My Husband Called Me Disgusting

Chapter 5

No matter how much it hurt, I still had to go to work.

When I handed in my application, my supervisor broke into a wide smile and said it was about time I came to my senses.

The fellowship was set to begin in a month and a half. That was more than enough time to finalize the divorce.

During a break, I picked up my phone and found a string of messages from my best friend, Sophie.

Sophie: How gorgeous is that necklace your husband got you? A hundred thousand, right?

Sophie: I told you he loves you. There's no way a man like that would ever lose his temper with you.

I asked her how she knew about the necklace. She said she'd run into Nathaniel and his secretary at the Chanel counter, and when she went over to say hello, he'd told her he was buying me a necklace.

So even the necklace had been an afterthought. She'd caught him there with his new flame, and he'd bought it on the spot to cover his tracks.

Everyone believed Nathaniel loved me, that he was devoted to me and no one else. I had believed it too.

But love, it turned out, could be performed.

I sat with that for a while, typing and deleting, before I finally sent Sophie a single line: I'm going to divorce Nathaniel.

Her call came through before I'd even set my phone down.

She couldn't make sense of it. We were the couple everyone envied. How had it come to this? I told her everything, and when I finished there was a long silence before she spoke. "So even a man like Nathaniel can cheat," she said quietly. "Evelyn, whatever you decide, I'm with you."

After I hung up, I looked down at my hand. The diamond on my ring finger was small, modest even, but I had never wanted anything else.

Nathaniel had given it to me when he proposed. At the time, he was trying to prove himself to his family, co-founding a company with a friend, grinding through sleepless nights to close their first deal, surviving on less than four hours of sleep. He'd taken on part-time translation work for an old classmate just to save up enough for a ring he felt was worthy of me.

He collapsed from exhaustion not long after. The doctor told me that if they'd gotten to him any later, they might not have been able to bring him back. I stood at his bedside with red-rimmed eyes and asked him why he'd pushed himself that far. Even flat on his back, weak and pale, he was still smiling at me like a fool. He fumbled to wipe the tears off my face and pulled me close. "Because I wanted to bring you home sooner. You're too wonderful, and too many people have their eye on you. If I didn't make you mine fast enough, someone else would've taken you." He pressed his lips to my hair. "You're mine, Evelyn. I can't let go."

Even after Cole & Partners found its footing and money was no longer a worry, he tried countless times to replace the ring with something grander. I never let him. I had worn this one every day since he slipped it on my finger, because to me it was worth more than anything else in the world. It held everything he had once felt for me.

I took it off. Beneath it, a faint pale band marked where it had been, pressed into my skin by years of wearing. But that mark would fade eventually, just as one day I would finally pull this splinter from my heart.