Lucas did not go after Nina that night.
He had already picked her up from the airport.
But after returning to Hawthorne Villa and seeing the divorce agreement on the nightstand, he stood there for almost ten minutes without moving.
My closet was half empty.
The jade bracelet was gone.
My old photo album was gone.
Everything he had bought me remained exactly where it had always been.
The handbags.
The jewelry.
The watches.
Even the secondary bank card containing four years of untouched transfers.
Mr. Grant stood behind him.
“The young madam left about two hours ago.”
Lucas looked at him sharply.
“Why didn’t you stop her?”
The old man lowered his eyes.
“She said she was no longer the young madam.”
Lucas picked up the divorce agreement.
My signature was already there.
Firm.
Clean.
His hand tightened around the paper.
“She’s angry.”
Mr. Grant said nothing.
“She’ll come back.”
Still nothing.
Finally Lucas looked at him.
“What?”
Mr. Grant hesitated.
Then said something nobody in the Hawthorne family had ever dared tell him.
“Sir… Mrs. Hawthorne never looked angry when she left.”
Lucas frowned.
“She looked relieved.”
That was when he became afraid.
At first, he called from another number.
Blocked.
Then from his assistant’s phone.
Blocked.
He sent messages through Mr. Grant.
No answer.
By sunrise, he had contacted the station.
There were seventeen trains leaving Jiang City that night.
Lucas could have found out which one I boarded.
But the ticket had been purchased with cash.
For the first time in four years, Clara Wen had disappeared somewhere Daniel—no, Lucas—could not immediately reach.
And he hated it.
At nine in the morning, Nina called.
“Luke, are we still having breakfast?”
He looked at my empty chair.
“No.”
There was silence.
“Did something happen?”
“Clara left.”
Nina paused.
Then her voice softened.
“She finally agreed to the divorce?”
The word finally made Lucas go still.
“What do you mean?”
“I just thought…”
“Nina.”
His tone changed.
“Why would you say finally?”
She laughed nervously.
“You never loved her. Everyone knew that.”
Lucas looked toward the dining table.
Four years.
How many mornings had I sat there?
How many times had he checked his phone while I placed coffee beside his hand?
He could not remember.
That bothered him more than he expected.
Nina continued:
“Maybe this is better. We don’t have to hide our feelings anymore.”
Lucas should have felt relieved.
For years, he had believed Nina was the unfinished chapter of his life.
But sitting in the house I had just abandoned, all he felt was irritation.
“I’ll call you later.”
He hung up.
I arrived in Southport the following afternoon.
The city smelled of salt.
My rented room was above a small bookstore two streets from the sea.
The walls were pale blue.
The furniture was cheap.
The bathroom faucet leaked.
I loved it immediately.
Nobody called me Mrs. Hawthorne.
Nobody knew Nina Sullivan.
Nobody cared that my mother had once worked in someone else’s kitchen.
I found work within two weeks at a coastal cultural center.
The salary was ordinary.
So was the job.
For the first time in years, ordinary felt luxurious.
I ate noodles from roadside stalls.
Bought my own flowers.
Walked beside the ocean after work.
And slowly discovered that loneliness was completely different when nobody was making you feel unwanted.
Lucas found me two months later.
I was closing the bookstore downstairs when a black car stopped across the street.
I recognized him immediately.
Same coat.
Same controlled expression.
But his eyes looked exhausted.
“Clara.”
I locked the door.
“How did you find me?”
“Your insurance registration.”
Of course.
Lucas always had ways of finding information.
He stepped closer.
“Come home.”
“No.”
His face tightened.
“We need to talk.”
“You had four years.”
“Don’t do this.”
I almost laughed.
“Do what?”
“Act like our marriage meant nothing.”
I stared at him.
Those words were almost impressive.
“You’re angry because I’m treating our marriage the way you did.”
He went silent.
Then he took out the divorce agreement.
Unsigned.
“I won’t sign.”
“That’s fine.”
His eyes narrowed.
“The court can handle it.”
For the first time, Lucas looked genuinely stunned.
“You really want to divorce me?”
“Yes.”
“Because Nina came back?”
“No.”
That answer confused him.
I continued:
“Nina returning only gave you somewhere to go while I left.”
“Then why?”
I looked at him.
“Because I was sick alone.”
His expression changed.
“Because I spent birthdays alone.”
I took another breath.
