He Played Poor To Chase Her, I Made Him Poor for Real

After I reported in, my mother called me out of the blue and told me to come home immediately.

When I landed, Adrian was standing beside her, still holding the cake I'd bought.

"Why did you divorce Adrian?"

This time my mother's fury came laced with shock and panic. She'd just learned that Adrian had walked away with nothing under the old prenup, three overseas villas, $860 million in shares, not a cent kept.

She threw the divorce papers in my face, shaking. "Do you understand he kept nothing? He's living in a hospital dorm. Has he lost his mind? Have the two of you lost your minds?"

My mother had spent her career in politics, surrounded by men who put their own interests first. She could not begin to grasp why Adrian would truly give up over a billion for another woman. The only explanation she could land on was that this girl must have some terrible hold on him.

I bent, picked up the divorce papers, and, while Adrian and my mother watched with relief blooming on their faces, tore them to shreds and threw the pieces into the air. I smiled and refused to remarry him.

"In your dreams."

"Vivi—"

Adrian's face changed. He looked at me with those pitiful, pleading eyes and begged for a chance to explain. He said he knew he'd been wrong.

I told him, repulsed, that I'd seen him give Chloe that exact same look, and I threw the divorce papers from my bag in his face.

I noticed his shirt was a cheap thing off a street stall. He really was living as the "poor boy" Chloe liked. He hadn't even kept the clothes he'd taken off.

He said he and Chloe were done. Chloe stepped out from behind him, her tone measured, neither high nor low. "Ms. Lowell, I came today to say I know what I did was wrong. I won't contact Adrian again."

My mother came over and patted my shoulder, soothing. "Vivi, she's just a woman. Nothing real even happened between them."

"And Adrian's admitted his mistake. What could matter more than a marriage?"

"Mom?" I couldn't believe it. "You knew?"

She'd even used her influence to remove Chloe from Adrian's side. As if pressing the girl down would make Adrian "come to his senses."

"So?" I pushed my mother back and looked at Adrian. "Are you here apologizing because my mother stepped in, or because Chloe stopped wanting you, and only then did you realize you were wrong?"

"No." He shook his head. "Neither. It's because I dreamed about Annie."

He said he'd dreamed about her over and over these past few days. In the dream, Annie asked him, "Daddy, did you stop wanting me?" The more it gnawed at him, the wronger it felt, and that was why he'd come for an explanation.

But then he kept going. "You have to believe me, Vivi. What I felt for Chloe was real. She's like the woman you used to be, the one who'd cry all night over wounded soldiers. It's not that I don't love you. I just wanted to find that woman who made my heart race. If you could just turn back into who you were—"

The slap landed before I decided to throw it. He clutched his face, stunned.

I laughed out loud. "You're still saying it. 'Turn back into who you were.' Adrian, who was I, exactly? Was I the twenty-year-old holding her acceptance to Doctors Without Borders? Was I the woman telling you I was going to Africa? Who knelt by my bed and cried, 'Vivi, you're pregnant, you can't go'? Who?"

I told him, flat and cold, that it was nothing to me anymore, whatever he and Chloe did, however they ended up.

He searched my face and saw that I truly no longer cared, and he couldn't understand what had happened.

I said the truth in a voice with no life left in it.

"Because Annie's dead."