A Decade Undone by Deceit

I collapsed from exhaustion after dedicating ten years of my life to my CEO girlfriend, Kendal. I gave up my music, my dreams, everything to build her empire. At the hospital, the doctor delivered the news.

Malignant tumor. I needed emergency surgery to save my life.

Kendal never visited. Not once. I later found out she was on the phone with another man, sweetly telling him she missed him while I was lying in a hospital bed.

Two weeks after they cut the cancer out of me, on her birthday, I went home and cooked her favorite meal. It was supposed to be our last supper, a final goodbye.

She stumbled in late that night, drunk, carried piggyback by that same man.

They were wearing matching black t-shirts. His said, "I'm with her." Hers said, "I'm with him."

She saw me and froze, her laughter dying in her throat. She scrambled off his back, her face a mask of panic and guilt.

But I felt nothing. Not anger, not jealousy. The part of me that could feel pain for her had been carved out on the operating table, right along with the tumor.

I looked her straight in the eye. "It's over."

Then I walked out of the penthouse we once called home, leaving her standing alone in the monument to our failed relationship. This time, I wasn't coming back.