Chapter 8
Jasper smiled faintly. “You don’t think I’m trying to trick you, do you? I just suddenly figured it out. These past few weeks, I’ve spent every day waiting for you in that stairwell. Selena, no one stays the same forever–not you, not me. I’m tired.”
I knew it.
Finally, Jasper and I divorced as I had hoped. His mother looked at me several times during the process, as though she wanted to say something but held back.
On the day of my flight to Ashford, both Jasper and his mother came to the airport.
Jasper looked thinner again, but his expression was calm as he reminded me to stay safe.
“Selena, even though we’re divorced, you can’t go finding a new man so quickly.”
“And why not?”
‘ve known each other for over twenty years. Are you really going to forget all that in just a few years? No, you can’t forget me nat fast. It’ll hurt my feelings.”
I scoffed. Since our divorce, it felt like things had reverted to the way they were before our marriage.
The boarding announcement for my flight came over the speakers. Jasper was still muttering on and on, but I had no interest in
listening. I grabbed my suitcase and walked away.
Outside the airport, Jasper watched the plane take off with reluctance in his eyes. His mother, seeing his gaunt face, couldn’t hold
‘back her tears.
“You fool, why did you have to hurt Selena in the first place? And now that you’ve changed, why don’t you fight to win her back?”
Jasper let out a bitter laugh. “Mom, how much longer do you think I have? Why should I drag Selena down with me?”
That day, Jasper had planned to pick up her favorite waffles, but halfway up the stairs, his vision blurred, and he collapsed.
When he woke up, he was in the hospital.
The doctor’s diagnosis was devastating: late–stage liver cancer. At most, he had three months to live.
Jasper had seen far too many late–stage cancer patients, their faces gaunt and their bodies reduced to little more than bone.
He didn’t want Selena to see him like that–frail and hollow. He wanted her to remember him the way he was in her memories:
confident and handsome.
But the thought of her being with another man filled him with jealousy.
Three months after I arrived in Ashford, I received a call from Jasper.
I assumed it was another attempt to get me back, but when I answered, it was his mother’s voice on the other end.
“Selena, Jasper… Jasper is gone.”
2/3
Chapter 8
I didn’t register her words right away and instinctively asked where he had gone.
Her response was a wave of sobs.
Then it hit me–Jasper’s gaunt face flashed through my mind, and I realized what she meant.
Jasper was dead.
By the time I rushed back, he was already buried.
+15 Bonus
The black–and–white photo on his headstone captured Jasper at twenty–two, his warm smile frozen in time. He was dressed in
the same suit he wore on our wedding day.
I stood there in a daze, staring at the picture. It felt as if I were looking at the Jasper from all those years ago—the Jasper who had
been full of life.
Before I turned twenty–two, I never imagined I’d lose the man I loved most.
Before he turned twenty–two, Jasper never thought he’d betray the woman he loved most.
