The night my marriage truly ended, the Pacific wind rattled the windows of our Los Angeles apartment while my husband rushed out into the dark for another woman’s child.

It was early winter in California, the kind that only hints at cold. Downtown lights glowed in the distance, helicopters hummed over the freeway, and somewhere, sirens wailed faintly. On our bedside table, under the small hotel-style nightlight Thomas had insisted on when we moved into this place in West L.A., lay a crisp sheet of paper.

My pregnancy test report.

I’d placed it right under the warm yellow glow so he couldn’t miss it.

But the moment his phone lit up, the world shifted again.

He had been on top of me, the light dim, his cedar cologne familiar yet suddenly distant. His lips brushed mine, gentle as always. Thomas was calm even in intimacy measured, self-controlled, as if he were managing a meeting. I used to think that was love: the way he never pushed, never forced, always asked, “Is this okay?” and checked my reaction.

That night, something inside me flinched.

Maybe it was the new life inside me, an instinctive wave of protection. I pulled the duvet higher over my lower abdomen, as if my body remembered before my mind did that I was someone’s mother now.

He paused, studying my face in the half-dark.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I swallowed. “The light’s a bit bright,” I said, almost casually, heart pounding. Just look up, I thought. Look at the lamp. Look at the paper.

If he lifted his gaze an inch, he would see my future sitting there, black ink on white.

Instead, his phone buzzed on the nightstand.

He turned his head.

The screen lit up with a familiar name: Sarah.

The woman who had once been his entire universe.

The woman who had come back to America after a glamorous marriage abroad collapsed, dragging her small daughter into our lives like a storm front.

The woman who still had the power to pull him out of our bed in the middle of the night.

He frowned, grabbed the phone, scanned the message. His jaw tensed.

“I have an emergency to deal with,” he said, already sitting up. “Get some rest, okay?”

By the time I found my voice, he was stuffing his wallet and keys into his pocket.

“Thomas ”

He bent down, pressed a quick kiss to my forehead, more automatic than affectionate. “I’ll be back soon,” he promised, like this was one of his late-night calls downtown, not another detour into a life I didn’t belong to.

He left in a hurry. The door closed. The apartment fell utterly silent, save for the faint whoosh of passing traffic on Wilshire.

I lay there, staring at the space he’d left behind, feeling relief and disappointment tangled so tightly I couldn’t tell them apart. It felt like finally getting the princess gown I’d dreamed of since I was a kid silk, crystals, the whole fairy-tale fantasy only to discover when I put it on that it didn’t fit. Not the neckline, not the waist, not me.

After a long moment, I slid my hand out from under the blanket, reached for the report I’d left by the lamp, and quietly tucked it into the drawer of my vanity.

For the first time, a new thought crossed my mind cold, clear, terrifyingly calm:

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that Thomas didn’t know I was pregnant.

Back in high school near the outskirts of Los Angeles, Thomas had been that kind of boy: the one every girl watched, even if they pretended not to.

He was captain of the basketball team, top of the math Olympiad, the golden boy teachers bragged about at staff meetings. To me, he was more distant than the moon somewhere above the stadium lights and smog, shining. He wasn’t just older. He was untouchable.

I still remember that first summer storm.

I was fifteen, angry at the world, standing on the cracked asphalt by the river just outside town, throwing rocks as hard as I could into the swollen, brown water. The sky was low and gray, the air sticky, and every stone that hit the surface sent up a splash that felt like a tiny act of revenge against a universe that never picked me.

I slipped.

The river swallowed me.

There was a roaring in my ears, icy water in my mouth, panic exploding in my chest. And then, hands. Strong hands, gripping my arm, dragging me toward air. I surfaced coughing, vision swimming, clinging to the shirt of a boy with soaked hair and sharp eyes.

Thomas.

“Are you crazy?” he’d demanded, breathless. “You could’ve ”

“I have low blood sugar,” I lied between shivers. “I got dizzy.”

He narrowed his eyes, clearly not believing me, but said nothing. Five minutes later, he was at the convenience store across the road, buying me a pack of chocolate bars. “Keep these on you,” he muttered. “Next time, sit down if you feel faint. Don’t go swimming in a storm.”

That was the beginning of my decade-long unrequited love.

I watched him from afar for years. On the court. On the podium. Laughing with friends on the bike trail. In every sketchbook I hid under my mattress, he appeared again and again: shooting a three-pointer, giving a speech, leaning over his notebook with that tiny crease between his brows. He was my private religion.

When a matchmaker in the Chinese-American community in L.A. finally paired me with a man named Thomas Wu years later, my heart almost jumped out of my chest.

There he was at the coffee shop in Westwood, a little older, in a perfectly ironed shirt, tie slightly loosened, still very much the boy from the river just sharper around the edges. I knew his history. Everyone did. His college romance with the campus goddess. Her going abroad. The scandalous stories whispered at dinner parties.

I also knew, deep down, that a man like that wouldn’t come with a blank-page past.

And yet, when he proposed, I said yes without a fraction of hesitation.

He never talked about her about Sarah. It was as if her going abroad, marrying into some wealthy family, having a child in another country had nothing to do with him. If I hadn’t secretly stalked old photos on social media, I might have believed him.

She was everything I was not.

In one photo, she stood under a maple tree in Boston, late afternoon light sliding through red leaves. Her eyes were long and fox-like, lids tilted upward in an almost unreal way. Her posture, her smile, her entire presence felt distant. Untouchable. Ethereal.

When I looked at those photos, I saw the girl he used to love and the girl I used to be and how far I’d bent in between.

In college, my hair barely brushed my ears. I dyed it misty blue because I loved anime and didn’t know how to be anything but loud about it. I wore oversized white shirts, cargo pants, sneakers scribbled with cartoon characters. In every selfie, I looked like a delinquent in a Tokyo street manga.

After I married Thomas, my entire reflection changed.

I grew my hair long, straight, and black, because he once said he thought black hair looked elegant on women. My graphic tees disappeared, replaced with silk blouses and soft dresses. I traded chunky boots for nude heels and delicate flats.

Back then, I naively believed that loving someone meant transforming into whatever they liked. I thought as long as I became “Thomas’s wife” in every possible way, one day he would look at me and really see me.

