I Was Never Your Real Wife

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On our eighth anniversary, I didn't prepare a single thing.

Instead, I sat at the kitchen table and drafted a divorce agreement with my own hands.

When I walked into the house, Elliott had his little mistress pinned against our headboard, taking her with a desperate, frantic hunger on our wedding bed.

The girl turned her face toward the door, her lips curving into a smug little smile when she saw me.

"Hazel... you're home?" she gasped, her voice dripping with mock innocence. "Should I... should I get up?"

Elliott didn't even pause. He patted her hip, his tone warm and teasing, the way someone might comfort a pet.

"Why get up?" he said. "She doesn't exactly inspire passion."

He finally looked up, cutting his eyes toward me before gesturing toward the hallway with his chin.

"Be a good wife, close the door," he added casually. "She's shy."

He expected me to do what I always didto turn around in silence, walk out, and give them whatever space they needed to ruin my life.

Instead, I walked into the bedroom, set the divorce papers on the nightstand, and said quietly, "Elliott, let's get a divorce."

...

His movements faltered. He looked down at the girl beneath him, then slowly pulled away.

"Hazel, do you really think I have the time for your little tantrums right now?"

Amber tilted her head, her eyes flashing with a mix of surprise and irritation at being interrupted.

"Hazel, a man has needs," she purred, adjusting her hair. "If you're too old and faded to satisfy Elliott, you have to let me do it, right?"

I ignored her and pushed the papers closer to him. "Sign it, and I'll leave right now."

Elliott grabbed a cigarette from the nightstand, lighting it with one hand while keeping the other casually draped over her waist.

"Are we really doing this?" he asked, exhaling.

"I'm not throwing a tantrum."

"Not throwing a tantrum?" He let out a slow plume of smoke, the gray haze blurring the sharp lines of his face. "Every single time you pull this stunt, you end up tearing up the papers yourself. Stop playing hard to get, Hazel. It doesn't work on me."

Amber shifted, letting out a soft, delicate sigh. "Elliott, baby... don't be so mean to her. She did give you a child, after all. Even if... well, even if she had to trick you into it."

Elliott blew out another breath of smoke, his lips twisting into a mocking sneer.

"Hazel, you drugged my drink and crawled into my bed eight years ago just to get this ring on your finger, didn't you? As long as you stay in your lane, the title of Mrs. Mercer is yours. Don't push your luck."

He truly believed I would keep playing the obedient, understanding wife, guarding the empty shell of our marriage while I waited for him to look at me. But he didn't know that my heart had already rotted from crying. I didn't even have the strength left to pretend it didn't hurt.

I was done. I couldn't do it anymore.

"Elliott, I mean it," I said, my voice shockingly steady. "I'm sick of playing the perfect wife. I'm exhausted. I don't want it anymore."

He let out a dry laugh. Reaching out, he pinched Amber's chin, forcing her to look up.

"Amber, tell her. How long have you been with me?"

Amber's voice was soft, breathless. "Almost... almost three years..."

"She isn't complaining about being tired," Elliott said, letting go of her chin to look back at me. "And yet you're the one crying about it? What right do you have to be tired?"

He picked up the divorce papers and shoved them back into my hands.

"Take your papers and close the door. Or what? Are you lonely? Want to join us?"

He was always like this. Treating my sincerity like a comedy, my exhaustion like a petty bid for attention. He truly believed everything I did was a desperate plea for him to look at me.

I felt so tired. Too tired to even argue.

I turned and walked out, the sounds of their passion picking up again behind the closed door.

I sat on the living room sofa. A draft from the window fluttered the edge of the papers resting on my knees. I buried my face in my hands, sitting there in the quiet for a long time, but my palms remained completely dry.

When you cry too much, you eventually run out of tears.

My daughter's photo sat in a silver frame on the coffee table. She was wearing a little white sundress, her eyes crinkled into perfect, happy crescents. I closed my eyes, and the memoriesthe ones that had already decayed into my bonesflooded back.

Elliott and I had been together for eight years.

The first three years were genuinely beautiful. So beautiful that I thought he was my forever. Then came the night he was drugged at a party, and I ended up pregnant. I remember spinning around in his arms, crying, "Let's get married, Elliott!"

But his first words to me were: "Hazel, you really are calculating, aren't you?"

From that day on, the women in his life never stopped.

The day our daughter was born, he was out shopping with some swimsuit model. I suffered a massive hemorrhage during labor and had to sign my own consent forms. The day our daughter turned a month old, he drank until dawn in a VIP lounge. The day she first called him "Daddy," I recorded a video and sent it to him; he replied a day later with a single word: 'Annoying.'

But for our daughter's sake, I endured it.

Three years ago, when she was diagnosed with congenital heart disease, Elliott pulled strings and hired the best medical team in the country. For a brief second, I thought we might finally find happiness.

But the surgery failed.

During those agonizing eleven hours in the waiting room, every call and text I sent him vanished into a black hole. I knelt on the cold hospital floor, throwing up from sheer panic.

And where was the man who had vanished? He was all over Amber's latest Instagram post. The caption read: 'The best kind of company.'

