My Commander Ex Divorced Me Then I Became Out of His League Chapter 04

My Commander Ex Divorced Me Then I Became Out of His League Chapter 04

Nova Pierce’s expression shifted into something spectacular.

Her practiced smile froze at the corners. The veil of delicate vulnerability over her eyes split open just a crack.

But she recovered fast.

“Sloane, it’s only natural you’d be upset. A divorce like this—it’s rough on anybody.”

Her voice carried just the right amount of pity.

“If you ever need anything, don’t be a stranger. I’m just the Commander’s aide, but I can still put a word in here and there.”

I heard her.

Every syllable, crystal clear.

This was a victory lap.

Gentle. Graceful. Completely bulletproof.

“No need.” I walked past her, cloth bag in hand. “As of today, Commander Whitmore and I have nothing to do with each other.”

I didn’t look back.

But I knew the woman behind me was smiling.

She thought she’d won.

What she didn’t know was that in this game, she wasn’t the one who’d lost.

When I stepped through the gates of Campbell Military Medical Center, the north wind hit me straight in the face.

The northern December cold can crack bone.

I was wearing a thin coat, carrying one cloth bag, with exactly seven dollars and thirty cents in my pocket and a base housing access card.

Well. The access card was probably useless now.

I stood outside the hospital for a moment and pulled a deep breath of frozen air into my lungs.

It burned. Sharp and clarifying.

Thirty years from my last life flickered through my mind in rapid sequence. Endless laundry. Endless cooking. Endless glares from my mother-in-law. One New Year’s Eve after another, all swallowed alone.

It was over.

All of it.

This life, I was going to find one person.

Professor Harrison Shaw.

My mentor.

In my previous life, he’d been devastated when I withdrew. He wrote me three letters, asking me to come back and finish my studies.

I never responded.

Because Martha Whitmore said, “What’s a woman need so much education for? A wife’s real job is taking care of her husband at home.”

And I’d actually believed her.

This life, I would never believe it again.

I pulled my coat tighter and headed for the bus station.

Crestwood University was two hundred miles away.

Six hours by long-distance bus.

A few crumpled bills. Just enough for a one-way ticket out of here.

It would be enough.

I only needed to make this trip once.

The bus rattled along the highway for a full six hours.

By the time I reached Crestwood, night had fallen.

I stood at the station entrance, my breath condensing into white plumes.

A couple crumpled bills in my pocket. Just enough for a one-way ride out of town.

The university was on the west side of town.

A forty-minute walk.

I didn’t hesitate. Just started walking.

When I passed a food stall, my stomach growled.

I gripped the coins in my pocket and kept going.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t hungry.

It was that this money had another purpose.

Forty minutes later, I stood outside the gates of Crestwood University School of Medicine.

Iron-barred gates. Two concrete pillars. A wooden plaque mounted between them.

Five years.

I’d been gone from this place for five whole years.

The gatehouse light was on.

I knocked on the window.

“Excuse me. Can you tell me where Professor Harrison Shaw’s office is?”

The gatekeeper, an old man with reading glasses, looked me up and down.

“You’re looking for Professor Shaw? He’s long gone for the day. Come back tomorrow.”

“Where does he live, then?”

“Can’t give out his address. What’s your relationship to him?”

I paused.

“I’m his student. Sloane Ashford.”