.
She signed the papers and vanished. No calls. No messages. Just silence.
Until two weeks ago.
Until the accident.
The police called said her car had skidded off the highway in the rain. She had no ID, only an old driver’s license from our marriage days.
When I saw her at the hospital, pale and broken, her mind trapped in the past…
I thought maybe fate was giving us one last rewrite.
But fate doesn’t erase the truth, it just delays the explosion.
-------
A soft knock breaks my thoughts.
Lucas steps inside, cautious.
“She’s gone?”
I nod. “Packed a bag and left.”
He exhales. “You going after her?”
“I should.”
“But?”
“She hates me right now.”
“She has a right to,” he says, not unkindly.
I shoot him a look. “You’re not helping.”
“Maybe you need honesty more than help,” he says. “You didn’t just lie to her, Ethan. You lied to yourself.”
I stand abruptly, anger rising. “What was I supposed to do?
Tell her she left because she caught me signing that merger, the one that shut down her father’s company?”
Lucas blinks. “You mean she still doesn’t know that part?”
I freeze. The truth sits heavy in my chest like a stone.
No, she doesn’t.
She never knew.
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The Secret
It wasn’t just the late nights or the cold dinners that ended us.
It was betrayal, the kind that hides in boardrooms and balance sheets.
Her father’s construction firm was small, struggling.
My company’s merger offered expansion but I didn’t realize until too late that the acquisition meant dissolving his business entirely.
When the news broke, her father had a heart attack.
He survived but barely.
Ava never connected the dots.
She only saw my distance, my guilt, my sudden obsession with fixing things.
She thought I’d stopped loving her.
I had.
Not her, myself for such a terrible thing to her father.
-------
Lucas watches me quietly. “You need to tell her.”
“She’ll never forgive me.”
“Maybe not,” he says. “But at least she’ll know the truth.”
I run a hand through my hair. “You think she’ll even listen?”
“Ethan, she came back once. Maybe fate’s not done with you yet.”
-------
Later - The Rain
Night falls fast. The city lights blur behind rain-streaked glass.
I grab my coat, keys in hand.
I don’t know where she’s gone, but I can guess, the old studio. The one place that ever felt like hers.
When I get there, the door is unlocked. The lights are dim.
And there she is, standing in front of that same half-finished painting.
Her robe’s been replaced with jeans and a sweater, hair damp from the rain. She looks smaller somehow, fragile, but there’s fire in her eyes.
“You followed me,” she says without turning.
“You left the door open.”
“That didn’t mean ‘come in.’”
I take a slow step forward. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
She finally turns to face me. “That’s exactly what I should be.
Alone until I can figure out who the hell I am without your lies.”
I swallow hard. “You have every right to hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” she says, voice trembling. “That’s the worst part. I still love you and I wish I didn’t.”
My chest aches. “Then don’t stop.”
She shakes her head. “Love without truth is poison.”
“I know,” I whisper. “And there’s more you don’t know.”
Her eyes flash. “What now? Another secret?”
“The merger, the one that ruined your father’s company — it was mine.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
She blinks, disbelieving. “What?”
“I didn’t mean for it to happen. The board pushed it through.
By the time I realized, it was done. Your father’s company got absorbed and...”
“Don’t,” she cuts in, voice shaking. “Don’t you dare blame your board.”
Tears fill her eyes, and mine burn to match.
“I tried to fix it,” I say. “I paid his debts, funded his recovery, but you were gone before I could tell you.”
She stares at me, heartbreak and fury warring behind her gaze. “You destroyed my family’s life, and then you lied to me to feel better about yourself.”
“I was trying to make things right.”
“You don’t get to decide what ‘right’ means, Ethan!” she shouts.
I flinch. She’s right
The studio feels smaller now, the air thick with everything we never said.
Finally, she wipes her tears, steadying her voice. “You always wanted control. Even now, when I’ve lost my memories, you’re still trying to write my story.”
Her words hit harder than any blow.
I take a step closer, my voice low, desperate. “Then tell me how it ends, Ava. Tell me what to do.”
She looks at me for a long time. Her lip trembles, but her eyes don’t waver.
“It ends,” she whispers, “when I remember who I was before I loved you.”
Then she walks past me, into the rain, leaving the scent of lilacs and loss behind.
--------
I stay there for hours, staring at the half-finished painting.
The storm outside rages, thunder shaking the glass, lightning illuminating her brushstrokes, wild, chaotic, beautiful.
And for the first time, I realize the truth I’ve been running from:
She doesn’t need saving.
I do.
As lightning flashes again, my phone buzzes.
A message from an unknown number.
“She’s remembering.”
The blood drains from my face.
Because there’s only one person who could’ve sent that message and they shouldn’t know she’s alive.
---
The mysterious message hints that someone from their past, perhaps tied to the accident, is watching, suggesting Ava’s crash wasn’t an accident at all.
- Writer