He was at a music festival with Amber, kissing her passionately under a shower of confetti in a roaring crowd.

Before my daughter passed away, her last words were: "I hope Mommy and Daddy don't fight anymore."

I had foolishly believed that day would come. If only I was quiet enough, patient enough, obedient enough. But I never saw that day. And now, I truly couldn't do it anymore.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

It was a text from Elliott:

'Pick up a box of ultra-thin condoms on your way back. And get some macarons from that bakery down on 4th. Amber wants some.'

I stared at the screen, motionless. I had done things like this too many times. When they slept in my bed, I slept on the living room sofa. When she wanted desserts from the other side of town, I drove two hours in traffic to buy them. When she wanted to wear my clothes, I cleared out my closet.

I didn't feel anything anymore.

The phone buzzed again.

'If you aren't back in twenty minutes, consider yourself off the Chelsea project.'

The project was my life's blood, the product of countless sleepless nights. I looked at the pouring rain outside, took a deep breath, put on my coat, and walked out.

I returned drenched to the bone.

Opening the front door, I saw Amber sitting on the living room sofa wearing my silk pajamas. Her bare feet were propped on the coffee table, and she was turning something over in her hands.

It was my daughter's picture. The frame I kept on my nightstand, the one showing her happiest smile.

Amber tapped her manicured nails against the glass.

"Cute kid," she murmured. "Too bad."

My voice squeezed out of my throat, raw and unrecognizable. "Amber. Put it down."

She looked up, a smirk playing on her lips, and loosened her fingers.

The frame slipped. It hit the hardwood floor, and the glass shattered, sending shards flying everywhere.

I stared at the cracks, a violent buzzing filling my ears.

Amber carelessly kicked a piece of glass away with her toe. "Oops. Hand slipped. Hazel, you're not going to get angry over a dead person, are you? After all, how can the dead compete with the living?"

I was shaking so hard my bones ached. I raised my hand and slapped her across the face, hard.

Amber's head jerked to the side. She froze for a second, then began to shriek.

"Hazel, don't you think you're taking this too far?"

Elliott walked into the room, grabbing my arm in a vice grip. His voice was flat, but the fury beneath it was unmistakable. He pulled so hard I stumbled, my knees crashing onto the floor. Shards of glass sliced into my skin, and the sharp pain made me gasp.

"Elliott, do you even dare to look down?" I choked out. "That is your own flesh and blood."

He glanced down, the anger in his eyes flickering slightly. "I'll have someone restore the photo."

Amber buried herself in his chest, whimpering, "Elliott, it was an accident... I didn't mean to..."

He let go of her and leaned down toward me. "But as for hitting her, that's where the line is crossed."

He reached out and yanked the necklace from around my neck.

It was the promise necklace he gave me years ago. When we were eighteen, he told me it belonged to his late mother and was meant for his future wife.

The chain snapped. The pearls scattered across the floor.

Elliott clutched the pendant in his hand, looking down at me. "From now on, you don't deserve to wear this."

He tossed the pendant carelessly into the trash can.

Then he picked Amber up in his arms and walked toward the door.

Amber clung to his neck, looking back at me over his shoulder. Her lips moved silently.

I read her lips perfectly: 'Serves you right.'

The door slammed shut.

Left behind were the scattered pearls, the broken glass, and my daughter's smiling face, sliced into jagged pieces on the floor.

She seemed to be asking me: 'Mommy, does it hurt?'

I collapsed onto the glass, my tears falling one by one, blurring her ruined smile.

I fell into a dream.

I dreamt of our senior year of high school, when I was hospitalized with acute appendicitis. Back then, I had no parents, no family. I had to sign my own surgery forms. Elliott skipped three days of classes just to sit by my bedside. When the pain kept me awake, he held my hand and told me terrible jokes, over and over. They weren't funny at all, but he told them with such earnestness.

The day I was discharged, he knelt down to tie my sneakers. The sunlight caught the back of his head, highlighting his hair in gold. He looked up at me, his eyes crinkled with warmth. "Hazel, from now on, I'm tying your shoes. For the rest of our lives. I promise."

I smiled in my sleep.

Then I woke up, my pillow soaked.

My phone screen lit up. It was a video from Amber.

In a VIP hospital suite, Amber leaned against the pillows, a shy, radiant smile on her face. Elliott sat on the edge of the bed, his hand resting gently over her slightly rounded belly.

"Who do you think the baby will look like?" he asked, looking up into her eyes. "I'll give both of you the absolute best of everything. I promise."

Amber giggled and snuggled into his chest.

The text beneath read: 'It's been so long since you've been a mother, Hazel. I guess you probably can't comprehend how happy I am right now.'

The screen went black. I stared at the dark glass for a long time. My chest felt squeezed by an invisible hand, numb with pain.

In three years, he had never once asked who our daughter looked like.

"I'll give both of you the absolute best of everything." He had never said those words to me or to Lucy.

My phone buzzed again. A location pin from Elliott.

'Thought you wanted to talk about the divorce? Get over here.'

I changed my clothes, took the divorce agreement, and walked out.

