He Asked Me To Wait, I Asked For A Divorce Chapter 09

I didn’t expect Owen’s warning to come true only a few days later. Gavin actually showed up.

I had just left the production shop and reached the parking lot when I saw him leaning against my

car.

He was darker from the sun and noticeably thinner. The confidence he’d once carried in norm was gone, replaced by exhaustion and a hard, bitter edge around his eyes.

When he saw me, he straightened. “Claire.”

I stopped a few feet away and looked at him calmly. “Lieutenant Mercer. What do you want?”

The title sounded so formal that it put an ocean between us.

His expression shifted. There was a trace of wounded resentment in his voice. “Can you not talk to

me like that?

Do we really have to turn this into something so ugly?”

“Turn it ugly?” I almost laughed. “You filed a false complaint against me. Your family took my grandmother’s jewelry. How did I become the one making things ugly?

Gavin, have some shame.”

His fist tightened. Regret flickered through his eyes. “What happened before was wrong.

I shouldn’t have listened to my mother. I shouldn’t have treated you that way.

Can we get remarried?

I swear I’ll do things right this time. I’ll handle my parents. They won’t make your life difficult

again.”

I stared at him like he’d just told me the most absurd joke I’d ever heard.

“Gavin, do you actually think I can’t survive without you?” I looked straight at him and spoke one

word at a time. “When Diego Garcia looked like your ticket to a bigger career, you were

embarrassed by the woman you married and told me to stay out of the way if someone more useful

came along. Now your career is wrecked, the admiral’s daughter dumped you, and suddenly you remember how good I was to you?

That’s a hell of a calculation.”

“That’s not what I mean!” He stepped forward, reaching for my hand. “I really know I was wrong.

I lost my head. Just give me one more chance, okay?”

I stepped back before he could touch me.

“Achance?

In my last life, I gave you more than thirty years of chances.

I cared for your disabled parents, kept that miserable house running, worked myself sick, and burned through my entire youth. What did I get for it?

I got to watch you marry a senior officer’s daughter. I got to hear that you told people I slept around. I got to see your daughter stand outside my apartment and act disgusted by the place I lived.”

My voice stayed calm, so calm it sounded like I was telling someone else’s story. “Gavin, I died once

already.

When my heart gave out in my last life and I collapsed on the floor, all I had left was hatred.

I hated myself for being blind. I hated that I’d spent an entire lifetime living for other people.

I got this life back to change where it ends.

Your life, your career, your parents-none of it belongs to me anymore.”

He went still, his face drained of color.

He had always believed I was throwing a tantrum. He thought I’d eventually come back, and that no matter how capable I became, a divorced woman like me would have fewer choices and would end up wanting him again.

But the woman standing in front of him now was put together, bright-eyed, calm beside a car she’d bought for herself. I was nothing like the timid Claire who had spent her days orbiting a stove and

his parents.

For the first time, panic crossed his face.

It seemed to hit him that he really had lost the woman whose entire world had once revolved around

him.

“Is this because of Owen?” His eyes tightened, his voice strained. “Are you with him now?

Is that why you’re being this cold?”

“Who I’m with is none of your business.” I opened my car door. “Gavin, don’t come looking for me

again.

If you keep showing up, I’ll report you for harassment.

You barely managed to keep your job. Don’t lose that too.

I got into the car, shut the door, started the engine, and drove away without a moment’s hesitation.

In the rearview mirror, Gavin remained where he was. His figure shrank until it became a dark blur and then disappeared.

I felt nothing. No thrill of revenge, no ache for what we’d once been.

It felt like finally throwing away something that should have been gone years ago. Light. Clean.

Done.

I drove along the coastal highway with the windows cracked, salt air pouring into the car.

The Atlantic glittered in the distance, wide and endless.

I suddenly remembered all the times in my last life when I’d stood outside the Mercer house and stared toward the ocean, waiting for a man who never came back for me.

Back then, I thought his future was somewhere beyond that water, and that somehow it was supposed to be our future too.

Now I understood. My future had never been tied to another person or waiting somewhere beyond

the sea. It had always been in my own hands.