Academic Glory After A Bitter Divorce

When my brother became a widower, my wifea decorated Army Majordecided she wanted a divorce.

She sat across from me, her expression a masterclass in manufactured guilt. Before Rachel died in the line of duty, she begged me to look after Chris, Diana said softly. You know how hard it is for a man to be left alone like this. I can't just stand by and do nothing.

I looked at her. I nodded. And without a single ounce of hesitation, I agreed to sign the papers.

Because in my previous life, I had refused. I had invoked my late parents dying wishes to tether her to me, desperate to save a marriage that was already rotting from the inside out.

The result? Chris spun a narrative of victimization that painted him as a tragic, cursed widower. When the town turned on him, he staged several pathetic suicide attempts. Diana, entirely consumed by her devotion to him, grew to resent me with a toxic, blinding hatred. She filed a formal report to the military brass, claiming our marriage was the result of my family's relentless coercion.

I was dragged through the mud. Condemned by the entire base. Diana and Chris orchestrated a punishment so cruel it still haunts my nightmares: I was forced out of my home, essentially indentured as a live-in caretaker for a violently unstable, dying woman on the outskirts of town. I became a punching bag, a pariah, and eventually, a corpse.

This time, I took the divorce. I let her go, turning my eyes instead toward the grueling university admissions exams. I was going to get my degree. I was going to get my life back.

"I've submitted the paperwork to the command center. Once it clears the brass, you can both come back to my office to finalize the dissolution."

The base chaplain shook his head, his face etched with genuine regret as he ushered us out of his office.

Stepping out into the crisp autumn air, I stared at the people walking along the sidewalks of the base. For a fleeting second, the vastness of the world felt overwhelming. I didn't know where to go.

Diana, however, could barely contain her relief. Her eyes were bright as she lowered her voice, leaning in close.

"Beckett, I know this is incredibly unfair to you," she murmured. "But once Chris is through the worst of his grief, we can remarry. Just... keep the divorce quiet for now. Please."

Looking at the woman standing before mea woman whose heart and mind were entirely consumed by my brotherI felt a wave of profound, hollow pity.

If the agonizing memories of my past life weren't burned into my retinas, I might have actually believed her bullshit. The only reason she wanted to keep it a secret was to protect her pristine military career and shield Christhe one who got away, her golden boyfrom any collateral damage.

I lowered my eyes, masking the coldness there. "I understand," I said quietly.

Diana nodded, satisfied, and walked away.

But it didn't even take forty-eight hours for the whispers to start. The rumor mill on a military base is a vicious, living thing. Soon, everyone was saying that I had blackmailed Diana into our marriage by threatening her family's financial ruin.

Through the grapevine of enlisted men and base wives, I was swiftly transformed into a monster. The avalanche of dirty looks and muttered insults dragged me right back to the suffocating isolation of my past life.

It was exhausting. Even after I willingly stepped aside, Diana hadn't hesitated to throw me to the wolves.

I swallowed the bitter pill of my anger, waiting for a chance to confront her. But she was gone. For days, she remained permanently stationed at Chriss side, catering to his fragile emotional state.

It wasn't until nearly a week later that she finally returned to our house to pack a bag of fresh clothes.

The moment she stepped into the bedroom and met my gaze, the polite smile vanished from her lips. Annoyance hardened her features. "We're basically divorced, Beckett. You don't need to wait up for me anymore."

The silence in the room stretched, thick and heavy.

"Have you heard what they're saying out there?" I finally asked. "They're saying I coerced you into marrying me."

Diana's aggressive posture faltered for a fraction of a second. "I've been busy," she deflected, looking away. "I don't have time to listen to base gossip."

Watching her evade my eyes, a cold clarity settled over me. Until this exact moment, some pathetic, lingering part of me had held onto a shred of hope. I thought that by giving her the divorce, she might spare me the brutal character assassination of my previous life.

But for Chris, she would gladly watch me hang.

A hollow laugh escaped my throat. "Diana, you know exactly why we got married. If we're ending this, the least you can do is clear the air. I refuse to carry the weight of these lies."

Something in my words struck a nerve. Her face darkened, her military authority flaring as she snapped at me.

"Do you have any idea what Chris is going through right now?! If I hadn't let those rumors distract people, the pressure would have driven him to kill himself! You're his brother, for God's sake. How can you just stand there and be so selfish?!"

She took a step closer, her voice rising. "Besides, Chris was always the one I wanted. If your parents hadn't leveraged my family's debts, do you really think I ever would have walked down the aisle with you?!"

Hearing her weaponize my dead parents sent a sharp, physical ache through my chest.

"Your parents were the ones who came to mine, begging for the arrangement!" I shot back, my voice vibrating with restrained fury. "How the hell is that my parents' fault?! If you loved Chris so much, you should have had the spine to say no!"

