The One He Loved Was Never Me Chapter 06
Ethan stood frozen, cold to the bone.
His mind replayed the morning’s events on a merciless loop—he’d abandoned me moments after I’d lost our child, swept Megan into his arms and out the door without a backward glance. He’d even texted me on the way to clean up the broken pieces.
And the night before—the gold letters on the cake box: MEGAN. Handed over by his own hands.
And before that—at the dinner table, sliding the entire plate of shrimp away from me, dropping zucchini into my bowl.
His hand swung up. He slapped himself across the face, hard.
The sharp crack made both nurses jump.
He staggered out of the emergency wing, running and dialing at the same time. He called Xiao Li.
“Did Emily come in to the office today?”
Xiao Li hesitated. “No—Emily submitted her resignation to HR directly this morning and left. You didn’t know?”
“What—” Ethan’s vision went black. He braced himself against the corridor wall. “Her leg—the cut—did she get it treated?”
“No. She refused. It bled a lot. She said it was nothing.”
Ethan hung up and called my number like a man possessed.
Still powered off.
He called HR, confirmed the timestamp on my resignation. This morning.
He had HR forward the file. When he saw my signature on it—the date clear and unmistakable, the handwriting steady without a single tremor—something inside him collapsed.
He slid down the wall and sat on the hospital corridor floor, back pressed against the empty hallway bench, hands covering his face, shoulders shaking.
He didn’t know how long he stayed like that.
When Megan called his name several times and he finally surfaced, he didn’t respond to her.
He only murmured: “Mom, Dad—did you hear? Emily was pregnant… but she went to the clinic alone…”
My father blinked, his first instinct a frown. “Impossible. If she were really pregnant, she’d have announced it to the whole family. Why would she go terminate it on her own? She’s clearly making it up—had someone spread the rumor just to get out of buying Megan’s congee.”
My mother nodded, walking over to comfort Ethan. “Emily loves children. She bought stacks of fertility books and did all that research. If she really were pregnant, there’s no way she’d give it up. She’s probably hiding somewhere right now, watching us panic.”
Ethan still couldn’t shake the dread.
He looked around. No sign of me.
He took a deep breath and called Xiao Li again.
“When Emily left—how did she seem?”
Xiao Li thought for a moment.
“Pretty calm, actually. She crouched on the floor and picked up every last shard of porcelain. Before she left, she smiled. Oh—and she threw out the flower.”
The flower.
That flower.
It hit Ethan all at once.
The flower he’d driven six hours from San Francisco to bring back—shattered. And he hadn’t even glanced down at it. He’d just scooped Megan into his arms and walked out.
“Did Emily say anything else?”
Xiao Li hesitated. “Before she left, she said one thing. She said… ‘There’s no such thing as an identical flower. Once it’s broken, it’s broken.'”
Ethan’s phone slipped from his hand and cracked against the floor.
He turned and ran out of the hospital. Drove straight to the office.
Outside the room he’d prepared for Megan, her things were already arranged inside. But across the hall, my office door stood open. The room was empty.
The calligraphy piece we’d written together—gone from the wall.
The framed photo of us on the desk—gone.
In the trash can, atop a pile of torn photographs and crumpled documents, lay a single sheet of white paper, folded in half.
He opened it. My handwriting.
A divorce agreement. Already signed.
Dated today.
His fingers began to tremble violently.
He sank to the floor, back against the empty desk, Adam’s apple bobbing, unable to produce a single sound.
Night fell.
When my parents brought Megan home, they found him sitting on the floor amid the wreckage of the room.
Scattered around him: his phone, his keys, sheets of paper he’d crumpled and then smoothed flat again.
“Emily’s still not back?” My mother’s voice carried a note of irritation.
“Ethan, why are you sitting on the floor?”
Megan approached gently to help him up—and met his bloodshot eyes. She flinched and pulled her hand away.
Ethan’s body, frozen for hours, had gone completely numb.
When he spoke, his voice was so hoarse it was barely audible. “Emily’s gone. She really is divorcing me.”
My mother snatched the agreement from his hand, turned it over and back, reading it twice. Then she grabbed her phone to call me. The screen flashed: You have been blocked by this contact.
She stared for several seconds, murmuring: “How is this possible? Emily won’t even acknowledge her own mother?”
My father’s chest heaved. He pressed a hand to his forehead, breathing in labored gasps.
Megan cried out: “Dad’s blood pressure is spiking again! Where’s his medication?”
My mother fumbled through the coffee table and drawers, then froze in place:
“The pills… Emily always sorted them into the daily pillbox by dose and brought them to us on schedule… I don’t know where she kept them…”
The house descended into chaos.
Megan crouched helplessly by the sofa. My father leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, gasping for air. My mother tore through cabinets in a frenzy.
Someone—in the midst of the panic—said: “If only Emily were here.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
His fists clenched until his knuckles went white.
“I’ll find her,” he said, voice raw. “I will never agree to this divorce.”
My mother steadied my father with one arm, urging Ethan to hurry, stamping her foot with a sigh: “That girl—how could she just leave without a word…”
After a week of aroundtheclock searching, Ethan finally traced me through the registration records I’d filed with the New York law firm.
He booked a flight almost immediately.
As he headed for the door, Megan grabbed his sleeve, her voice small and wounded:
“Ethan, tomorrow’s my birthday gala. Didn’t you promise we’d go try on that custom gown today?”
He pulled his arm free with more force than necessary, barely containing his agitation. “Megan, I don’t have time. Go by yourself.”
The thought of the gala darkened his eyes.
Everything Emily had never once had—Megan had never once gone without.
Megan pouted, about to protest, but my mother—exhausted beyond recognition—pulled her back. “Megan, enough. We finally have a lead on Emily. Let Ethan handle this.”
These past days she’d been managing my father’s blood pressure crisis alone, while her own herniated disc had flared up, confining her to bed for days. She’d never known exhaustion like this.
Ethan paused. His gaze fell on the silver orchid earrings at Megan’s ears.
He held out his hand. “Megan, take off the earrings. Give them back to Emily.”