Scene: The Journal is Found
The paramedics had left.
The search team had called off operations for the night.
The storm that had raged all evening was finally gone, but the chaos it left behind hung in the air like smoke, thick, choking, impossible to ignore.
Cole stood in Jade's room, still drenched from the rain, his hands trembling as they hovered over the mess she left behind.
She was… gone.
The word didn't sit right in his throat. It scraped. It burned. It refused to take root.
He hadn't meant to pick up the journal.
He was only looking for a sign, anything to tell him where she might have gone.
But then he saw it. Bound in worn leather, tucked beneath the lamp on her nightstand.
Unassuming.
Like her.
He opened it with fingers colder than the rain outside.
"I don't blame you, Cole.
Not for being cold.
Not for being distant.
Not even for neglecting me on nights when the silence wrapped around me like a second skin. I don't blame you for looking right through me, for forgetting the sound of my laugh, or the way I flinch every time someone raises their voice.
And no, I don't blame you for the child we lost.
Even if it was the only thing that made me feel real.
Even if I was the one holding my stomach in the hallway, alone.
Because I've always known—I'm not the one you want.
No one ever believed me when I said I never planned it. The wedding. The press. The scandal.
They all think I forced your hand. That I trapped you.
And Vivien…
Vivien gets to be the tragic heroine, the one who loved you from the start.
No one even dares call her what she is.
Not a mistress.
Not a liar.
Just… misunderstood.
While I became the villain of a story I didn't write.
In some other version of our lives, maybe that makes sense.
I'm the intruder.
The obstacle.
The cold-hearted wife who stole a man that was never meant to be hers.
But even villains bleed."
The words blurred. His vision stung.
He blinked, but they were still there. Her handwriting. Her pain. Her quiet, unwavering loyalty written in a language he never bothered to learn until it was too late.
He flipped through pages filled with ink-stained loneliness.
Then—tucked between two entries, folded neatly with a paperclip—he found it.
The divorce papers. Signed. Dated. Unsent.
Her signature at the bottom looked calm. Resolved. Like someone who had finally let go of something heavy.
He stared at it for a long time.
No tears, no fights, no scene.
Just her signature.
And a final kindness he hadn't earned.
His fingers trembled as he turned the next page—one addressed to her brother.
"To my brother—
To the boy I followed through thunderstorms.
To the man I believed would always choose me.
I expected the world to turn its back on me.
I expected the whispers, the headlines, the venom.
But I didn't expect you.
Not your silence.
Not your disgust.
Not the way your eyes said, 'You deserve this.'
I used to think if I tried hard enough, loved hard enough, I could earn a place.
In someone's heart.
In someone's home.
But I was wrong.
I see it now.
The only time I'm welcome is when I leave.
So here it is—
My apology to a world that never asked for me.
To a husband who never wanted me.
To a brother who forgot I had a name.
I'll carry the blame if it makes it easier for everyone else to sleep.
Just don't pretend to mourn me when I'm gone."
Cole's throat tightened.
He had read court testimonies. He'd watched victims break down on the stand.
But nothing had ever felt like this.
This wasn't testimony.
This was a eulogy Jade wrote for herself.
While she was still alive.
He lowered the journal slowly, as if putting it down too fast would shatter something that was already broken.
The door creaked open.
It was Jade's brother—ashen-faced, hollow.
Cole didn't say anything.
He just held out the journal with both hands, like it weighed more than he could bear.
The man took it. Read the first line.
And crumpled to his knees before he could read the second.