I thought if I gave enough cooked enough, listened enough, changed enough he would stop rushing through life, stop living by his calendar and notifications, and linger with me under the city lights, watching the jacaranda blossoms fall onto the sidewalk in West L.A.

But there’s a simple truth I ignored for too long:

If someone doesn’t have you in their eyes, they can’t see your colors.

The one who falls first is the one who bleeds.

Sarah returned to the U.S. in the third year of our marriage, landing in Los Angeles with a battered suitcase, a pale little girl, and a burning determination to reclaim everything life had denied her.

She added me on WeChat through a mutual friend, her profile picture a black-and-white shot of her mid–dance leap, all lines and impossible grace. Her name popped up on my screen at midnight, the notification glowing over Thomas’s sleeping face beside me.

Shortly after, she posted a photo of her daughter, Lily, lying in a hospital bed, cheeks flushed with fever.

We lived in California now, but the way she wrote, the places she tagged, the hospitals she checked into they all screamed the U.S. as loudly as any Hollywood landmark. Cedar–Sinai. UCLA. LAX. Universal Studios Hollywood.

For the first few months after her return, my marriage started feeling less like a partnership and more like a courtroom drama playing out in slow motion across Los Angeles County.

Sarah’s divorce in New York had gone badly. Her ex-husband was from an old-money East Coast family. He’d safeguarded his core assets before the marriage, wrapped them in trusts and prenuptial agreements, and when things exploded, he walked away almost untouched.

She, on the other hand, lost almost everything except Lily.

And even that was at risk.

Unwilling to give up her daughter, she came to Thomas for help. Maybe she knew he’d never truly stopped loving her. Maybe she just knew he was the kind of man who couldn’t walk away from a woman crying over her child.

Thomas had grown up in a single-parent household. His mother raised him on long shifts and patient sacrifices, and he understood better than most what “custody” really meant in a child’s life.

From the moment Sarah landed back in L.A., Thomas threw himself into her case like a soldier into a last mission.

He called in favors from top family law attorneys in Beverly Hills. He flew to New York twice in a single month. He sifted through financial records and old emails, found leverage against her ex, and cornered him into letting go of his claim over Lily.

Of course I was unhappy. Of course I was jealous. But how could I say anything when every conversation sounded like, “It’s about a child, Claire. You of all people should understand how important that is”?

In three years of marriage, Thomas had never raised his voice to me. Not once.

Even when I threw an irrational fit over something stupid like him forgetting to answer a text for hours, or staying late at work without telling me he would just smile faintly, wrap me in his arms, and coax me into calming down. My best friend Chloe always said I was spoiled like a princess.

“Your marriage is too perfect, Claire,” she used to tease. “You’re going to jinx it.”

Then I saw Thomas with Sarah.

The mask slipped.

This serene, controlled man who never even slammed a door at home once just once crushed his phone in his hand in front of me because of her. I watched the veins stand out in his neck as he argued over FaceTime, his voice hoarse, eyes bloodshot.

“You knew Lily had diarrhea and you still gave her ice cream?” he snapped one morning in the hospital room at Cedars. “Do you think this is a game, Sarah? She’s the one suffering. Not you.”

Sarah sat on the edge of the hospital bed, arms crossed, face pale but defiant.

“She grew up drinking ice water in New York winters,” she retorted. “She begged for it. What was I supposed to do say no when she looked at me like that?”

Lily, a tiny ball in the bed’s center, curled into herself, cheeks white, IV line running into her small hand. She reached out and grabbed Thomas’s sleeve, voice small and sweet.

“Daddy Thomas, don’t be mad at Mommy. I was just greedy.”

He melted instantly.

He scooped her up, kissing her hair. “Okay, okay,” he murmured. “Daddy Thomas is not mad. Next time, no ice cream when your tummy hurts, deal?”

She nodded, nestling into his arms.

“Next Saturday,” Lily chirped, suddenly brightening, “I want to go to Universal Studios. You’ll take Mommy and me, right?”

Thomas glanced at Sarah. She didn’t look away.

I stood at the foot of the bed, clutching my medical folder from my prenatal checkup.

Next Saturday was my birthday.

“Of course,” Thomas said softly, brushing Lily’s fringe aside. “As long as you get better, Daddy Thomas will agree to anything.”

The word “anything” echoed in my head all the way back to the parking structure.

That Valentine’s Day, Los Angeles was drenched in pink neon, every restaurant booked solid, every florist delivering until dawn. Sarah texted Thomas a picture of Lily pouting in front of the L.A. Zoo gates, saying the little girl wanted to see giraffes on “the hearts holiday.”

I was furious.

“It’s Valentine’s Day,” I argued that morning in our kitchen. “She’s a child, Thomas. She doesn’t know what that day means. We’re adults. We do.”

He rinsed his coffee mug, calm as ever. “She’s just a kid, Claire. Holidays don’t mean anything to her except time with people she trusts. Sarah just got back to the States. She used to have nannies. She’s not used to juggling everything alone.”

“So she can’t take her own daughter to the zoo without you?” I snapped. “She managed to dance on stages across Europe but can’t handle a stroller on her own in L.A.?”

Seeing I was about to blow up, Thomas didn’t argue.

He also didn’t compromise.

That morning, I hid his car keys like a petty teenager. He simply called a rideshare and left anyway.

Before he walked out the door, he put a small velvet box on the dining table a necklace I had liked in a Beverly Hills store window. He’d left a reservation confirmation for a fancy restaurant next to it and texted Chloe to “make sure Claire eats something nice tonight.”

Repressed emotions rose inside me like a riptide: dark, restless, trapped just beneath the surface of my smile. No matter how the choices were arranged, I was always the one left behind.

Thomas helped Sarah rent a high-rise apartment downtown with a view of the Hollywood sign. He helped enroll Lily in a private school in West L.A. He attended parent-teacher conferences as if he were the father, standing beside Sarah in gym bleachers, cheering for her daughter during community dance performances.

They looked like a family of three everywhere they went.

And I watched from the outside, suffocating in slow motion.

I dug up everything I could about their past. I knew I was torturing myself, but I couldn’t stop.

