The Blue Rejection That Ended My Marriage Chapter 02

The Blue Rejection That Ended My Marriage Chapter 02

The home office door closed in front of me, cutting off their low voices.

The next morning, the house was empty when I came out of the bedroom.

Used dishes still sat on the dining table beside half a fried egg and half a glass of milk. As always, they had been left there for me to clean up.

I pretended not to see them and packed my things through the pain in my back.

Every piece of clothing and every basic necessity I owned had come out of whatever I managed to save after one blue request after another.

Once I had everything together, I stuffed it all into my suitcase and called Nathan Brooks, a former student of my mother’s.

When I’d decided to quit my job and stay home to support Sloane’s career, Nathan had been the only one who kept trying to talk me out of it.

He arrived quickly. The moment he saw me standing there with one hand pressed to my back and a suitcase beside me, his face tightened with concern.

“You’re really going through with this?”

“You gave Project Deep Blue to Sloane for free so she could land the biggest client in Milan. And now you’re really ready to walk away?”

I didn’t argue. I simply handed him my phone and showed him two years’ worth of spending requests.

Page after page of blue looked like a record of my self-respect slowly disappearing.

He didn’t say anything else. He took all my luggage with him, and before he left, he said, “As long as you’ve come to your senses, it’s never too late.”

My leg had started going numb, so I sat on the couch for a while to rest.

Then a notification came through from the company-wide Slack channel.

I had never left the channel after resigning. They had probably forgotten I was still in it.

The newest post was a company announcement showcasing Miles’s latest design.

The image attached to it made my grip tighten around my phone.

I had spent two straight weeks working on that design a few months earlier, back when I’d been planning to return to the design team.

Then my back injury was diagnosed. Sloane said I shouldn’t be sitting for long periods and that it wasn’t the right time for me to go back.

Apparently, giving my work to Miles was perfectly fine.

I typed a message.

Me: [Since when did the design files on my computer become yours?]

Sloane replied immediately.

Sloane: [Stop making things up in here.]

A second later, another notification appeared.

[You were removed from the channel.]

By the time I reached the office, people were already whispering behind my back.

“What a petty little man.”

“He gets to stay home on his wife’s dime and still does nothing but get jealous.”

“Miles actually earned his place. Elliot just got lucky—he married the right woman.”

I ignored the stares boring into my back and headed straight to Sloane’s office.

Miles was there too. A form lay on the desk in front of Sloane, and she was in the middle of signing it.

I caught a glimpse of the heading.

Project Bonus — $60,000 toward a car.

The project hadn’t even started, and the bonus was already approved.

None of the color-coded rules she imposed on me applied to Miles. She signed without the slightest hesitation.

The moment Sloane saw me, she turned the form facedown.

“Perfect timing. Apologize to Miles.”

I stared at her.

“Me?”

“Elliot, enough with the jealousy. What you posted in the company channel made Miles look bad.”

I gave a short, humorless laugh.

“Stealing someone else’s design isn’t humiliating?”

“Taking sixty grand toward a car before the project even starts isn’t humiliating?”

Miles gave her sleeve a small tug and lowered his voice.

“Sloane, forget the car. Don’t fight with Elliot over me. He’ll just blame me even more for holding up his requests.”

Sloane’s expression turned ice-cold.

“So this is still about money.”

“Then maybe this will teach you a lesson.”

She pressed the intercom and called security, then had me thrown out of the building in front of the entire office.

The moment I stepped outside, a deep, brutal pain seized my lower back. I had to sit down on a concrete bench near the entrance.

Two messages arrived almost back-to-back.

The first was from the hospital.

Hospital: [Mr. Hale, your imaging results are back. Your spondylolisthesis has progressed to Grade III, and there is already nerve compression. You need to be admitted for surgery by the day after tomorrow at the latest.]

The second was from Sloane.

Sloane: [I’ve frozen your authorized-user card for now. I’ll turn it back on when you apologize.]