You Forgot I Was A Morgan

Hazel POV: For seventeen years, Colton had been the sun my entire universe revolved around. His happiness was my purpose. His well-being was my reason for breathing, for enduring the slow, painful death of my marriage. But the sun had gone out. The universe was cold and empty. There was nothing left to orbit. "You'll never see him again," Jackson sneered, his voice laced with triumph. He thought he had won. He thought he had found my breaking point. He and Colton stood together, a united front of male solidarity, their expressions a mirror of smug satisfaction. I met their gaze, my own eyes cool and empty. The pain was still there, a vast, black ocean inside me, but on the surface, there was only ice. "Fine," I said. The word was quiet, but it landed with the force of a bomb. "I don't want him." Colton's face crumpled. The arrogant, hateful mask fell away, revealing the shocked, wounded face of a little boy who had just been told his mother didn't love him. Jackson simply laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "You're pathetic, Hazel. Truly." He snatched the divorce papers from the ground where Campbell had dropped them, strode to the hood of my car, and scrawled his signature with a flourish. "There," he said, shoving the papers at my chest. "You're free. Now get the hell off my property and don't ever come back. You'll be hearing from my lawyer." I gathered the scattered pages, the flimsy paper a testament to the end of my life as I knew it. A strange sense of lightness filled me. I felt like a diver who had just released her weights, ascending from the crushing pressure of the deep. "You'll regret this," Jackson called after me as I turned to walk away. I paused, but I didn't turn back. "No," I said, my voice clear and steady in the night air. "I won't." My posture straightened. The slump of the weary housewife fell away, replaced by a straight-backed elegance I hadn't felt in years. I was a Morgan. My family didn't build an empire by being weak. We didn't bow, and we certainly didn't break. I had just forgotten that. I had traded my birthright for a loveless marriage to a charismatic, arrogant, new-money tech CEO I' d met by chance at a coffee shop. I started walking down the long driveway, not looking back. I heard a small, choked sound behind me. It was Colton. A flicker of something, a remnant of maternal instinct, stirred within me. "Colton," I said, my voice soft, almost a whisper. I didn't turn around. "Don't forget to take your allergy medication. The spring pollen is bad this year." His allergies were severe, especially to nuts. I had spent his childhood reading every label, interrogating every waiter, living in a state of constant, low-grade panic. Once, after he'd accidentally eaten a cookie with nuts at a school party and collapsed, Jackson's family had blamed me. "How could you be so careless?" they'd asked, their voices sharp with accusation. I had sobbed for days, the guilt a physical weight on my chest. "And stay away from mangoes," I added. "You know they give you hives." He never listened. He loved mangoes. "And whatever you do-" "Just go!" Colton screamed, his voice breaking. "You're not my mom anymore, remember? You don't get to tell me what to do! You're just a crazy, jealous woman who tried to hurt Campbell!" The words were a hammer blow, but I didn't flinch. I just closed my eyes for a moment. It's better this way, I told myself. It's cleaner. I started to walk again, my steps quickening. I would go to my car, drive away, and never look back. I had nothing to pack. Everything in that house was a monument to a life that wasn't mine.