Erica spent over a week in the hospital, and Morgan never came back.
He texted saying he’d be out of town on business for a while, occasionally having his assistant drop off gifts and supplements.
Looking at the jewelry and health products piling up in her room, Erica felt absolutely nothing.
She opened her phone to find photos Nancy had been sending of her and Morgan together over the past few days.
In the pictures, they sat on the cliffs at Big Sur watching the sunrise over the Pacific. They stood side by side at Glacier Point in Yosemite, dwarfed by the magnificent granite peaks. In the stunning Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, they lit candles together and made wishes before the beautiful stained glass windows…
After the photos came a long message from Nancy:
“Every place in these photos is somewhere Morgan took me when we were dating. We made the most beautiful memories in these places and promised each other forever. Now he says he’s taking me away to help me heal, but every single stop has been revisiting our old haunts. Don’t you think that means he’s hoping to go back to the way things were, just like I am?”
Erica read through the messages silently without responding.
After her injuries healed, she went home alone, but at the front door she heard familiar voices–William and Ryan were inside.
“Dude, you already bankrupted Nancy’s ex, right? The guy’s completely screwed and will never recover, and Nancy’s doing better. So why are you getting hammered the second you get back?”
Through the slightly open door, Erica saw empty bottles scattered around Morgan.
He looked wasted, his usually sharp features flushed, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
“I just hate myself for being such a coward back then. Why couldn’t I swallow my damn pride? Why didn’t I fight for us? Why did I waste four whole years torturing myself while letting Nancy get destroyed by some piece of shit?”
William and Ryan exchanged looks, clearly fed up.
“Are you serious right now?” William said, his voice getting heated. “Nancy left you, man. She chose to walk away, chose to be with that jerk, chose to cut everyone off when we all warned her he was bad news. That’s on her, not you.”
Ryan was even more blunt. “And what about Erica? Your actual wife? The woman who’s been nothing but amazing to you for four years while you’ve been obsessing over someone who dumped you?”
“Ryan’s right,” William continued, clearly pissed off. “Erica deserves so much better than this. She gave up her entire career for you, takes care of your parents like they’re her own, puts up with you being gone half the time without a single complaint. And this is how you repay her? Getting drunk over
your ex?”
“She literally almost died last week and you weren’t even there!” Ryan’s voice cracked with anger. “We had to hear about it from the hospital because you were too busy playing knight in shining armor for Nancy. That’s messed up, Morgan.”
William leaned forward, his tone getting serious. “Look, we’ve been friends since college, but I’m gonna be real with you–if you keep treating Erica like garbage, you’re gonna lose the best thing that ever happened to you. Nancy had her chance and she blew it. Erica’s been here the whole time, loving you unconditionally, and you’re throwing it away for what? Nostalgia?”
The room went dead quiet. Morgan finished his drink and whispered, “She could be perfect, but she’s still not her.”
Those words hit Erica like a physical blow, shattering what was left of her heart into irreparable pieces.
Her hands shook uncontrollably. She pressed her back against the door, eyes squeezed shut, remembering when Morgan had agreed to marry her.
Back then he’d said they made sense together.
12%
Now he was saying she wasn’t the one.
If he saw their entire marriage as settling for second best, then what had her four years of complete devotion been worth?
Nothing. Less than nothing.
She’d been a placeholder. A warm body filling space while he pined for someone else.
Standing there in the hallway of what she’d thought was their home, listening to the man she’d loved with everything in her dismiss her as fundamentally inadequate, Erica felt something inside her die completely.
Not just her hope–her entire capacity to keep pretending this could work.
She was done. Not just with the marriage, but with the version of herself who’d believed she could earn his love through sheer force of will.
It was time to stop being the wrong woman desperately trying to become the right one.
It was time to remember who she’d been before she’d lost herself trying to be enough for someone who would never choose her.
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