This Time I Choose Me

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

NORA

Our anniversary morning started like any other. Daniel kissed my forehead before I even opened my eyes, told me happy anniversary, and said he had a surprise planned for tonight. I let myself believe it. After everything I'd found, some stubborn part of me still wanted to believe it.

He left for work like normal. I spent the day trying to distract myself, going through wedding photos on my phone, touching my ring, telling myself maybe there was still an explanation. Maybe the hotel charges were for meetings. Maybe the redacted name was some old clerical mess that had nothing to do with us.

He texted around six. Something came up at the office. A deal that couldn't wait. He said he was sorry, said he'd make it up to me, said we'd celebrate tomorrow instead.

I stared at that message for a long time. Eight years, and our anniversary always seemed to be the one night something came up.

I couldn't sit in that house alone. Not tonight. Not with everything sitting heavy in my chest, threatening to spill out with nowhere to go. I needed Sophia. I needed her arms around me and her voice telling me it would be okay, the way she always did, ever since we were nineteen.

I drove to her place without even calling first. I never called first. That was the kind of friendship we had, the kind where you just showed up.

Her building was quiet when I got there, the hallway lights humming soft overhead. I used the spare key she gave me years ago, the one I kept on my ring next to my house key, and I let myself in like I always did.

The apartment was dim, just one lamp on somewhere. I heard voices before I saw anything. A man's voice, upstairs, low and easy in a way I knew better than my own heartbeat.

Daniel.

My stomach dropped, but some small foolish part of me still reached for an excuse. Maybe he stopped by to drop something off. Maybe there was a reason.

Then I heard her voice.

"You're really not spending your anniversary with your fake wife tonight?"

I stood frozen in the hallway, one hand still on the doorframe.

He laughed. Actually laughed, warm and low, the same laugh I used to fall asleep to.

"Nora was never the real one," he said. "She never mattered. Not like this."

The floor seemed to tilt under me. Eight years. Every late night, every trip, every quiet moment I forgave without asking questions, all of it collapsing into those few words spoken so easily, like I was nothing more than a small joke between them.

I must have made a sound, because I heard footsteps, and then they were both standing at the top of the stairs looking down at me.

Sophia had a robe wrapped loosely around her, her hair messy in a way that told me everything I didn't want to know. Daniel stood beside her in his undershirt, no tie, no jacket, nothing like a man who had rushed off for an emergency at the office.

I waited for shock on their faces. I waited for panic, for scrambling, for some kind of shame.

There was none of that.

Sophia's mouth pressed into a thin line, annoyed, like I'd walked in on something inconvenient instead of something that had shattered my entire life. Daniel just sighed, the way you sigh at a problem you're tired of dealing with.

"Nora," he said, and even now, even caught, his voice stayed calm, almost bored. "This isn't what it looks like."

"It's exactly what it looks like," I said, and my voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.

Sophia crossed her arms. "You weren't supposed to be here."

That was it. That was her response. Not I'm sorry. Not we should have told you. Just annoyance that I had interrupted something.

"Eight years," I said, and my voice cracked in the middle of the word. "Eight years, Daniel. I stood beside you at that courthouse. I signed my father's company over to you because you said it would protect us. I stood alone at my father's grave because you told me you had a board meeting. Was that a lie too?"

He didn't answer that. He didn't need to. His silence was the answer.

"Who is the wife on the marriage record?" I asked, and my hands were shaking again, the same shake from the bureau, from the kitchen island, from every moment since this had started unraveling. "Is it her? Is it Sophia?"

Something flickered across Sophia's face, fast, gone before I could be sure what it was. Daniel's jaw tightened.

"You should go home," he said. "We'll talk about this when I'm back."

"Talk about what," I said, my voice rising now, all the careful control I'd been holding onto for days finally cracking apart. "Talk about how you married someone else and let me believe I was your wife for eight years? Talk about how you let me sign away half my father's company for a marriage that was never even real?"

"It's complicated," he said.

"Don't," I said. "Don't you dare stand there and tell me it's complicated. You just told her I never mattered. That wasn't complicated. That was clear."

I turned before either of them could say anything else. I couldn't look at their faces one more second, couldn't stand in that hallway breathing the same air as the two people who had built a life out of lying to me. I ran for the door, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it over everything else.

"Nora, wait." Daniel's voice, closer now, footsteps fast on the stairs behind me.

I didn't wait. I hit the door and pushed out into the hallway, my shoes slipping slightly on the tile, and I ran for the stairwell instead of the elevator because I didn't want to stand still waiting for doors to open with him closing in behind me.

But he was faster. He always ran, kept himself in shape for the company photos, for the magazine features about the young CEO who had it all. He caught my arm at the top of the stairwell, his grip tight enough to hurt.

"Let go of me," I said.

"Just listen to me for one second," he said, and behind him, at the top of the stairs, Sophia stood watching with her arms still crossed, not even bothering to look ashamed.

"There is nothing you can say," I said, wrenching my arm free. "You already said it. I never mattered. Not like this."

His face changed then, something almost like frustration, like I was the unreasonable one for being hurt by the truth he'd just spoken out loud.

"You're overreacting," he said. "You always do this. Make everything bigger than it needs to be."