Back then, Diana was desperate for a promotion. She needed the political and financial backing my family could provide, so she eagerly accepted my ring. I remembered nights on the porch, her head resting against my chest, her voice soft in the dark: Now that I'm yours, Beckett, I promise I'll only ever love you. I'll spend my life making you happy.

When my parents passed, they left their entire estate to her as a sign of absolute trust. She hadn't kept a single promise.

The bitter taste of betrayal flooded my mouth. The bedroom around me began to blur, a hot sting behind my eyes stealing my voice.

Through the ringing in my ears, Diana's tone was ice-cold.

"I don't want to look at you right now. And I won't have you disturbing Chris. Pack your things and move out to the old hunting cabin on the edge of town."

Rachel's military funeral was held that afternoon. Diana led her entire battalion to the veterans' cemetery to pay their respects.

The ceremony was somber, heavy with brass and the crisp folds of the flag. Half the town had turned up. Me included.

From my spot in the crowd, my eyes were drawn to the front of the procession. Without a single care for the hundreds of eyes on them, Diana wrapped her arms around a weeping Chris, letting his tears soak into the dark fabric of her dress uniform.

"No matter what happens, I will always be right here with you," I heard her murmur.

They clung to each other like star-crossed lovers.

The sight of it was a physical blow to the ribs. It had been years since Diana had touched me with even a fraction of that tenderness.

The chaplain caught my eye and quietly whispered something to Diana. She finally, reluctantly, released Chris. Her face turned to stone as she gestured for me to stand beside her.

As I moved forward, the whispers of the soldiers around us drifted into my ears, sharp and intentional.

"Can't believe a guy who looks that put-together is such a snake. Holding a family hostage just to get a wife."

"Major Stafford is a saint. If I were her, I would've filed for divorce on day one."

The murmurs grew louder. I waited for Diana to say something. Anything. To shut it down. She stood rigidly silent, her jaw set.

My stomach dropped. I scanned the faces of the men in her unitmen who used to come over for Sunday barbecues, who used to call me family. Now, they looked at me like dirt on their boots.

If she wasn't going to defend me, I had to do it myself.

"You want to accuse me of coercion?" I asked, raising my voice to carry over the wind. "Show me the proof. Because if you can't, I have every right to"

"Enough!" Diana's voice cracked like a whip, cutting me off instantly. "This is a funeral! Show some damn respect!"

The whispers died instantly.

I turned to her, my hands balling into fists at my sides. "You won't defend me, and you won't even let me defend myself? Chris's reputation is sacred, but mine means nothing?"

Diana didn't even look at me. "His wife just went into the ground, Beckett. He is completely alone in the world. Do you have any capacity to understand his pain?"

The memory of my previous lifethe forced captivity, the squalor, the slow, agonizing death of becoming a forgotten widower myselfflared hot in my veins.

"What makes you think I don't understand?" I spat.

Diana frowned, opening her mouth to argue, but a voice from the back of the crowd muttered, "The guy's wife is barely cold and he's practically crawling into the Major's uniform. Pathetic."

The moment the words hit the air, Chris dropped to his knees on the damp grass, sobbing hysterically.

Diana's eyes flashed with lethal rage. She marched past me and grabbed the soldier by the collar of his uniform, practically lifting him off his feet.

"Do not ever disrespect a Gold Star family in my presence," she snarled.

The soldier, completely caught off guard by her aggression, began to tremble. Diana shoved him backward, sending him tumbling into the dirt. She turned to the crowd, her voice echoing off the headstones.

"If anyone else has something to say, I'll have you court-martialed!"

Ah. So it wasn't that she didn't know how to defend someone. It was just that the someone wasn't me.

The acidity in my chest rose as I watched Chris look up at her, his eyes shining with fresh, awe-struck tears. He reached out, pulling Diana down into his embrace.

"Diana... I'm so useless," he wept into her shoulder. "Rachel's gone, and I'm already falling apart. How am I supposed to survive without her..."

Diana's face softened into profound heartbreak. She frantically wiped the tears from his cheeks.

"I'm here. I'm right here. No one is ever going to hurt you again."

I couldn't watch another second. I turned on my heel and walked away.

But before I could get out of earshot, Diana caught Chriss hand in hers, standing up to address the crowd.

"The man I truly love is Chris Gallagher. I intend to marry him, and I will spend the rest of my life taking care of him. As for Beckett, the divorce papers are already filed. From this day forward, he is nothing to me."

The mocking stares of the crowd burned into my back, followed by a sudden, jarring wave of applause and cheers from her loyal unit.

Diana beamed, looking for all the world like a victorious general.

A sharp gust of autumn wind hit my face, chilling the dampness on my cheeks.

