Page 206 of My Ruthless Husband

I want to tell her that nothing is all right, that everything has shattered into pieces. But instead, I just nod.

“I told you they wouldn’t want this.” Hannah’s voice drifts over my numb mind as she places the tray on the table, but it doesn’t register.

She is still talking as I move past her on heavy legs. The ground beneath me feels like it’s slipping away, and I’m just… falling. The whole world is a blur, and I’m drowning in it. And I don’t care enough to fight for air.

For revenge.

Every step feels like I’m dragging my own dead weight behind me. My legs barely hold me as I pass Archer.

Hal and Vicky stand, watching me approach.

“Ma’am?” Hal bends his head to look me in the eye but I avert my face.

“I’m tired,” I whisper, the words slipping from my mouth without meaning, without life.

I face Vicky instead. “Can you take me home?” I ask, my voice hollow, like it’s not even mine anymore. It sounds like someone else’s.

Hal pulls out his phone. He’s going to call Damian.

“No,” I manage to say. “Don’t call him.” I swallow hard. “He doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

For the first time, Hal doesn’t argue.

I don’t know what I said to Archer or Hannah before leaving. My mouth moves, my legs carry me, but it’s all so disconnected from the rest of me. I don’t remember the car ride back home or how I ended up in the master bedroom.

My hands move on their own, packing my things with a mechanical precision.

I know I should feel something, but there’s nothing. No anger, no sorrow, no fear—just nothing. My own reflection in the mirror feels alien, like I’m looking at someone else. Someone who was once alive but is now just… dead.

For the second time, I’ve been a fool—an even bigger one than before. I let myself believe that the Damian who seemed to soften, who pulled me close and took me across oceans, was the real one. That the laughter we shared beneath foreign skies, the quiet moments spent tangled together on cold hotel sheets, were glimpses of a new beginning—a true honeymoon, a second chance at the life I thought we could have.

I fell for him all over again, so easily, like I hadn’t learned a single lesson from all the times he’s turned away.

I let down my guard, convinced myself that maybe he had changed, that the distant man who left me aching in silence was finally gone. I was naïve enough to start dreaming again.

Now, all those moments we spent together feel like fresh wounds. I’m haunted by every touch, every look, every word he said that I thought meant something. I wanted so badly to believe that this time I wouldn’t be left feeling empty, abandoned.

I believed him. I believed in him. I believed I mattered to him.

But now… now I don’t even matter to myself.

???

My hands are dirty and a bit scratched as I press my palms into the soil, carefully patting the soil around the base of the little plants.

Mrs. Hawthorne hums softly as she works in the flower bed, her hands moving gently over the roses. Her hands, weathered with age, move carefully but with a certain ease that comes from years of doing the same thing.

She’s in her early seventies, but age has only added layers of grace to her. There’s an undeniable elegance in the way she moves.

Mrs. Hawthorne is one of the wealthier residents in this small village on the outskirts of York. Though you wouldn’t know it by the way she dresses so modestly. She keeps to herself most of the time, a recluse of sorts, but she has always been kind to me.

I’ve spent the last month here, in her beautiful house, doing what I can to repay her kindness by helping with the flowers, cooking meals, and keeping the house in order.

“There’s something I’d like you to do this afternoon,” she says, breaking the silence.

“What is it?” I ask, already making a mental note for it.

“Shopping.”

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