He Terminated My Lease So I Terminated Our Wedding Chapter 14
After dinner, an email forwarded by my lawyer popped up in the corner of my screen.
“This is the last one we intercepted. Whether you read it is up to you.”
The sender was Owen. The subject line contained only two words.
That Island
I opened it.
The screen filled with a dim, overcast island. Gray waves washed over the sandbar, just like that storm-darkened evening three years ago.
Beneath the photo was a single sentence.
“If I could do it all over again, the first thing I would ask is—do you want this?”
I looked at it for a few seconds. I wasn’t angry. I didn’t feel much of anything.
The question, arriving three years too late, wasn’t about giving the choice back to me.
It was only about making him feel better.
It had nothing to do with me.
I dragged the email to the trash and clicked Permanently Delete.
Mateo came over with a glass of water and glanced at the screen.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” I closed the laptop. “Just clearing out junk mail.”
He didn’t ask anything else. He only smiled and reminded me, “Tomorrow’s the groundbreaking for the community center. Our first project together. Nervous?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
Once, I thought the future was a house, a wedding, a home someone else promised me.
Later, I understood that the future wasn’t in awards or projects, either.
It was in getting back up, again and again, and rebuilding with my own two hands. It was in walking, step by step, all the way to where I stood now.
I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window I had designed myself.
Baltimore’s lights spread out before me. My reflection stared back from the glass—calm, clear, and entirely my own.
I didn’t need to wait for anyone anymore.
My life was back in my hands.
The laptop I had just closed chimed again.
This time, it was an alert. Owen had sent the island photo to the community center’s public mailing list, copying every donor and all the media scheduled to attend the groundbreaking.
The subject line had become a question.
Are you really willing to hand a community center to someone who built her fame on lies?
I reopened the laptop and forwarded the email to my lawyer.
This time, I didn’t delete it.