It turned out the serious Thomas I knew had once been noisy on the phone, whining to Sarah late at night from his cramped college dorm. It turned out the dignified, disciplined Thomas had once stood on a Boston street corner, singing off-key to make her laugh after a fight. It turned out the strict Thomas, who hated lateness and broken promises, had broken his own rules for her over and over.

For me, he was gentle, patient, considerate.

For her, he burned.

One day, I simply stopped screaming inside. It was like someone flipped a switch in my chest and everything went quiet.

I stopped clinging to Thomas’s arm when he got up from the sofa, begging him not to go. I stopped crying whenever he said, “Sarah needs help with something.” I stopped tracking every minute he spent with them and every minute he wasn’t home.

I learned to shop alone at The Grove, wandering past families holding hands. I learned to sleep alone in a queen-sized bed that suddenly felt too big. I learned to take business trips to San Francisco alone, watching other couples at airport gates share coffee and laughter.

Online, Sarah posted videos on WeChat Moments and Instagram stories of Lily calling Thomas “Daddy Thomas” in a singsong voice. I saw the black shirt I had chosen for him as they rode a carousel at Universal, his profile sharp in the California light, the little girl’s laughter overlaying everything.

I stopped checking my own apps for likes.

Instead, I dug my old cosplay outfits out of storage.

Thomas didn’t understand my love for anime, but he’d always respected my choices. So I caught the Metro downtown to a convention center and spent an entire weekend among people who still had neon hair and wore outrageous costumes in public without apology.

I watched girls twirling in elaborate wigs, boys with painted swords, couples dressed as characters who fought monsters together as equals.

When did I stop wanting to be myself?

I didn’t know.

What I did know was that Thomas, faced with a choice between my cosplay dreams and Sarah’s dance auditions, would always choose her.

She mentioned once, half-joking, at a mall in Glendale, that she might show up to a troupe audition in a Lolita-style lace dress “just for fun.” Thomas’s expression turned instantly cold. By that evening, he had called three contacts and gotten her into one of the best contemporary dance companies on the West Coast.

In that moment, watching him treat my passions as hobbies and her whims as emergencies, I felt electrocuted.

There it was, in the starkest way possible:

The difference between loving and not loving.

For the person you love, you rearrange the world.

For the person you merely care about, you adjust your schedule.

The terrifying part of this realization was that once you see it, you can’t un-see it. And once love descends, it is almost impossible to stay rational.

Thomas didn’t love me.

He liked me. He respected me. He felt responsible for me as his wife and as the woman his business connections and family had accepted.

But he didn’t love me with the wild, unreasonable part of himself.

Love doesn’t leave room for that much logic.

So I would never be his first choice in a fire.

The question that quietly started haunting me was this:

If I had this child, if I brought our baby into the world, would our child grow up feeling like I did in my parents’ house always second, always “almost,” always loved only as long as it didn’t cost too much?

When I went back to my parents’ place in the San Gabriel Valley, my mother’s smile blossomed as soon as she saw me. Not because she’d missed me.

Because I was Mrs. Thomas Wu.

When I was little, my parents had gone to the Midwest for business, taking my older sister Jessica and younger brother Tyler with them. I stayed behind with my grandmother in our old house, a sickly kid with a suitcase and a quiet heart.

Dad adored Jessica their first child, his “precious jade.” Mom adored Tyler the only son, her “dawn of the family line.” I was the extra, the one who fit into whatever leftover space remained.

That day, I walked through their front door alone.

“Where’s Thomas?” Mom’s smile faltered, eyes instantly sharp. “Why didn’t he come back with you?”

“He’s busy,” I said, voice flat.

The living room buzzed with life. Jessica sat on the couch, complaining to Dad that she needed a new car so she could give her BMW to her husband. Dad agreed instantly. Tyler demanded the latest gaming computer. Mom playfully whacked his ear with a spatula, scolding him half-heartedly.

“You’re always like this,” she laughed. “Whatever your sister gets, you want too.”

He just grinned.

He didn’t need to fight. He knew the house, the company, and their savings were already being mentally transferred into his name. That’s the confidence of being favored: you don’t need to keep score because you already know the ending.

At dinner, Mom finally turned to me, placing a glossy chicken drumstick into my bowl. “You’ve been married to Thomas for so long. Why is there still no movement in your belly?”

The other drumstick disappeared into Tyler’s bowl before I could answer.

Jessica glanced at me, resentment flaring in her eyes. “I remember when Claire first came back,” she said, voice dripping with false nostalgia. “She dressed so weird. Colored hair, baggy clothes. Mom and Dad almost had a heart attack. Who knew she’d get lucky and marry someone like Thomas?”

Her husband, seated beside her, peeled shrimp for her with a servile smile.

Dad took a gulp of wine and looked at me. “You need to hurry up,” he said. “Tyler isn’t married yet. The market’s bad. We still need Thomas’s help.”

I stared at the drumstick in my bowl, glistening with oil.

When I was a child, no one ever put the drumstick in my bowl.

Now that I had one, I couldn’t swallow it.

On my birthday, I sat on our L.A. sofa for a long time, watching my phone screen light up and dim, light up and dim again.

Chloe sent me money and a string of swear-word-laced blessings. Friends sent emojis. A sales associate at the mall sent me a promotional message with “Happy birthday, dear” copy-pasted at the bottom.

Nothing from Thomas.

Nothing from my family.

Two years earlier, when he’d first learned that no one celebrated my birthday growing up except my grandmother, he’d gone quiet for a long time. Then he’d booked the best private room in a downtown restaurant, invited my parents and siblings, ordered a cake big enough for a wedding, and insisted everyone sing “Happy Birthday” to me.

This year, he forgot.

And everyone else followed his lead.

That night, after scrolling until my eyes blurred, I grabbed my car keys and drove back to my old high school on the edge of the city.

The basketball court was empty now, the bleachers rusted, the river beyond the fence peaceful in the dark. I walked to the chain-link fence and pressed my forehead against the cold metal, listening to the ghost of my younger self throwing rocks into the water.

Back then, I had stormed out of my parents’ house because Dad had made me give a dress I loved to Jessica and Mom had punished me for a broken vase Tyler shattered. I’d gone to the river, furious, tossing stones until my arms ached.

