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His Wife, His Mistake
Chapter Five: The Woman Who Left
POV: Arya
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The day I left Damon, I didn't cry.
I thought I would. I expected my hands to shake. I expected to run back up the stairs and crawl into bed next to him, pretending I hadn't seen what I saw.
But I didn't.
I walked out the door, down the steps, out into the cold morning air with only my suitcase, my passport, and the baby growing inside me.
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The next few days were a blur.
Bus rides. Motel rooms. Late-night nausea. Loneliness sitting in the passenger seat of every decision.
I told no one.
No mother. No best friend. No lawyer.
No one but the baby. The one I whispered to in the quiet. The only one who couldn't leave me.
"It's just you and me now," I said, curled up in a cheap motel bed as the morning sickness hit like a wave.
"You're all I have… and I won't fail you."
But some nights, I wondered if I already had.
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Pregnancy alone is a different kind of war.
You fight it in silence — against your body, your mind, your heart.
The first trimester nearly broke me.
The vomiting. The dizziness. The cravings I couldn't satisfy. The sharp pull in my back when I tried to lie flat.
But the worst part wasn't physical.
It was the loneliness.
The aching absence of a voice beside me telling me it would be okay. Of a warm hand on my stomach. Of a man asking, "How are you feeling today?"
I hated him for that.
I hated Damon for making me carry this alone.
For cheating on me.
For making me believe I was invisible.
And most of all, for not noticing the nights I cried myself to sleep just a few feet away from him.
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There were times I imagined going back.
I told myself I could forgive. We could raise the baby together. Maybe he'd change.
But every time I pictured his cold eyes… her lips on his neck… the way he walked past me without even seeing me…
I remembered why I left.
And I reminded myself that my child deserved better.
Even if I had nothing.
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I ended up in a small coastal town with salty air and kind strangers.
I rented a one-bedroom apartment above a bakery. The landlady was an older woman named Miriam, who found me passed out on her porch one afternoon and brought me ginger tea.
"You look like someone learning how to breathe again," she said gently.
I didn't have the words to explain that she was right.
Miriam became my first real anchor. She offered me a job helping her sort books in the tiny community library on the edge of town. It paid almost nothing, but it was enough to buy prenatal vitamins and secondhand clothes.
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As the months passed, my belly grew — and so did my strength.
I learned how to budget.
How to sleep sitting up.
How to walk to the clinic alone.
How to paint again.
I rediscovered pieces of myself Damon had never bothered to see.
I wasn't just his wife. I wasn't just a shadow of the woman who hosted dinner parties and smiled for cameras.
I was Arya.
A mother.
A fighter.
A survivor.
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Still, some nights I'd wake up gasping from dreams of him.
Dreams where he reached for me… then vanished.
Dreams where I told him about the baby… and he laughed.
Dreams where I died in childbirth, and he never knew I existed.
I started journaling.
Writing letters to the baby. Letters I'd keep in a shoebox, sealed away for when he was old enough to ask.
"Your father didn't know," one read.
"But he had chances. I gave him so many chances."
"And I loved him — but sometimes love isn't enough when it's only one-sided."
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Liam was born in a quiet hospital room during a thunderstorm.
No flowers. No family. No Damon.
Just me and a nurse named Clara who held my hand as I screamed through the pain.
"It's a boy," she whispered.
I sobbed — not just from the pain, but from the overwhelming love I felt the moment I saw him.
Dark hair. Pale skin. Tiny fists clenched as if ready to fight the world.
He looked like Damon.
But when I pressed him to my chest and he calmed in my arms, I knew he'd never be like him.
Because he would be loved from the start.
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Motherhood was hard.
There were days I didn't eat until noon. Nights I cried quietly while Liam slept. Times I held him and whispered apologies I didn't understand.
But there were also smiles. First steps. Paint-covered fingers. Laughter echoing through the tiny apartment like magic.
I built a life around him.
My own art. An open studio. A routine.
No secrets. No lies. No begging someone to love me.
Just peace.
Or so I thought.
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Because peace shattered the day I saw Damon again.
And for a split second — in that crowded fairground — all the pain I had buried for four years threatened to rise like a wave.
The way he looked at Liam.
The flicker in his eyes when realization hit.
The ghost of guilt written across his face.
I didn't know what I wanted in that moment — revenge, forgiveness, or escape.
But one thing was clear:
The man who shattered me…
Was now staring at the pieces I rebuilt without him.