The door to the third-floor VIP lounge was cracked open. The moment I pushed it open, a dozen pairs of eyes whipped around to face me. The long leather sofas were packed with people, their expressions shifting from surprise to amusement.

"Look at that, the wife actually showed up!"

"And she made it in under thirty minutes! Damn, I just lost three grand!"

Elliott sat right in the center, legs crossed, a cigarette dangling from his fingers. "Mrs. Mercer is always punctual."

Amber walked up to me, snatched the papers from my hand, and read aloud: "Voluntary dissolution of marriage..."

The room erupted into laughter. Some clapped, others doubled over.

"Hazel, are you seriously divorcing him? Where are you going to find a guy as good as Elliott?"

"Yeah, even if he plays around, he still gave you the title, didn't he?"

Amber picked up a small red booklet from the coffee table and held it up to my face.

A marriage certificate.

She opened it, pointing to the names and photos. 'Elliott Mercer. Amber Ward.'

"Hazel, look closely," she laughed, her smile widening. "Your marriage certificate is a fake!"

"The venue was rented, the officiant was a hired actor, and the entire wedding was a sham populated by paid extras."

She snapped the booklet shut and tapped it against her hand. "This one is real."

The laughter swelled around me.

"Jesus, Elliott, that is brutal!"

"I went to that wedding! She was sobbing her eyes out, completely clueless! Haha!"

"The officiant could barely read his lines, and she just thought he was nervous!"

The laughter poured into my ears and leaked out of my eyes. I stood frozen.

I had thought that, at the very least, I had that wedding. I had that boy in the white shirt. I had his promise to tie my shoes forever.

It turned out even that was a lie.

Elliott sat there, watching me through the haze of smoke and mockery. "The day we were supposed to register, Amber clung to me and begged so sweetly I couldn't say no. But publicly, you were still Mrs. Mercer, weren't you?"

It seemed there was no need to sign the divorce papers after all.

I turned and walked out of the lounge.

Behind me, the laughter continued. "Elliott, she was crying like that at the wedding. Now that she knows it was all a joke, do you think she'll want to kill herself?"

His voice was soft, indifferent: "Who cares."

I leaned against the hallway wall, slowly sliding down until I was crouching on the floor.

I had grown up an orphan, and at eighteen, I was severely bullied at school. I fell into deep depression and stood on the edge of the school rooftop, ready to jump. It was Elliott who had appeared behind me.

"Hazel, I'll protect you."

He had pulled me back from that ledge.

Everything I learned afterwardhow to smile, how to stand tall, how to walk with my head held high in a crowdI learned because of him.

But the person who had pushed me right back to the edge of the roof was also him.

I got home after midnight and began to pack.

There wasn't much in my closet. Most of the clothes had been worn by Amber anyway, and I didn't want them. I packed only a few of my own things and the photo album.

I flipped to the last page of the album.

Lucy was completely bald, terribly thin, but she was still smiling. She said, "Don't cry, Mommy. Lulu doesn't hurt."

I clutched the album to my chest, crouching on the floor.

My phone buzzed several times.

Amber.

'Hazel, there's something I've always wanted to tell you.'

'You didn't actually think your daughter's surgery failed because of bad luck, did you?'

My hands began to shake violently.

'The day of her surgery, Elliott knew I had a high fever, so he pulled her entire surgical team to treat me instead.'

'The schedule got messed up, and they had to swap in a backup surgeon who wasn't up to the task.'

'Oops, I didn't think there would be an accident~'

'But honestly, she was just a kid. She couldn't possibly be more important than me, right?'

I could barely hold the phone.

Back then, when Elliott secured the country's top medical team, it had kept me from completely losing my mind. I thought he cared about us. I had stayed in that empty marriage, lying to myself, hoping he would change his mind and make our family whole again.

But he hadn't even cared about his own daughter's life.

Another video arrived.

In the video, Elliott leaned back on the couch while Amber snuggled in his lap, her voice babyish: "Elliott, do you regret pulling the medical team away for me back then?"

His voice was calm. "You had a hundred-and-four-degree fever. I wasn't thinking about anything else."

Amber pouted. "But do you regret it?"

Elliott paused for a second. "No. There's only one of you."

The video ended.

I stared at the black screen. My voice was trapped in my throat, but the tears wouldn't stop. I bent over, my forehead pressed against the cold floor, my entire body shaking with dry, silent sobs. By the end, my tears had run dry, leaving only a hollow, radiating ache in my chest that made it hard to breathe.

My daughter's smiling face was pressed against my chest, icy cold.

I packed the album into my suitcase, zipped it shut, and booked the earliest flight out.

On my way to the airport, I watched the sky gradually brighten outsidefrom black to gray, and finally to white. My heart was entirely still, devoid of even a single ripple.

I took out my phone and sent Elliott one final message.

After printing my boarding pass and passing through security, my phone lit up before I could turn it off.

Texts from Elliott. One after another, the phone vibrating relentlessly.

I turned it off.

As the plane lifted into the air, the string inside my heartthe one that had been stretched taut for so many yearsfinally snapped.