Once upon a time, she had stood in my parents' living room with that exact same conviction, declaring that she wanted to marry me. That I was the only man for her.

Now, Chris stood in my place. And I was nothing.

I reached up, wiping the stray tear from my jaw. I forced my legs to move, putting one foot in front of the other until the cemetery was far behind me.

After her public declaration, Diana didn't even try to hide it. She moved Chris straight into our marital home.

I was exiled to the old hunting cabin my family owned on the edge of the woods. The walls were thin. At night, when the silence was absolute and sleep refused to come, my mind would conjure the sounds of their laughter. Every imagined syllable felt like a serrated knife dragging across my ribs.

One night, unable to breathe, I stood by the cabin window.

Through the treeline, I could see the distant, warm glow of the town's continuing education center. Faintly, the sound of a lecture drifted through the cool air.

School.

The university entrance exams had been reinstated nationwide. The town was buzzing with people pulling night shifts just to get a shot at a real degree, a real future.

Maybe this was my way out.

The very next morning, I walked into the annex and signed up for the prep courses. Diving headfirst into the ocean of textbooks became my salvation. It kept me so thoroughly exhausted that I barely had the mental real estate to think about Diana and Chris.

I genuinely believed I had outsmarted fate. I was breaking the chains of my disastrous marriage to forge a new life.

But two days before the divorce was set to be finalized, Chris showed up at the cabin.

He looked healthy. Radiant, even. He leaned against the porch railing, a smug, venomous grin playing on his lips. "So, Beckett. Bed's pretty cold without a woman in it, isn't it?"

"You're going to rot in this pathetic little shack for the rest of your life," he sneered.

Thanks to the grueling hours I'd spent studying, my mind felt incredibly sharp. The blinding rage was gone, replaced by a cold, clinical calm.

"You started those rumors, didn't you?" I asked evenly.

Despite how much my marriage to Diana had deteriorated, I knew she wasn't petty enough to orchestrate a smear campaign like that. In my past life, when I was locked away to die, Chris had stood over me with this exact same look of sadistic amusement. It all clicked into place. He was the architect.

Chris scoffed, looking down his nose at me.

"So what if I did? Run to the town square and scream it. Who's going to believe you?" His face twisted into something ugly and resentful. "Mom and Dad always loved you more. They gave you everything. Diana was mine. I saw her first, but you used their money to steal her away from me!"

He took a step toward me, his voice trembling with years of suppressed rage. "Now I'm just taking back what belongs to me. What's wrong with that?!"

He looked like he wanted to lunge forward and tear my throat out.

Since we were kids, Chris had made it his mission to destroy everything I touched. Whatever I liked, he had to have. When I married Diana, his bruised ego pushed him to pursue Rachel, a rising star in the precinct. But Rachel's career had stagnated, while Diana skyrocketed to Major.

I ignored the pure hatred radiating off him. "I've never understood why you let yourself be consumed by this. It's a miserable way to live."

Chris let out a sharp, incredulous laugh.

"Don't act like you're above me, Beckett! You're the pathetic one here! You're going to spend the rest of your life buried under my boot, and there is nothing you can do about it!"

With that, he turned and strutted away, practically practically buzzing with triumph.

I let out a slow exhale, returning to my cramped desk to open my textbook. The exams were looming. I couldn't afford to waste brain cells on him.

But less than an hour later, the crunch of tires on gravel broke my focus.

This time, Chris wasn't alone. He had brought Diana.

The front door banged open. Diana stood in the threshold, vibrating with fury. "What the hell did you say to Chris?!" she demanded.

"He says you threatened to have him locked away in a psychiatric ward! Apologize to him. Right now."

Chris stood slightly behind her, his shoulders shaking as he forced out pitiful, shuddering sobs. He tugged gently on the sleeve of Diana's jacket.

"Diana, it's okay... I'm sure he's just hurting. Please don't be too hard on him."

I lowered my eyes, a wave of profound nausea rolling through me.

This was his signature move. Even when Rachel was alive, Chris would constantly run to Diana, playing the tragic victim, whispering lies about how I was bullying him. It was the poison that had slowly, systematically rotted my marriage from the inside out.

Anyone with half a brain could see the holes in his story. But Diana? She swallowed every word like gospel.

She stepped protectively in front of him, glaring at me like I was the enemy.

"How many times are you going to torture him, Beckett?! Apologize!"

I stood up, my hands clenching at my sides. "Did you hear me say it? You have zero proof. Why the hell should I apologize for something I didn't do?!"

Diana's face hardened into a mask of pure ice.

"Fine. You won't apologize?" Her voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. "Since you're so fond of threatening people with being locked away... let's see how you like it."

My eyes widened, a sudden, primal terror seizing my heart.

