The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 317

The Woman Before Me 

MARY’S POV: 

I sat on the edge of Elowen’s bed long after she had fallen asleep, my back pressed against the headboard, my knees drawn up to my chest like a child hiding from a thunderstorm. 

I hadn’t slept at all. 

I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Vesper’s face on that pillow-peaceful, beautiful, utterly unbothered by the destruction she had brought into my home. Every time I let my breathing slow, I saw her dark hair spread across the white sheets like ink spilled on fresh snow. I saw her lips, slightly parted in sleep. I saw her bare shoulder, exposed and vulnerable and somehow still looking like she belonged there, in my house, in my guest room, in the bed where my husband had promised to sleep alone. 

And the worst part, the part that kept twisting through my mind like a knife, was that neither of them knew I had seen. 

I had stood in that doorway, frozen, my hand still on the frame, my breath caught somewhere between my throat and my chest. I had watched them. I had watched her. And then I had done something that felt, in that moment, like cowardice but now, in the cold light of early morning, felt more like survival. 

I had closed the door. 

I looked at myself in the mirror above Elowen’s dresser. 

The woman who stared back at me was someone I barely recognized. Dark circles sat under my eyes like bruises, purple and deep and impossible to hide. My irises were bloodshot from crying and exhaustion, the whites threaded with red in a way that made me look older than my age. My hair was tangled from a night of tossing and turning, and my lips were cracked from breathing through my mouth because I had been too tired to remember to drink water. 

When had I become this person? This tired, faded, invisible version of the woman I had once been? When?