That was the day Thomas pulled me out of the water.

That day, soaking wet and shaking, I thought falling into that river was the worst thing that could happen to me.

I had been so young.

Thomas came home past midnight.

I lay in bed, eyes closed, breathing even. He slid under the covers behind me and wrapped an arm around my waist, his breath warm on my neck.

“Claire,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “I’m sorry. I forgot your birthday.”

“It’s okay,” I said, gently prying his hand away. “I forgot it too.”

I didn’t ask where he’d been.

I already knew.

Sarah had been posting all day a carousel of photos at Universal Studios: Lily on his shoulders, Thomas’s black shirt silhouetted against the sunset, Sarah’s fingers flashing into the frame with a peace sign.

He seemed to sense something brittle in my voice.

“Why didn’t you remind me?” he asked suddenly. “Last year, you wouldn’t let it go when I almost forgot our anniversary. You nagged me all day.”

Last year, I had bullied him into taking a walk on a forest trail in Griffith Park, forcing him to pose for pictures under trees like some Instagram husband. He’d smiled indulgently and called it “ritual.”

Now, I finally understood something my childhood had taught me early, but I refused to accept:

For the child who is not favored, asking is pointless.

You can cry, you can beg, you can cling. No one will truly change their mind for you.

Before Sarah came back, I think Thomas had started letting me into his heart just a little. Enough to remember my birthday, enough to try our silly rituals. But I wouldn’t throw myself against a concrete wall anymore.

The only thing you get from that is pain.

He reached for me again, fingers slipping under the hem of my nightgown. My body went rigid.

He kissed my neck, slow. Nausea swept up without warning, a wave so strong I barely made it to the bathroom before I started retching. His footsteps followed, stopping at the door, filled with worry.

“Claire what’s wrong?”

“Maybe I had some bad seafood,” I lied, rinsing my mouth.

Back in bed, I turned my back to him, closed my eyes, and pretended to be asleep.

He touched my lips with cool fingers, hesitant. Once upon a time, I couldn’t go a day without kissing him. I had demanded good morning kisses, goodbye kisses, “you’re home” kisses. I curled into his neck every night, breathing in his cologne like oxygen.

When did that stop?

When did my body start flinching at his touch?

In the dark, I smelled something on him faint but unmistakable. Under the cedar base note of his cologne, there was a light, green-white floral scent.

Lily of the valley.

Sarah’s perfume.

I lay awake for a long time after he fell asleep, watching the ceiling, counting the cracks in the paint.

To make up for my ruined birthday, Thomas booked a day trip to the coast north of Los Angeles.

“Claire,” he said that Saturday morning during breakfast, “you said once the Little Prince watched the sunset forty-three times in one day because he was sad. Let’s go to the beach. Watch the sunset. Eat seafood. Catch a movie after. Just us, okay?”

I didn’t want to go. My eyes felt full of sand. My body was heavy.

But he rarely insisted on anything, and the sudden assertiveness made me dizzy. I still liked sunsets. I still liked movies.

So I let him lead me down to the parking garage.

The car sped along the Pacific Coast Highway, golden afternoon light spilling across the ocean like melted metal. Seagulls wheeled overhead. Every view looked like a postcard.

We watched the sun sink into the horizon, ate dinner at a small seaside restaurant, then headed to a tiny private cinema built into a beachside building, the kind you see on California lifestyle blogs.

They played “Love Letter,” a Japanese classic. Old-school, nostalgic, pure.

Halfway through, Thomas kept looking down at his phone.

His thumb flicked across the screen. Messages. Flight tickets. Notifications.

“If something’s urgent, we can go back,” I said quietly.

He shook his head. “I’m here to celebrate your birthday.”

I nodded.

Not even five minutes later, his phone rang again. This time he answered.

Even from where I sat, I could hear Sarah’s voice through the speaker, thin and trembling.

“Thomas, it hurts so much,” she cried. “Please please come.”

He didn’t even look at me as he stood up.

It was like his body had been waiting for that exact sentence.

He left the small theater, the door swinging shut behind him. The sound of the ocean swallowed his retreating steps.

More than half an hour later, my phone buzzed. I stared at the screen for a long time before answering.

“Claire, I’m sorry,” he said. “I have an emergency. I need to catch a flight out. Take a taxi back to the city, okay? I’ll explain when I get back.”

There was a kind of stunned clarity in me now. Then, to my surprise, a faint smile.

“Okay,” I said.

It took a long time for the clouds to roll in, for the sky to darken, for the temperature to drop. I walked along the beach until the wind cut through my sweater, then finally called a ride.

Halfway back to L.A., rain started lashing the windshield. The freeway lights blurred. Somewhere behind us, a car lost control on the slick asphalt and slammed into our rear bumper.

The impact threw me forward. My world spun. Something hot and wet slid between my legs.

The driver panicked, pulled over, and rushed me to the nearest hospital.

In the emergency room, my phone flashed with missed calls from unknown numbers and one familiar name.

I turned it face down.

The doctor’s voice was steady when he spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We couldn’t save the baby.”

I lay there, staring at the fluorescent lights, tears sliding silently into my hair.

During my last checkup, the OB had warned that my pregnancy seemed unstable. There were signs of possible complications. “No stress,” she’d said firmly. “Rest. Stay emotionally calm. No heavy lifting. No trauma.”

I’d smiled and joked about quitting social media. I thought the baby was in heaven, choosing parents. Maybe she saw my life and got cold feet.

Chloe came running into the hospital later, furious and grieving.

While I lay in that sterile bed, she did what I hadn’t done she looked up everything. She dug through Sarah’s posts, traced Thomas’s itinerary, tracked flights. The truth wasn’t hard to find.

Sarah had insisted on performing with her dance company abroad while Lily still had a lingering cold. She’d used her connections to talk her way onto the trip. On stage, her mood shaky, she made a misstep, fell, and fractured her leg. That very night, while I was bleeding out in a California ER, she posted a photo of a boarding pass, writing:

“No matter how much we argue, you always show up for me. You always come to my side. Some people never change.”

