Four Hundred And Twenty Nine

Four Hundred And Twenty Nine
James’ POV

The door clicked shut, and with it, she was gone.

I just stood there, staring at the place where she’d been, my chest hollow, my hands shaking as if the ground had been ripped out from beneath me. The dining room was too quiet now, the chandelier humming faintly above like it mocked me. The papers on the table stared back at me, crisp and unyielding, the ink like poison seeping into my veins.

Divorce.

The word carved itself into my skull with the sharpness of a blade.

I reached out with trembling fingers, pulling the envelope toward me, though I already knew what it contained. My name in her handwriting on the front, the finality of it tore me in half. My thumb brushed the edge, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it. I didn’t need to see the legal wording to know what it meant: she was leaving me.

My knees nearly buckled. I dropped into the chair she’d been sitting in moments before, her warmth still lingering on the cushion. The scent of her perfume clung to the air, faint and maddening, and it gutted me. How many times had I sat across from her, cold and silent, pushing her further away? And now… now when I finally admitted the truth, it was too damn late.

I buried my face in my hands, dragging them down until they scraped against my jaw. My chest heaved, a strangled sound escaping me before I could swallow it back. God, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried, but the burn behind my eyes now was merciless.

She’d kissed me before she left. Not out of hope, not out of love that wanted to stay, but out of grief. Out of goodbye.

That kiss was going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

I slammed my fist against the table, rattling the plates and glasses that hadn’t been cleared. A half-empty wineglass toppled, red spilling across the white linen like blood. I barely noticed. My hand throbbed from the impact, but pain was the only thing that reminded me I was still here, still breathing, still drowning in the wreckage I had created.

“Damn it!” I roared into the silence, my voice echoing against the walls.

I wanted to tear those papers apart, shred them into nothing. But even if I did, it wouldn’t change the truth: she didn’t want to be mine anymore. She had given up waiting for me to become the man she needed. And I had no one to blame but myself.

Images flashed in my mind without mercy, Ella on our wedding day, her smile soft and full of promise. Ella laughing in the garden when she played with Cecilia. Ella looking at me across the years with eyes that begged for warmth I refused to give.

And Ella tonight, her face streaked with tears, whispering that her heart belonged to someone else.

Jean Luc.

The name alone was enough to send a sharp twist of jealousy through my gut. The man who had been there when I wasn’t. Who had held her when I pushed her away? Who had been present at Cecilia’s birth when I chose bitterness and rage over love.

How could I compete with that?

I pushed back from the table, pacing the length of the dining room like a caged animal. My reflection caught in the window, disheveled, wild-eyed, broken. The man staring back at me wasn’t the James Lancaster everyone knew. Not the untouchable heir, not the cold bastard who never faltered. He was just a man who had lost the only woman who ever truly loved him.

My throat closed as I remembered her words: “I was never yours. Not in the way that truly mattered.”

God, hadn’t she been? Hadn’t she always been mine? Or had I been so blind, so consumed by my own demons, that I never realized I’d been nothing more than a ghost in her story?

I stumbled toward the sideboard, grabbing the decanter of whiskey. My hands shook as I poured a glass, half spilling onto the polished wood. I downed it in a single gulp, the burn doing nothing to numb the pain clawing inside me.

I poured another. And another.

The liquor blurred the edges of the night but couldn’t erase the sight of her walking away, leaving me with nothing but a stack of papers and my own regret.

Eventually, I collapsed onto the leather armchair in the corner, the one she used to curl into with a book. I could almost see her there, her legs tucked beneath her, a faint smile on her lips as she lost herself in some story. She’d always tried to share them with me, eager to pull me into her world, and I’d brushed her off more times than I could count.

What a fool I had been.

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes until I saw stars. The truth gnawed at me, relentless: I had wasted years building walls between us. I had chosen silence over tenderness, pride over forgiveness, and suspicion over trust.

And now… now I had nothing.

The house felt colder without her presence, emptier, like a mausoleum filled with ghosts of what we once were. Every corner held a memory, her laughter in the kitchen, her soft footsteps in the hall, the sound of her humming as she tucked Cecilia into bed.

I could lose everything else, money, power, reputation. But losing her? That was the one thing I couldn’t bear.

My hands tightened into fists, my nails biting into my palms. I wouldn’t let this end here. I couldn’t.

She thought she was done with me. She thought her heart belonged to someone else. But I knew her, knew the way her voice trembled when she spoke those words. Part of her still cared, still remembered what we once had.

And damn me, I would spend every last breath fighting to win her back.

I would prove to her that I could love her right, that I could be the man she deserved. I would make her see that she was mine, not by force, not by binding her with paper or obligation, but because I would give her everything I had left.

I would show her that she had never stopped being my heart.

But tonight, as I sat alone in the ruins of our marriage, the only thing I could do was let the grief tear through me.

I buried my face in my hands again, and for the first time in years, I wept.

Wept for the woman I had destroyed with my silence. Wept for the love I had squandered. Wept for the family I had broken.

And as the tears soaked my palms, I whispered her name like a prayer, over and over, hoping somehow she could hear it, hoping it wasn’t too late to make her mine again.