My Commander Ex Divorced Me Then I Became Out of His League Chapter 13

My Commander Ex Divorced Me Then I Became Out of His League Chapter 13

In the summer of 2022, I boarded a plane bound for Germany.

My first time on an airplane.

Outside the window, the clouds churned. The sun at thirty thousand feet was blinding.

I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes.

The last image from my previous life flashed through my mind.

The kitchen. A half-peeled potato. A cold, hard floor.

Goodbye.

Goodbye to the woman who spent her life circling a stove, waiting for a husband who never came

home.

Goodbye.

Two years later, I returned.

I brought back more than a fellowship certificate from Heidelberg. I brought two new techniques that were virtually unknown in the country. Hypothermic Cardiopulmonary Bypass Valve Repair. Minimally invasive correction of congenital heart defects in infants.

When I landed, Chief Hayes was there to meet me at the airport.

“Sloane! You’re back!” He clapped me on the shoulder. Again, the shoulder. “Do you have any idea how hard we’ve been waiting for you these last two years?”

I smiled. “Chief, can you please stop hitting my shoulder?”

I threw myself back into the work immediately.

The first domestic hypothermic cardiopulmonary bypass valve repair was performed by me, as lead surgeon, at Crestwood General.

The procedure was broadcast live to twenty-three hospitals across the state.

It went flawlessly.

When the feed ended, the applause came back from twenty-three hospitals all at once.

That day, the name Sloane Ashford went from regional to national.

Things moved faster than I’d ever anticipated.

In 2023, the Department of Health appointed me as a special expert consultant in cardiothoracic

surgery.

In 2024, I led the nation’s first minimally invasive correction of an infant congenital heart defect.

In 2025, I presented my research at the International Cardiac Surgery Annual Conference. It

received the highest commendation of the entire event.

Age thirty-two. Chief of Surgery. The youngest leading authority in cardiothoracic surgery in the

country.

That was my report card, eight years after my rebirth.

What was I doing in year eight of my last life?

Right. Planting cabbages in the yard of the base house.

Did anyone come asking to remarry during all of this? Yes.

Gavin came a few more times. Every time, my answer was the same. No.

He cycled through pleading, then silence, then finally-he stood in the doorway of my office, looking at the certificates and commendations on the wall, and he said, “Sloane. I was never a good

husband.”

The truest sentence he’d ever spoken in his life.

“I know,” I said.

He gave a bitter smile.

“Do you hate me?”

“No.”

I meant it.

Hatred is exhausting.

In my last life, I hated for thirty years. I hated until my hair turned gray and my back bent. I hated all

the way into the grave.

This life, I had no spare energy to give to hatred.

“Then… is there still a chance for me?”

His voice was barely above a whisper.

I’d never heard Gavin Whitmore sound so hollow.

A decorated commander, reduced to a lost, uncertain man in front of a woman.

But I didn’t soften.

Thirty years of cold in my last life couldn’t be thawed by a single “Is there a chance?”

“Gavin.”

I used his first name.

His head snapped up.

“You’ve got your life. I’ve got mine. That marriage was the biggest mistake I ever made. But now

I looked out the window at the sky.

“I don’t regret it anymore.”

He stood there for a long time. Then he turned and walked away. This time, he didn’t look back.

As he stepped out the door, his silhouette buckled, just for a moment.

I watched that retreating back, and I felt an extraordinary calm.

In my last life, I’d watched him walk away for thirty years.

This life-

It was the last time.