Chloe rolled up her sleeves, ready to go swing at two people across the ocean. I just smiled weakly.

“Don’t be mad,” I whispered. “When I’m better, I’ll take you around the world. We’ll spend our money on stupid food, not stupid men.”

Thomas disappeared for seven days.

He flew to wherever Sarah was, cared for her, cooked for her, helped with Lily until the child’s condition stabilized. I knew this because I didn’t unfollow her.

I watched every update like a masochist.

“Someone rented a cute little house so we can cook,” she wrote under a photo of a kitchen. “He makes bone broth for me every day to help my leg heal.”

“The guy who once swore he’d never be good with kids now cares more about my daughter than her real father,” another caption read.

“My pride says I shouldn’t let him carry me,” she joked under a boomerang of him lifting her into a wheelchair, “but he says if I don’t sit, he’ll carry me.”

The casual intimacy in her words was nothing like the aloof goddess image she’d built before. It was messy, needy, warm.

I took screenshots of everything.

Then I ordered strengthening soups and herbs from a postpartum care center and healed myself by degrees.

When I was small, my parents rarely came back to our old house except for Lunar New Year. At every holiday dinner, the best drumsticks went to Jessica and Tyler. Grandma would glare at them, grab a knife, and march into the backyard. She’d catch another chicken, cook it, and put two giant golden drumsticks into my bowl.

“Don’t cry next time,” she told me with mock sternness. “If no one gives it to you, fight for it yourself. With Grandma here, all the chickens in this yard are yours.”

I was loved once.

She died before I turned eighteen.

My parents tried to sell the old house as soon as they could. When I refused to sign, they locked me in, starved me, tried to beat the defiance out of me. I escaped. A kind acquaintance introduced me to a job as an anime costume model, changing into cheap synthetic outfits under hotel lights, holding props, smiling for hours.

I saved every dollar. Hired a lawyer. Took back the deed that was mine.

From then on, I understood something important:

It’s okay not to be favored.

It’s okay not to be chosen.

A child who never learned to expect gentleness will learn to build her own shelter.

When Thomas finally returned from his trip, he brought expensive gifts.

Handbags. Shoes. Jewelry. A new tablet “for your design work.” I accepted them all, tracing the logos with numb fingers. When he tried to talk about his trip, he lied for the first time.

He told me he’d gone abroad for a client emergency.

I already knew every city he’d been in.

Sarah had posted a photo of them kissing on a beach, the caption visible to me alone:

“Is it fun holding on to a man who doesn’t really love you? If it weren’t for that misunderstanding back then, we never would’ve broken up. Why don’t you let him go? He loves me. He’s good to my daughter. Even now, his laptop password is still my initials. Consider this me begging you. Give him back to me.”

My heart didn’t shatter this time.

It sank. Dark. Heavy. Then settled into silence.

I typed back slowly:

“Why don’t you ask him to say that to my face?”

She didn’t answer that.

Instead, she sent another message later, brittle and sharp:

“I, Sarah Lin, have never failed to get what I want. Don’t push me, Claire.”

I looked at her texts, then at the man in my kitchen making my favorite braised ribs. His hands trembled slightly when he noticed I wasn’t eating.

“Claire, you’ve lost so much weight,” he said, voice low. “Let me feed you?”

I shook my head, placed his pillow in the guest room that night, and said calmly, “I haven’t been sleeping well. Let’s sleep separately for a while.”

He stared at me like I’d started speaking another language.

That night, he came home tipsy from a business dinner, knocking on my bedroom door with a sloppy smile.

“Wifey,” he slurred. “I want honey water. Your honey water.”

He rarely used that pet name. It sounded strange on his tongue.

I handed him a glass of plain water. “We’re out of wild honey,” I said. “I didn’t ask Auntie from my hometown to send more.”

In the past, I always made sure our kitchen had the best ingredients. Knowing his stomach was weak, I’d spent hours researching recipes to help his digestion, delivering homemade lunches to his downtown office, writing little notes on napkins.

When did I stop bringing him lunch?

When did the jars of dried herbs and supplements in our pantry run out, one by one, without me replacing them?

It was like I’d been carving tiny pieces of him out of my daily life with a small knife, until there wasn’t much left of us.

My days filled up with work. I was a concept artist. I joined a startup in Shanghai remotely, designing characters and worlds from my small studio in L.A. I left early, came home late, often locked myself in the study.

Thomas watched me with increasing confusion.

“Claire, are you going to work now?” he asked one morning.

“Yeah. I joined a company in Shanghai. Remote job, but I rented a small studio downtown. I focus better there.”

“Why not work from home?”

“Too many memories here,” I wanted to say. “Too many ghosts.”

Instead, I said, “It’s noisy.”

He fell silent.

It turned out that between us, if I didn’t start conversations, there were none. If I didn’t send him photos of weird cloud shapes and ask if they looked like my love for him, his phone stayed silent. If I didn’t ask him to try new restaurants on weekends, he didn’t suggest anything either.

One evening, he finally snapped.

He cornered me in the hallway, frustration raw in his eyes.

“Are you still mad about that night at the movie?” he demanded.

“No,” I answered truthfully.

“Then why sleep separately? Why no honey water? Why don’t you tell me when you’re happy about something you drew? Why don’t you send me your photos anymore?”

“I’m busy.”

“That’s not it,” he said sharply, running a hand through his hair. “I’m scared, Claire. I’m afraid you don’t love me anymore.”

I stared at him.

“Have you lied to me?” I asked quietly.

His pupils constricted.

Before he could answer, his phone rang again.

Sarah’s voice shook through the speaker. “Thomas, come quickly. Lily has a fever. I I broke the thermometer. I don’t know what to do. I need you.”

He automatically grabbed his car keys.

I pressed a hand to my abdomen, a delayed pain gripping me. The aftereffects of the accident were worse than the doctors originally thought. Some days my stomach felt like it was being twisted from the inside.

“Take me to the hospital first,” I said, forehead breaking out in cold sweat. “My stomach hurts.”

“Claire,” he said, forcing a soothing tone. “You’re jealous again. Don’t be childish. Don’t compete with a child. You’re an adult. Be sensible. Sarah panics easily. If I don’t go, she can’t handle it.”

