Chapter 14

014 Mr. Knight’s Ex Scarlett’s POV I want to sit down right there on the staircase and let the overwhelming emptiness gulp me, but I dare not. I know if I let it, then I will stay beaten. I will lose the strength I’m pretending to have and collapse I thought I could let go of Sebastian. Ever since I walked into their kiss three months ago, I have been preparing for this day. I did it.

It just hurts more than I expected.

Closing my eyes, I try to chase Sebastian out of my head. I just need something, anything, to take up the hole left in my heart now that I carved him out.

Something I could value. Something for myself. I lived my life around him, but I used to have a life of my own. I used to have friends to laugh and cry with, used to be competitive just like any student. I used to have a dream.

Inave it I was going to be a writer, before up and stayed home to build a family, Richard Hanson.

Jack Fuller’s mean face when he mentioned that name pops into my mind, like he was throwing a bone to a pitiful dog.

Anger burns in my chest, and magically, the pain dulls at that.

I can’t believe Jack Fuller thought about it before I did. He thought he could threaten/lure me with my dream — the first script I ever wrote. He didn’t evaluate its weight on my heart right only because I have long given up that dream for my marriage.

I shouldn’t have done that.

Though he didn’t think I could make it. He never had faith in me, and that’s why he didn’t help me when brought that to him, and that’s why he never mentioned it again until he desperately needed something to bind me here.

He thinks he can buy my freedom with MY dream, so why not start there? Prove him wrong by making it on my own!

And I know just the person.

Pulling out of my phone, I type before hitting send–

To Adrian Dunn: [A movie from Mr. Knight’s ex–wife. Want it? – S]

I only slid into my inbox after I sent that message. Only one new message is lying there. I wouldn’t expect Jack Fuller to even care. Even to ask for my help, Ava would talk to me through Sebastian.

But Mom didn’t call either, nor did she reach out in any way.

The one new message belongs to Sebastian:

[Coming home?]

1/2 014 Mr Knight Ex Just two words. From three days ago. If I didn’t have Aurora to turn to, but just died in some corner that no one knows, he wouldn’t even know until the cops find me first.

I stare at those two words, suddenly having such an urge to laugh-

Either he didn’t take the divorce papers seriously, or he doesn’t understand what a divorce means.

“Coming home“? Could a house be called a home if the couple sharing it is no longer married? After that ugly fallout, after I saw clearly the true faces of these so–called “family“, after he snatched the divorce papers out of me just in case I would go back on my words, he asked:

Are you coming home?

To do what? To give him love in exchange for his hatred? To flatter him after his day of being Ava’s loyal knight? To “clear” the misunderstanding, and “come to my senses” that they weren’t being horrible to me by demanding my blood for Ava when they treated me like shit, but it was actually my fault that I would want to be able to decide that for myself?

How could he have sent such a message, after everything?

Even to a pet, you wouldn’t be so heartless.

But then again, I wasn’t even a pet to him. A pet is something that even though not equal to, one would appreciate its existence.

I was his enemy, he didn’t appreciate my existence except in the short moments when Ava needed me.

I have been such a hilarious idiot, and I am only seeing that now. How laughable. So I do. I burst into laughter in the empty room until it turned into a bitter cry.

He never believed me when I said I loved him. He thought I married him to upset Ava. He used that assumption as an excuse to ignore everything I did for him in the past five years, in my whole life.

Now I said I was over him, and he didn’t believe me either.

1 wasn’t over him when I gave him the divorce papers, but I am now.

Everyone needs to see the truth, at some point. So do I.