Chapter 1

On our fifth wedding anniversary, my wife stood me up for work.

She texted me saying she had left an anniversary gift.

It was two cheap sparklers and a single wilting rose.

At midnight, her intern posted an update on social media.

In the photo, his cheek pressed intimately against hers with a magnificent fireworks display in the background.

I took out the divorce agreement I had prepared long ago and walked out of the home we shared for five years.

Camille dismissed it completely. “He will be back in less than three days.”

Three months later, she called me in tears.

“Nolan, I will put on the most beautiful fireworks for you. Please come home, okay?”

What I wanted, though, was never the fireworks.

1

On our fifth anniversary, I prepared a candlelight dinner at home.

I had bought a limited-edition diamond ring, hoping to surprise my wife.

I waited until almost midnight before my phone finally rang.

“I am having dinner with clients and will be home late,” Camille said. “By the way, your gift is in the nightstand drawer.”

It was two cheap sparklers and a single wilting rose.

My heart felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over it.

A moment later, I saw Dustin’s post on social media.

“The fireworks are gorgeous, but they pale in comparison to you.”

In the photo, Camille pressed her face against his, beaming with sweetness.

On her wrist was a designer bracelet I had seen on Dustin’s feed before.

It was supposed to be a gift he bought for his fiancée, yet now it was on my wife’s wrist.

Even worse, our mutual colleagues from the company left comments beneath the post.

“Damn, bro! You actually spent the night with Boss Camille?”

“Boss Camille really is something else. Lucky bastard!”

A storm of bitterness raged inside me.

So this was the “urgent work” she had talked about.

I scrolled through my photo gallery, filled with ten years of memories with Camille.

We met when we were twenty, back when she was waitressing at a diner and getting harassed by entitled jerks. I stepped in and saved her.

When we graduated at twenty-two, I paid off her entire thirty-thousand-dollar student loan.

At twenty-five, after getting our master’s degrees, I gave up an opportunity to go abroad just to marry her and help build her startup.

Yet on our fifth anniversary, she was lying in another man’s arms.

Just then, a message popped up on my phone.

It was a picture of Camille wearing a lace nightgown.

The photo was unsent a second later, followed by a text from Dustin: “Sorry, wrong chat.”

I knew Dustin was deliberately provoking me, but what could I even do?

In a relationship, the one who is no longer loved is treated like the unwanted intruder.

My marriage with Camille had reached its absolute end.

Silently, I deleted every single photo of Camille from my phone.

I told myself over and over that there was no future left between us.

The countdown to ending our five-year marriage had officially begun.