“What if I say,” I asked, clutching my side, “that if you walk out that door tonight, we’re done? We divorce.”

The word hung between us, heavy.

Thomas’s patience snapped. “Stop making a scene!” he shouted. “Marriage is serious. It’s not a game.”

He took a breath, softened his voice. “Be good. Wait for me. I’ll come back and we’ll talk.”

He left.

He ignored my pain. He ignored my threat. He ignored everything but the voice on the phone.

I called an ambulance myself.

They wheeled me out past the doorman, who watched with wide, worried eyes. Chloe rushed to the hospital as soon as she could, fury simmering under every word as she called Thomas again and again.

He didn’t answer.

It wasn’t until the next day, when a neighbor mentioned seeing paramedics at our place, that Thomas realized I’d actually gone to the hospital.

He called until my phone buzzed across the bedside table. I let it ring.

When my parents found out, they didn’t ask if I was okay.

They texted.

Mom: “Claire, what are you doing? Stop being stubborn and making Thomas unhappy. As long as you’re not dying, call him back.”

Dad: “The company is about to sign a big deal. Don’t cause trouble. Don’t make Thomas worry.”

I took screenshots and sent them to Thomas.

“Don’t call my parents anymore,” I wrote. “I’m very tired. Let me rest.”

He called immediately.

“Claire, where are you?” His voice was hoarse. “I’m worried. Let me take care of you.”

“No need,” I said calmly. “Go take care of Sarah and her daughter. They need you more than I do.”

Before he could respond, I turned my phone off again.

Thomas had connections everywhere. It didn’t take long for him to find where I was. He burst into my hospital room hours later, looking like he hadn’t slept in days. He rushed to hug me, resting his chin on my hair, his voice breaking.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out. “That night, Lily must’ve put my phone on silent. I didn’t hear the calls. I ”

Chloe walked in with takeout and set it down with a crash.

“Cut it out,” she snapped. “If you can’t let go of your first love, don’t hold on to Claire. Do you even know how many times you’ve abandoned her since that woman and her daughter came back?”

I held out a stack of papers.

A divorce agreement.

“It’s okay,” I said softly. “I know you can’t let her go, and I can’t let go of you. But the doctor says I’m not well. That my mental health is affected. Maybe letting each other go is our best ending.”

His breathing became uneven. The strong, composed man I’d always known seemed to flicker.

“No,” he said, voice low. “I don’t want a divorce.”

I smoothed a wrinkle in my hospital gown. The cotton made a faint rustling sound. “Last night,” I said, “you almost slept in the same bed as her.”

“How do you know?” he asked, stunned. “It wasn’t like that. Lily had a fever. Sarah caught it. I took care of both and collapsed from exhaustion ”

Chloe laughed sharply. “So the perfect man ends up in other women’s beds now, too,” she said. “Don’t worry. Claire is kind enough to bow out of your drama. Just make the divorce generous.”

I rubbed my wrist absentmindedly. A faint red mark circled it remnants of a dark night months ago when everything felt too heavy. The doctors had diagnosed me with depression afterward, using words like “fragile” and “risk.” I didn’t need to repeat that chapter.

“If you don’t sign,” I told him softly, “I’ll file in court. It’ll just take longer and hurt more for both of us.”

It was the first time I’d seen real panic in his eyes.

“Claire,” he whispered, staring at my wrist. “I ”

“Actually, you don’t like me that much,” I said, not unkindly. “People confuse habit with love. You got used to me. That’s all.”

Later, at the Civil Affairs Bureau downtown, he showed up in the shirt he’d worn on our first date the one I’d always ironed for him on important days. It was wrinkled.

“I don’t want a divorce,” he repeated quietly while we waited. “But the doctor said you needed space and time. I thought if I signed and waited, I could chase you back later.”

“No need,” I replied. “I genuinely hope you and Sarah find whatever it is you’ve been chasing all these years.”

He looked like he wanted to say something more. In the end, he signed.

During the mandatory cooling-off period, I disappeared.

No one could find me.

Not Thomas. Not my parents.

Thirty days later, I turned my phone back on, called Chloe to pick me up in front of the Bureau, and signed the final papers. Thomas appeared just in time to see my back as I walked away. He tried to take my hand.

“Claire, let’s not divorce,” he pleaded. “Okay?”

I pulled my sunglasses down over my eyes and kept walking.

At night, Chloe drove, watching him shrink in the rearview mirror.

“Why are you letting them off this easy?” she muttered. “You could’ve dragged that cheating pair through court.”

I opened my bag and showed her the settlement. The apartment in the city center. The cash. The stocks. The silent acknowledgment that he had failed me.

She whistled. “Okay,” she said. “Rich ex-husband brother at least has a few grams of conscience.”

We traveled.

We flew across the U.S. and beyond. New York. Miami. Seattle. Tokyo. Paris. I funded the trips with my settlement money and the savings I’d been hoarding. I ate food off street stalls and white tablecloths. I watched people in airports, couples fighting in hotel lobbies, children laughing in foreign languages.

When I came back to Los Angeles, Thomas and Sarah weren’t together.

Chloe blinked. “I thought he agreed to the divorce so he could marry her right away,” she said.

“They won’t get married,” I answered.

“Why?”

“Because they both want their cake and eat it too,” I said. “People that greedy end up with nothing.”

One evening, the doorbell of my new high-rise apartment in downtown L.A. rang.

Thomas stood outside, rain beading on his coat, a piece of paper in his hand. His face looked older, his eyes hollowed out by lack of sleep.

“Claire,” he said, voice thick. “Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?”

I stared at the paper.

My old pregnancy report.

“Where did you find that?” I asked, forcing my expression to stay calm.

“When you left,” he said, “you didn’t take everything. I found it in the drawer of your vanity. You put it right by the lamp, didn’t you? That night.”

I fell silent.

His shoulders shook. He covered his eyes with one hand and sank to the floor right there in my doorway, tall frame curling in on itself like he’d finally run out of strength.

“I checked,” he rasped. “The baby died the night we watched the sunset. The night I left you alone by the sea. I ”

He didn’t finish. Instead, he reached for me suddenly, pulling me into his arms, holding me like he was afraid I’d vanish into smoke.

