Chapter 7
Ryan said just one thing; he was finally out of the hospital today.
Then he hung up.
The one thing he never questioned,
Was that he genuinely wanted to be a father.
A wish that seemed so ordinary in most marriages,
But always felt impossible for him.
And every time it came up,
He found a way to pin his frustration on me.
But the irony?
He never actually wanted to leave me.
He once told himself-
That not divorcing me was his greatest act of kindness.
What a joke.
How selfish can one person be?
He was the one who kept pushing,
Until I finally fell.
And in doing so,
He dragged himself down with me.
The phone rang again, snapping him out of it.
“Mr. Ryan, this is your attorney.”
“Ms. Isabella Garcia called earlier.”
“She’s ready to finalize the post–divorce financial settlement.”
Every other time we’d gotten divorced,
Ryan would hand me some over–the–top parting gift.
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He Got His Dream Baby. Just Not With Me
66.7%
Chapter 7
A house. A car.
Or at the very least, a designer bag worth tens of thousands.
But this time,
I asked for a small percentage of his actual assets.
Compared to what he’d given before,
It was almost nothing.
So little, he didn’t even think twice.
Still, the moment he heard my name,
It felt like the lights flicked back on in his world.
Even if we hadn’t seen each other,
This was the first sign of life from me in weeks.
“Try to find her,” he told the lawyer.
“If you can get an address, I’ll agree to anything.”
The lawyer promised to try.
To Ryan, it felt like hope-
A crack of sunlight in a dark tunnel.
He came home buzzing with it.
Only to find the place emptier than ever.
Nothing had changed.
Not really.
But without me there,
This house didn’t feel like home.
He remembered the early days,
When we were in college and only saw each other once a month.
It hadn’t even been that long now,
But he missed me like crazy.
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He Got His Dream Baby….. Just Not With Me
69.4%
Chapter 7
He missed his Isabella.
So he sat there,
Alone in the silence of our home,
For three straight days.
Until the lawyer called back again.
“Mr. Ryan, I’m currently at-”
He didn’t even finish the sentence
Before a familiar voice cut in.
“Hello, counselor.”
I had just arrived at the coffee shop.
The lawyer had already ordered two drinks
And was on the phone when I walked in.
He quickly ended the call and set the phone face down on the table.
The financial settlement went smoothly.
According to our prenup,
I would receive two hundred thousand dollars-
Half the funds from one of his minor accounts.
To him, it was barely the price of a few luxury items.
But to me,
It was the safety net I needed.
A way to land on my feet,
When I finally chose to settle somewhere for good.
“Ms. Garcia, you and Mr. Ryan are still in the cooling–off period,”
The lawyer reminded me.
“We can’t release the funds until that’s over.”
I nodded.
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He Got His Dream Baby. Just Not With Me
72.2%
Chapter 7
That was only fair.
I still had enough in savings from the past few years of work.
I could wait.
Then he slid a card across the table.
“This one’s from Mr. Ryan, too. He insisted.”
“Since you’re still legally married,
he said it’s for your monthly living expenses.”
The lawyer’s face told me there was more he wasn’t saying.
Ryan always had that rich guy mindset-
Especially the type who thought money could buy forgiveness.
To a man like him,
If you can throw cash at a problem,
It was never really a problem to begin with.
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