“Because I learned that ninety-eight thousand yuan could buy flowers for Nina, but I couldn’t buy ten minutes of your attention.”
Lucas looked away.
I continued calmly.
“And because last year, while I sat beside a cake waiting for my husband on our anniversary, you were calling another woman overseas.”
His voice became hoarse.
“I didn’t know you cared that much.”
I smiled.
“That was the problem.”
Lucas remained in Southport for three days.
Every morning, he waited outside the cultural center.
I ignored him.
On the fourth day, he finally asked:
“What would make you come back?”
“Nothing.”
“Money?”
“No.”
“A different house?”
“No.”
“I’ll stop speaking to Nina.”
I shook my head.
“You still don’t understand.”
His jaw tightened.
“Then explain it to me.”
So I did.
“Nina was never the real problem.”
He froze.
“You were.”
Silence.
“You didn’t have to love me the way you loved her.”
I looked directly at him.
“But you married me.”
“You could have respected me.”
“You could have remembered my birthday.”
“You could have come to the hospital.”
“You could have refused to use me as a placeholder while waiting for someone else.”
Lucas’s eyes slowly reddened.
“I thought you knew what our marriage was.”
“I did.”
I smiled sadly.
“That’s why I ended it.”
When Lucas returned to Jiang City, he went directly to Nina.
For the first time, he asked her a question he should have asked years earlier.
“Why did you come back?”
Nina smiled.
“For you.”
But later he discovered she had also returned because her engagement overseas had collapsed.
Her family business was struggling.
And the Hawthorne name offered stability.
Maybe she had loved him once.
Maybe some part of her still did.
But Lucas finally understood something uncomfortable.
He had spent years loving a memory.
Just as I had spent years loving three words spoken to me when I was sixteen.
Be careful.
Neither of us had been loving the person standing in front of us.
We had both been loyal to fantasies.
The difference was that I had finally let mine go.
Lucas signed the divorce three months later.
There was no dramatic confrontation.
No shouting.
He simply sent the papers to my lawyer.
Attached was one handwritten sentence:
I’m sorry I understood your silence only after you were gone.
I read it.
Then folded it away.
The divorce became official.
I returned everything legally connected to the Hawthorne family.
Lucas insisted I keep part of the marital assets.
I refused most of them but accepted what the law considered my fair share.
Not because I wanted his money.
Because I had finally stopped confusing self-respect with walking away empty-handed.
I had given four years to that marriage.
Those years existed.
I would not erase myself just to prove I no longer loved him.
Two years later, the cultural center promoted me to program director.
I rented a small apartment overlooking the sea.
Then bought it.
With my own savings.
On the fourth anniversary of the night I left Jiang City, I received a package.
Inside was no jewelry.
No roses.
Only a small birthday cake from a Southport bakery.
The card said:
Happy birthday, Clara. I finally remembered. —Lucas
I stared at it for a long time.
Then smiled.
Not because I wanted him back.
Because once, I would have traded almost anything to receive something so simple from him.
Now it was only cake.
I shared it with my coworkers.
Years later, I saw Lucas again at a charity event.
He had never married Nina.
Their relationship lasted less than six months after our divorce.
He looked older.
Calmer.
When our eyes met, he walked over.
“Clara.”
“Lucas.”
He looked at me for several seconds.
“You look happy.”
“I am.”
He nodded.
Then smiled faintly.
“I’m glad.”
There was a time when I would have searched his face for regret.
That evening, I didn’t need it.
Before leaving, he asked:
“Do you ever think about us?”
I considered the question.
“Sometimes.”
His eyes changed.
Then I added:
“But not because I want to go back.”
He nodded slowly.
“I know.”
And this time, he really did.
The night I left Hawthorne Villa, Lucas believed I was making an emotional decision because Nina had returned.
He thought I would cool down.
He thought I would miss the comfort.
The money.
The name.
Him.
What he never understood was that I had already spent four years missing a husband who lived in the same house.
Leaving did not create the distance between us.
It only made the distance visible.
Lucas spent years believing Nina was the great love he had lost.
And I spent years believing he was mine.
In the end, both of us were wrong.
Because the most important love story of my life did not begin when Lucas Hawthorne held my elbow at sixteen.
It began the night, ten years later, when I carried one suitcase through his gate and finally chose the woman I had neglected longer than he ever had.
Myself.