“The longer you were gone,” he whispered into my hair, “the more I missed you. Why didn’t you call me? Why did you carry all that alone?”

“Because for seven days, you were with her,” I replied softly. “She sent me photos. You kissing her on that beach. You holding her hand.”

He froze, arms falling.

He tried to explain. “I didn’t understand my heart back then,” he said. “I thought it was the past I couldn’t let go. When Chloe told me you were sick, that you were struggling, I panicked.”

I laughed. It sounded hollow.

“I gave you so many chances,” I said. “Every time, you chose her. At best, you chose her daughter. I grew up as the unfavored second child. I’ve known since I was little that there’s no use fighting when the judge already picked their favorite.”

He flinched.

My parents came to my door, too.

“Claire,” my mother yelled from the hallway one afternoon, banging on the wood. “Your wings have gotten hard. Throwing away such a good son-in-law. If I’d known you’d turn out like this, I’d have left you at the hospital. You stole your sister’s man and now you’re ruining your father’s company!”

Dad texted me separately. “You hogged Grandma’s house and now you won’t help the business. Why are you like this? Jessica was supposed to marry Thomas. You stole him. You owe us.”

Jessica stared at me with pure hatred. “You’ve been flirting with men since you were a kid,” she spat. “If you don’t want him, don’t blame me for taking what you waste.”

Tyler threw an old sketchbook at my feet. “Stop pretending you didn’t like him,” he scoffed. “You’ve been drawing Thomas for years. You and I laughed at Jessica wanting him. You called her a toad, remember? I already sent these to Brother-in-law. It’s obvious you’ve liked him forever. Now go marry him back so Dad can sign this big deal and buy me a sports car.”

I picked up the sketchbook and flipped it open.

There he was, on yellowing paper. Shooting a basketball. Riding a bike. Leaning over a textbook. His youth frozen in graphite lines.

I hid the moon in my heart, I thought.

The moon never knew.

Thomas came to my new apartment every day, standing in the hallway with expensive gifts that I accepted without warmth. When we attended an industry gala together once me as a rising design lead whose work was making waves in both Asia and the U.S., him as a well-known consultant a colleague joked, “Are you two dating?”

“She’s my ex-wife,” Thomas said, smiling with an affection that made my chest hurt. “I’m chasing her again.”

I tucked my hair behind my ear, feeling heat rise to my cheeks. “Mr. Gao, you’re joking,” I protested. “We’re divorced. We’re just friends.”

Thomas’s face fell like a popped balloon.

When Sarah called now, he hung up.

He’d finally realized that to clear his conscience, he had to cut her off. He ignored her dramatics, her “Lily wants to see you” texts, her “I miss you” messages. Finally, she cracked.

She showed up at my office in downtown L.A., eyes bloodshot, designer coat wrinkled.

“Claire,” she hissed, voice shaking. “What did you do to him? Thomas is obsessed with you. He won’t marry me. He barely answers me. What did you say?”

I blinked, playing innocent.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just accidentally left an old pregnancy report where he could see it. Let him realize why I ended up in the hospital. I just accidentally left a dusty sketchbook on a table where my loudmouth brother saw it and told him I’d liked him for years. I just accidentally let him know that while I was losing our child, you were sending me photos of your new life with him overseas.”

The truth was simpler, harsher:

She’d failed his tests, and now he was failing hers.

Years ago, when his family business in California nearly went under during a recession, Sarah had insisted on leaving, refusing to sell back any of the expensive gifts he’d given her to help him. His mother, a proud woman who’d sacrificed everything for her son, had confronted Sarah and ended up in the hospital from the stress.

Sarah had not visited.

Later, she wanted to marry him.

She couldn’t pass his mother’s memory, let alone the bitter relatives who’d watched her walk away back when everything burned.

“Thomas loves me,” she screamed now in my office lobby. “He’s just blinded by you. All women are the same. You’re not as kind as you pretend. You saved photos of us for leverage. Don’t lie. If he hadn’t agreed to such a generous divorce, you would’ve used those to get more, to ruin my reputation.”

I gave her a tiny thumbs up in my mind.

She knew me well enough now.

At a party one night, Thomas drove me home. An expensive necklace sat in the back seat, resting on its velvet bed. He pushed it toward me.

“For you,” he said.

“Thank you,” I replied, fastening it around my neck without emotion.

He was waiting for something for me to say, “Happy birthday,” maybe. That night was his birthday, after all. I said nothing.

On the way back to my building, Sarah appeared in the parking garage like a ghost.

She held a stack of printed documents and a wildness in her eyes.

“Thomas,” she cried. “You’ve been tricked. You blamed me for Claire’s miscarriage, but she booked an appointment at a clinic before her birthday. She was going to end the pregnancy. She doesn’t truly want your child. She’s manipulative. And that blind date? The person you were supposed to meet wasn’t her. She bribed the matchmaker to take someone else’s spot.”

She threw the papers at our feet.

“And now?” she continued. “She’s using you to get investment for her company in Shanghai. She’s already partnered with a friend. She just needs someone like you to open doors in the U.S. for her. She doesn’t want you. She wants your network.”

The garage went quiet. Even the distant city noise seemed to fade.

Thomas looked at me, searching.

“Claire,” he asked softly. “Is what she said true?”

My throat tightened.

“I told you a long time ago,” I said. “I just wanted to help you two be together. I don’t want to fight for anything.”

I thought of my father’s house, of drumsticks that never landed in my bowl unless Grandma intervened. I thought of my parents’ threats, of how I’d once been locked in a room for daring to want the house my grandmother left me.

I’d long since stopped believing that fighting would change anything.

How ridiculous men were, sometimes.

Once, he believed only what he saw of Sarah. Now he believed only what he saw of me.

Thomas’s face twisted. “Enough,” he yelled at Sarah. “If you hadn’t kept calling, using your daughter as an excuse, I never would’ve hurt Claire this deeply. When I found out she’d liked me since high school, that she’d approached me deliberately, I wanted to slap myself.”

He turned back to me, voice shaking. “Claire, you’re disappointed in everyone, aren’t you? That’s why you wanted to leave this city.”

