I Stopped Waiting after the Ninth Divorce Chapter 05

I Stopped Waiting after the Ninth Divorce Chapter 05

Emmett’s POV 

I nearly stumbled forward, lips trembling, one thought consuming everything else: She came back. She couldn’t leave me. 

Then the figure turned around. 

The smile died on my face like a flame pinched out. Genevieve. 

“Emmett!” She rose from the vanity and flashed me that saccharine smile, arms open wide, waiting to be held. 

The warmth drained from my face all at once. I could feel my expression go cold, degree by degree. 

“I thought you left,” I said. Flat. Dry. “And why are you? wearing Eloise’s clothes?” 

She didn’t flinch. She closed the distance between 

us, her slender fingers coming up to rest against my chest, face tilted up, eyes lit with something certain and hungry. 

“I came back,” she said softly, voice edged with a pout. “I missed you, Emmett. The doctors say my condition 

has stabilized 

we can finally be together. You can finally marry me.‘ 

I almost laughed. It was the most absurd thing I’d ever heard. 

I shoved her hand away and stepped back, a cold smile twisting at my mouth. “Marry you? Who do you think you are?” 

The smile on Genevieve’s face went rigid. Disbelief flickered in her eyes. “What… what are you saying?” 

“Eloise is my wife.” I said it slowly, each word carved out like ice. “Not you. It was never you.” 

Genevieve let out a shriek that drove straight into my temples. 

“Emmett! You threw her away for me nine times nine divorces — and now you want to act like you’re some devoted husband? Don’t make me sick!” 

Something uncomfortable moved through me. I buried it. 

“I divorced her to keep you from spiraling,” I said, my voice dropping low. “Not because I loved you. If you hadn’t spent years dragging yourself back into our lives, Eloise never would have left.” 

The color bled out of Genevieve’s face then flooded back, red and raw, like she’d been stripped bare in front of an audience. 

“I dragged myself back?” Her head snapped up, her eyes going sharp and vicious. “Emmett, do you remember what you said to her right in front of me? You said, ‘I wish you were as devoted to me as she is.‘ Who said that? You let her kneel outside your door all night and turned it into a story you told your friends. You’re the one who came to my bed. She left because you pushed her out, every single step- and now you’re trying to put that on me? What gives you the right?” 

I went still. 

The images came without warning. Eloise kneeling outside my door in the rain. Her face, calm and unreadable, as she handed over the dress at the bridal boutique. Her voice on the phone: “Nothing else 

I’ll hang up now.” And then the accounts, closed. The number, blocked. Every trace of herself, methodically scrubbed from my life. 

I realized, for the first time, that the woman who used to wait for me with something like hope in her eyes the woman I’d assumed would always be there I had never once truly looked at her. 

She was the one I cared about. She had always been. 

But I’d let that care curdle into entitlement, into carelessness, into the ease of walking away and never once looking back. 

Genevieve laughed. 

“Done performing?” She tilted her head, something unhinged behind her eyes. “You’re not fooling me, Emmett. You love me you always have_” 

I grabbed her wrist. 

Too hard. My grip locked around her like a vice, knuckles grinding, fingers pressing deep enough to bruise. 

“shut up.” 

She choked on the pain but smiled through it, mouth curving into something cruel. “Hit a nerve, didn’t I?” Her voice went shrill, twisting like a blade against my ribs. “Now that Eloise finally got tired of your games and left, you want to play the heartbroken husband? 

You deserve to lose her The slap cracked through the room. 

Genevieve reeled back into the wardrobe, hand flying to her face, staring at me like she couldn’t believe what had just happened. 

“You hit me?” 

“She left because you kept pushing her.” My voice didn’t sound like mine. It was flat, distant, like it belonged to someone else entirely. I pulled out my phone and dialed security. “Main bedroom. Now. 

Escort her out.” 

I paused, eyes dropping to the pale blue slip she was still wearing. 

“Take the clothes off before you go.” 

Genevieve broke. She lunged forward and grabbed my sleeve, tears streaming, her sobs turning ragged and desperate. “You can’t do this to me! Emmett, I love you you can’t-” 

The door opened. 

Two guards stepped in and took her by the arms. Her crying dragged down the hallway, through the foyer, toward the front door. Her‍screams grew thinner and thinner, swallowed by the dark, until finally there was nothing but the dull thud of a closing door. didn’t move. 

The room settled into silence – the kind deep enough that I could hear myself breathe. The vanity still 

held a few of her things: a hair clip she wore often, a nearly–empty tube of hand cream, a few photos tucked in the drawer, my tie draped over the back of her chair. 

A home without her. Empty as a grave. 

I lowered myself onto the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, head bowed. 

And the pain finally came – rising slowly from somewhere deep in my chest, vast and dark and without end.