His First Love Came Back

After the redemption story ended, my husband grew tired of me.

We’d been married for eight years, the kind of couple everyone else pointed to as proof that true love existed. The model pair. But then, the story’s leading lady came home.

That’s when he started to drift. I’d catch him staring into the middle distance, lost in a world that didn’t include me. He started coming home late, his clothes carrying the faint, sweet ghost of a perfume I didn’t own.

The third time I found them together, their bodies angled toward each other in a way that was more than just conversation, I looked at him, my heart a placid lake on the surface and a maelstrom underneath.

"Let's get a divorce."

As we walked out of the city clerk’s office, the papers signed and filed, he spoke in a low voice, "You can't go back, you know. I'll give you a generous settlement… we can still be friends."

"No, thank you," I said, not looking at him. "This is goodbye."

1

I came into this world for one reason: to save the beautifully broken man who was destined to be the tragic second lead.

My mission was to redeem Ethan Thorne.

I arrived in his life long before the story’s true heroine, Claire, ever could. I was there through the brutal boarding school years, a constant presence, the one who smoothed his jagged edges and fought his demons alongside him. When his father, in a drunken rage, took a belt to him, I was the one who threw myself over his bleeding back, shielding him. I was the one who stitched him up in my tiny apartment, my hands shaking but steady.

To break through the fortress of paranoia he’d built around his heart, I told him the absolute truth. "I am here for you. My only purpose in this world is you."

When my mission was officially complete, when he was healed and whole, he begged me to stay. On his knees, he pleaded.

So I stayed. We got married. The turbulence of his past gave way to the quiet, steady rhythm of domestic life. The endless, mundane, beautiful trivialities of a shared existence.

And he started to resent me for it.

"You know," he said one evening, sprawled on the sofa, the words tossed off like a joke, "if I'd known you were a lifer, maybe I wouldn't have rushed into marriage. Could have played the field a couple more years."

He must have seen the flicker of pain on my face because he immediately sat up, his playful demeanor vanishing. He reached for me, his grip tight, almost desperate.

"Ava. That's not what I meant. You know what you mean to me. You know it."

I didn’t answer. My heart felt like it had been dropped into a vat of acid, the burn of it sharp and suffocating.

"Goodnight," I murmured, pulling away. "I'm a little tired."

I walked into our bedroom, closed the door softly behind me, and burrowed under the covers. Only then, in the silent dark, did I let myself cry.

2

"You’ve got all these gorgeous young things throwing themselves at you. You could have a little fun on the side. I mean, your wife’s not getting any younger, man."

"Don't talk like that again. Ava… she's amazing. It's just…"

Ethan was in his study with a friend, their voices low and relaxed, joking the way men do when they think no one is listening. I stood outside the door, a tray of sliced fruit in my hands, my feet cemented to the floor.

I had once analyzed Ethan’s psyche with the precision of a surgeon. His childhood was a black hole of cold, oppressive darkness, and it had left him with a voracious appetite for the extreme. He craved the jagged peaks of emotion, not the comfortable plateau of contentment. This was a man who would kneel in a torrential downpour all night just to beg the woman he loved not to leave. This was a man who once scaled the outside of a six-story building to close a deal because the elevator was broken.

His entire being was wired for risk, for the thrill of the chase.

And the life I had built for us—our peaceful, stable, loving life—was beginning to bore him to death.

He was just waiting for the right excuse to shatter the beautiful, fragile thing we had created.

3

I came home from work to find the table set for one. Our housekeeper was plating the salmon. I looked at the empty chair across from me. "Ethan's not coming home for dinner?"

"Mr. Thorne called. He said he has a business dinner. A late one."

I nodded, not saying a word. I ate my meal in silence, the cavernous quiet of the dining room amplifying the sound of my fork against the plate. Later, lying in our king-sized bed, sleep was a distant country I couldn't reach.

The "business dinners" were becoming more frequent. The alien scent of that perfume on his blazers was becoming more pronounced. It was sharp and cloying, an olfactory insult.

I watched the numbers on the clock glow in the dark, marking time, each minute an eternity.

It felt like a century had passed before I heard the soft beep of the keypad at the front door.

I sat up, ready to go out to the living room, to feign sleepiness and ask him how his night was.

But then I heard his voice, soft and low. "Claire, this is as far as you should go. You've had a bit too much to drink. I'll have my driver take you home."

And then her voice, laced with a fragile, almost tearful joy. "Ethan… I can't believe you never deleted my fingerprint."

A pause. A heavy, loaded silence. "I was just trying it… on a whim. I didn't think it would actually work… I'm sorry."

I slumped against our bedroom door, the wood cold against my back. The words were a physical blow, a tidal wave crashing over me, leaving me breathless and drowning.

Silence stretched for a few minutes outside. Then, Ethan spoke again, his tone carefully neutral. "You should go. It's very late."

"Ethan, please," Claire’s voice was broken, expertly so. It was a sound engineered for sympathy. "I'm so scared. Every time it gets dark, I just… I remember all of it. The bad things. Can I please just stay here for one night? Just one."

She let out a small, wounded sound. "You used to promise you'd always keep a room for me in your home. Is that… is that still true?"

Anyone would have felt a pang of pity hearing her. Especially a man like Ethan, his senses softened by alcohol.

He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was thick. "I'm married, Claire."

It was a standoff. I could feel the tension through the door.

Then came the sound of quiet weeping, growing steadily louder. It was a masterful performance. Ethan let out a heavy sigh. "Keep your voice down. You'll wake Ava… That room… yes, I kept it for you."

"Oh, thank you… thank you, Ethan."

The undisguised happiness in her voice sent a fresh wave of bitterness through me. I remembered when we were designing this house. I’d asked him why the guest room was the exact same size as the master suite. He’d given me a plausible, loving explanation about wanting our parents or our closest friends to be comfortable when they visited.

He had lied. So easily.

Tears I didn't know I had left began to slide, hot and silent, down my cheeks.

Outside, the man I had saved was delivering the final, devastating blow.

"Go on up," I heard him say. "Ava doesn't usually get up until eight. I'll wake you at six. You'll be gone before she's even awake. You two won't run into each other."

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