After the Last Tear: Rising from the Ashes of a Broken Marriage novel Chapter 66

Pax was gone.

Not just gone—erased.

His things had disappeared overnight, vanishing so cleanly that if not for the faint indentation his side of the mattress still held, I might have thought he had never been here at all.

The small, suffocating apartment we had shared for the past two years now felt eerily… spacious.

I stood in the center of the room, staring at the empty space where his belongings used to be. The closet door, once barely able to close from the weight of our combined mess, now hung slightly ajar—hollow, unburdened.

Even his scent, that faint mix of cedar and citrus, was already beginning to fade.

He hadn't left a note.

No message. No half-hearted explanation scrawled on a scrap of paper.

Nothing.

Just silence.

I swallowed, exhaling slowly

So, that was it,a clean break.

A quiet, unspoken ending.

Maybe this was for the best.

This way, at least, I wasn't the one who had to walk away first.

Two days ago, I had posted a question online on Reddit:

"I'm leaving the country in seven days. I haven't told my boyfriend yet. How do I break it to him?"

The comments had been ruthless.

Selfish. Cruel. Heartless.

They accused me of never planning a future with him, of leading him on, of being too much of a coward to be honest.

And the worst part?

They were right.

Between him and my future, I chose my future.

I had never truly considered another option.

I wanted to laugh at how absurd it all was, but my lips wouldn't move, frozen in something tight and bitter.

And yet…

Now that I thought about it, Pax's act had never been flawless.

The cracks had always been there, thin and almost imperceptible, but there nonetheless.

The night we met, I was working a part-time shift at a bar when a drunk customer grabbed my wrist, pulling me closer with the kind of entitlement that came from knowing no one would stop him.

Pax had.

We moved into this tiny apartment together, vowing to work hard, to build something—a future.

But I understood now.

That future was just something I had to fight for,sounds so ridiculous.....

What I had thought was struggling together had only been a game to him—an experiment, a pastime, a lie he lived simply because he could.

I didn't turn on the light.

The room felt too empty, too unfamiliar in the dark.

Then my phone vibrated twice against the nightstand. The screen flickered to life, casting a faint glow across the sheets.

A message--Pax.

An image--My passport.

"Accidentally took this with me."

My fingers curled around the edge of the blanket, the fabric cool beneath my skin.

A second message appeared.

"Why are you even getting this? Where exactly are you going?"

Stared at the words, my pulse skipping for reasons I didn't understand.