Chapter 1Love Ends in Old Dreams

The day Asher woke from his coma, he insisted he’d been reborn.

He told me that in another life, three years into our marriage, I would cheat on him with a college student. He said I would become so obsessed that I’d be willing to walk away with nothing, just to divorce him.

So this time, he was getting ahead of it. He found a girl, set her up in an apartment on the other side of town.

She had already given him a son and a daughter.

I didn’t scream or throw a hysterical fit.

I just waited until we were walking out of the courthouse, divorce papers in hand, and asked him quietly.

“Asher, the person I supposedly became… did you have something to do with it?”

He was silent for a long, long time.

And just like that, I knew. Asher had betrayed me twice.

* * *

The day Asher turned cold, I had no idea what I’d done wrong.

It was like a switch had been flipped.

He stopped meeting my eyes. The gentle check-ins, the little gestures of affection, they all vanished.

We’d only been married a month.

He moved into the guest room without a word of discussion. The night he carried his pillow and blanket out of our bedroom, I sat on the edge of the bed, tears streaming down my face.

“Asher, if you don’t love me, why did you marry me? If you want a divorce, just say it! We can go tomorrow!”

Something I said must have snapped the last thread of his patience.

He threw the bedding onto the floor.

His hands clamped down on my shoulders, his voice a torrent of venom as he hurled the most vicious words imaginable at me.

He said I was disgusting.

Shameless.

Completely unworthy of his love.

The verbal assault left me reeling, stunned into silence. On pure instinct, my hands flew up, my freshly manicured nails raking across his cheek.

Asher didn’t even flinch.

He just gave me one long, dark look, then walked out, blood welling in the fresh scratches on his face, and drove away into the night.

It wasn’t long before I heard the whispers from friends.

Asher was keeping another woman, and he wasn’t even trying to hide it.

Of course, I confronted them. I found her, dragged her to the ground, and lost myself in a blind rage.

Asher just stood in the doorway, watching calmly.

He didn't intervene. He just watched me transform into the cliché I never thought I’d be: a screaming, unhinged shrew, driven mad by her husband's infidelity.

And he was driving me mad. I was losing my mind trying to understand.

Why had he stopped loving me overnight?

I wasn't afraid of a divorce. All I wanted was a reason.

And he finally gave me one, his face a mask of cold indifference as he tossed me out of their apartment.

He said he was reborn.

He said that three years from now, I would throw our marriage away for some college kid.

The tears I’d been holding back started to fall again, hot and heavy. The excuse was so absurd, so insulting, that I refused to believe it.

“Believe what you want, Seraphina. But this time, I’m the one who fell out of love first.”

He was a man of his word.

A month later, his new girl, Nicole, was pregnant.

He told her to keep it.

During that time, everyone I knew pleaded with me. If you can’t live like this, just leave him.

But how could I?

How could I let him divorce me without a real explanation, just so he could play happy families with his mistress and their child?

No. As long as I refused to sign the papers, she would always be the other woman, and their child would always be illegitimate.

I clung to that bitter thought, fueled by spite.

I let my youth wither away, tangled in a toxic standoff with Asher for three long years.

But in the end, it felt like I was the only one trapped in that marriage.

In three years, he had two children.

My stubbornness had become a joke.