Sarah laughed bitterly. “You’re a fool,” she sneered. “Women understand women. She’s not that gentle. She saved intimate photos to use against us if she needed to. Don’t you see it?”

Her voice rose to a near scream. “The night at the movie, I sent you a message just to provoke her. I said, ‘Loving someone means letting him go if his heart belongs to someone else.’ That’s why I slept with you in Paris. That’s why we stayed together in Germany. She knew. She always knew.”

The sound of Thomas’s hand across her cheek echoed in the garage.

He turned back to me, desperate. “Claire, listen ”

I didn’t respond.

Because by then, my life was already changing.

I had moved to Shanghai for a while to manage my team in person. The original character IP we designed took off across Asia and then crossed back to the U.S. through online platforms. Our blend of traditional motifs with anime aesthetics turned into blind boxes, cards, figures. We launched e-commerce, TikTok live streams, collabs with U.S. influencers.

The day our company went public on a stock exchange, Chloe lay back in my office, half-buried in paperwork and projected returns, and said, “You divorced, got your first pot of gold, and stepped on your ex-husband’s network to climb higher. And he helped you willingly. That’s… honestly iconic.”

I smiled.

Thomas flew back and forth between L.A. and Shanghai for a year, trying to win me back. He paid a cost for that indecision.

His mother’s health, already fragile, worsened. One day, he told me over coffee, eyes red, that she’d died of a sudden heart episode after an ugly scene with Sarah.

Sarah had gone to his family home, demanding recognition, accusing his mother of “ruining her life.” Old wounds reopened. Stress won.

“I sent Sarah to jail,” he said quietly. “For harassment. For what she did. I gave Lily back to her biological father in New York. I thought if I cut all of that off… maybe we…”

I twisted the ring on my finger.

“Sorry,” I said gently. “I got remarried.”

His world stopped.

“My husband treats me very well,” I continued. “I’ve moved on. I believe you’ll find happiness too, Thomas.”

A man’s lie, I thought, can fool a woman for a night.

A woman’s lie, told with just enough sadness, can fool a man for a lifetime.

As long as he believed he owed me something, as long as he believed he’d failed me irreparably, he would keep going out of his way to help my company, send connections my way, introduce investors, think he was “making up for the past.”

But good times don’t last forever.

His mother’s death crushed him. My “remarriage” shattered whatever hope he’d been clinging to. He fell into a severe depression. His work performance plummeted. To see me, he had to make an appointment with my assistant like any other business contact.

Meanwhile, my parents’ company collapsed without his support.

Jessica’s husband cheated and left, calling her temper unbearable in a court filing and mocking her for never giving him a child. Tyler got into a street racing accident before he graduated college, injuring himself so badly that, in my mother’s words, “the family line ended with him.”

They moved into a crowded apartment complex near the edge of the city, arguing over grocery money. Then they came to Shanghai, trying to guilt me into being their ATM.

I refused.

They threatened to sue for “filial duty.” I sent them bags of cheap rice through a delivery service instead.

When Jessica was born, my parents named her “Precious Jade,” hoping she’d be cherished. When Tyler arrived, Mom spent three days flipping through dictionaries to pick a name meaning “Bright Dawn.” Me?

I was almost named “Little Rain,” for the downpour the day I was born, a sickly girl they didn’t want. Grandma had been the one to step up.

“If you shine,” she’d said, “no one can hide your light.” She named me Xiaoli “little bright one.”

Before she died, knowing my parents wouldn’t let me study seriously, she left me the house. They tried to take it. I fought.

From that day on, I understood something clearly:

It’s okay not to be favored.

It’s okay not to be chosen.

If no one holds out a hand, climb.

If no one saves you, swim.

I slowly built an inner world no one could shake. I stopped letting emotions drag me under. I stopped believing in unconditional love and started believing in contracts, in percentages, in stock options.

It wasn’t darkness.

It was awakening.

The day Thomas came to visit me again, he stood outside my suburban villa in Shanghai, watching me in the garden.

I sat on a low stool, my daughter beside me, holding a small plastic trowel. We planted roses in the dirt, the smell of soil and sunlight in the air. In the distance, it could’ve been any suburb in America just different cars, different language on the mailboxes. The way I arranged my life, you wouldn’t be able to tell where the story began.

I read from “The Little Prince” in English and Mandarin, my voice soft.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose,” I recited, “that makes your rose so important.”

I leaned down and kissed my daughter’s head.

She giggled, her laughter like a soda fizzing in summer.

From the gate, Thomas watched, unnoticed.

His world had gone dark.

Mine was finally bright.

He thought of the child we’d lost, of the life that might have been if he’d chosen differently. He found me later, asked:

“If our baby had lived… would we still be together?”

I shook my head.

“No,” I said. “The first person in your heart is Sarah. The second is her daughter. Even if we’d had our own child, we could never outrun the past you wouldn’t let go.”

“That’s not true,” he insisted. “I would’ve loved you both more than anyone.”

I looked at him steadily.

“If Sarah,” I asked, “fed Lily something by mistake poisonous mushrooms, say and at the same time, our child had a fever… who would you choose to rush to?”

“Of course I’d ”

He hesitated.

For half a second. Maybe less.

But I saw it.

“You see?” I smiled gently. “You’d go to Sarah. You’d say she didn’t mean to. She doesn’t know what’s dangerous. She panics. She needs you. You’d promise our child that Daddy will be back soon. But you wouldn’t. You’d be too busy fixing her mess, carrying someone else’s responsibility.”

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

“You’d tell yourself children are forgiving,” I continued. “That your child won’t resent you. That they’ll understand when they’re older. But a heart that’s hurt early is hard to heal.”

He thought of my childhood then. Of my seat at a crowded dinner table, drumsticks always out of reach. Of my grandmother’s backyard full of clucking chickens. Of a girl starved into compliance, sneaking out to model costumes to afford a lawyer.

He went pale, like something inside him had finally broken that couldn’t be fixed.

He sank into a depression so deep he didn’t climb out of it for a long time.

I didn’t go back.

Because by then, I had learned something important:

It’s okay not to get love.

Sometimes, getting a lot of money is good, too.

Fate, for once, had stood on my side.