"What... what are you talking about?"

I had done everything right. I had surrendered. I had signed the papers. And yet, she was still dragging me toward the exact same hell.

What had I done to deserve this?

The memories of my past life violently violently crashed over methe squalor of the Henderson farm, being locked in that filthy barn with Old Marge, the slow, agonizing descent into madness and death. My knees went weak, and before I could stop myself, I collapsed onto the floorboards.

"I'm sorry," I forced the words past the bile in my throat, completely humiliated. "I'm sorry. I was wrong."

Diana sneered, looking down at me with absolute disgust.

"Too late."

She turned her head and barked an order. Two military police officers stepped into the cabin. Before I could even process what was happening, they grabbed my arms, hauling me up and binding my wrists tightly with thick zip-ties.

All the strength drained from my body. A suffocating, black despair swallowed me whole.

From the safety of Diana's shadow, Chris watched it happen. When she wasn't looking, he caught my eye and flashed a brilliant, victorious smile.

He mouthed the words: This is your destiny, Beckett.

Then, he wrapped his arm around Diana's waist, and they walked out together.

The heavy wooden door slammed shut behind them, the lock turning with a heavy click. I was left completely alone, tied up in the dark.

I took a shaky breath, forcing the panic down. Think. Just think.

I couldn't stay here. But I wasn't dead yet. I had time.

The university exams were national. If I could get out of this town, I could take them anywhere.

Slowly, in the pitch black of the cabin, a plan began to form.

True to her word, Diana had me thrown in the back of a truck the next morning and driven out to the Henderson property.

Chris leaned over the tailgate before they left. "Old Marge isn't going to last much longer," he whispered maliciously. "Enjoy playing nursemaid in the pig shit, Beckett."

The Henderson familywhat was left of themdidn't care about me. They shoved me and Old Marge, a severely schizophrenic woman abandoned by the town, into a decaying barn out back. The overpowering stench of ammonia and rot hit me like a physical blow, making me gag until my eyes watered.

Marge sat in the corner of the dirt floor, her vacant eyes locked onto me.

In my past life, her family had ordered her to keep me contained. She and those feral hogs had turned that barn into a waking nightmare that broke my mind.

I swallowed my terror. My voice shook as I spoke to her in the dark.

"If you let me out of here... the second I'm free, I will pay someone to come get you. I'll get you out of this place."

I took a breath. "I know you're getting older. I swear to you, I will pay for a beautiful plot. I'll make sure you have a dignified funeral. Whatever kind of service you want. Just let me go."

As the words left my mouth, I felt ridiculous. I was bargaining with a woman who had been non-verbal for a decade, banking my life on the hope that she understood me.

Marge's cloudy eyes flickered. A raspy, unused voice crawled from her throat. "Promise?"

My heart leaped into my throat. I nodded frantically. "I promise. I swear to God."

Everyone, no matter how broken, cares about what happens to them when they die. Especially someone who had been treated like garbage for her entire existence. If she died here, they would toss her in an unmarked hole.

"Don't lie to Margie," she whispered. The tone was slow, but there was a dark, chilling weight to it.

"I won't," I choked out. "Never."

I don't know exactly what she did next, but she picked up a heavy wooden board and slammed it against the hog pen. The massive animals panicked, squealing and charging toward the rotting barn doors.

Within seconds, the rusted hinges gave way with a deafening crack.

Marge limped over to me in the chaos and used a rusted shear to snap the zip-ties on my wrists.

I stumbled forward, rubbing my bruised skin. In the pale moonlight filtering through the broken doors, I saw her slowly, painfully sink back into her dark corner.

God, she was just as much a victim as I was.

Terrified she might change her mind, I bolted. I ran through the woods until my lungs burned and my legs felt like lead.

Eventually, I reached the next town over. I emptied what little cash I had stashed away to hire a private transport service to go back for Marge. Her family barely even noticed she was missing, let alone cared enough to look for her.

I breathed a massive sigh of relief and anonymously pre-paid a local funeral home to handle her arrangements when the time came. She would leave this earth with dignity.

With that debt settled, I grabbed my duffel bag and headed straight to the regional command office in the city to find the base chaplain.

When he saw me standing there alone, bruised and exhausted, his brow furrowed. "Where's Diana? Does she know you're finalizing this today?"

I didn't answer. I just held out my hand for the finalized decree of dissolution.

As I turned to leave, I heard him let out a long, heavy sigh.

I shoved the papers into my jacket pocket and practically ran to the train station.

Just as I was stepping onto the platform, a frantic, breathless voice echoed behind me.

"Beckett! Where do you think you're going?! Stop right there!"

It was Diana.

I didn't even turn my head. I stepped onto the train bound for the opposite coast, and the doors slid shut behind me.