I Accepted His Divorce Proposal

My husband was dying of cancer. To set me free, he decided to become a monster.

He started cheating, openly and frequently. He’d humiliate me with cruel words, then freeze me out with cold silence. I finally broke and agreed to a divorce.

That’s when his friends, perched on their moral high ground, told me the "truth"—about his noble intentions, about the cancer.

My world shattered. I threw myself from a rooftop, a final, desperate act of love.

But after I died, Julian was saved. A medical miracle, they called it. He found the strength to weep at my grave, and then, with his friends' encouragement, he pulled himself together and married Lana, the girl who had always been waiting in the wings.

...But now, I’m back at that party. The night it all began.

Julian is laughing, a playful glint in his eye. "Let's get a divorce," he says.

I don't get angry. I just look at him calmly and say, "Okay."

1

After I spoke, a strange, heavy silence fell over the room.

In the sprawling, opulent VIP lounge, I was the only one who seemed oblivious, my head bowed as my spoon traced patterns in a crystal bowl of some lavish dessert.

The hand Julian had been holding—Lana’s hand—slowly slipped from his grasp. His handsome face, which had just been joking about falling for someone else, about wanting a divorce, was twisting into a rigid, ugly mask.

He clearly never expected me to say that.

He knew. He knew the depths of my love for him, knew that even a joke like this should have sent me into a spiral of tears and accusations. He expected a scene.

How could I possibly have said "Okay" with such unnerving calm?

Around us, his friends—all of them with their own hidden agendas—exchanged uneasy glances. The little drama they had orchestrated, the one where they got to watch me break down in a storm of angry, pathetic tears, had just crumbled to dust. The script had been thrown completely off the rails, leaving them all scrambling.

But I felt no triumph.

My gaze drifted slowly across their faces, one by one. Finally, it settled on Lana's striking, vividly beautiful face.

In my last life, I considered her my best friend.

I’d forgotten that she and Julian had grown up together. They were practically family. The fiercer she was in my defense, the more loyal she seemed, the deeper and more agonizing was the knife she eventually twisted in my back.

My stare made her visibly uncomfortable. She glanced instinctively at Julian, only to find him glaring at me, his face a thundercloud, his jaw clenched tight. A shadow passed over her eyes for a split second.

Then, just as quickly, she plastered on a bright, breezy smile and came over to grab my arm. "Hey, don't be mad, don't be mad! It was Zack's stupid idea. We were just messing with you."

I took a step back, letting her hand fall into empty space. My expression remained flat, my eyes fixed on Julian. "But I'm not messing with you," I said.

"I'm serious, Jules. Let's get a divorce."

2

Lana stood frozen between us, her head darting b...