The Ninth Goodbye: My Husband's Cruel Bet

On the night of our fifth anniversary, my husband left me standing on the shoulder of the Montauk Highway in a blinding thunderstorm.

His red taillights didn't even hesitate as they faded into the rain.

He abandoned me there because his ex-girlfriend, Isabelle, called to say she heard a scary noise in her basement.

I stood in my soaked silk dress, shivering not from the cold, but from the realization that this was the ninth time.

He had missed my gallbladder surgery to support her at a polo match.

He had missed my grandmother's funeral to fix her flat tire.

But the truth was far crueler than simple neglect.

Weeks later, after I survived a terrifying elevator accident that left me with a permanent limp, I overheard them talking at a gala.

"The bet was for nine goodbyes, Marcus," Isabelle laughed, clutching his arm. "I bet you that I could make you leave her nine times before she finally snapped. And look at that. I won."

My marriage wasn't a tragedy; it was a game. A wager between lovers who used my pain as a scoreboard.

I didn't cry. I didn't make a scene.

I went back to our penthouse, packed my sketchbooks, and vanished into the night without a word.

Five years later, Marcus found me in a small coastal town in Maine.

I was no longer the waiting wife. I was a celebrated sculptor, and I was holding the hand of a man who treated me like a treasure, not a toy.

Marcus stormed into my studio, demanding I come home.

My new husband stepped between us, calm and unyielding.

"You're trespassing," he said.

"I'm talking to my wife!" Marcus yelled.

I finally turned around, looking at the man who had destroyed me, and smiled.

"Ex-wife," I corrected softly. "And you're late. About five years too late."

Chapter 1

Ellie POV

On the night of our fifth anniversary, my husband left me standing on the shoulder of the Montauk Highway in a blinding thunderstorm because Isabelle called to say she heard a noise in her basement.

The red taillights of his Porsche didn't even hesitate.

They simply bled into the gray sheet of rain, swallowing the last five years of my life along with them.

I stood there in my soaked silk dress, shivering not from the cold, but from the bone-deep realization that this was the ninth time.

Isabelle called it a crisis. I called it a pattern.

It started at NYU. Back then, Marcus Thorne was the god of the architecture department, and I was just the scholarship student with paint permanently stained on her hands. He looked at my sketches like they were gold. I looked at him like he was the sun.

Izzy, my roommate, introduced us.

She said she wanted Marcus to find someone stable. Someone safe. I didn't know then that "safe" was just a polite synonym for "placeholder."

When Izzy left for Paris to find herself, Marcus proposed to me a week later. I thought it was passion. I thought the desperate, consuming way he held me was love.

God, I was an idiot.

I wrapped my arms around myself as a semi-truck blasted past, spraying a wave of dirty slush over my legs. My phone was dead, a useless brick in my clutch. My body was burning up with a fever that had spiked three hours ago, right before we got in the car.

Marcus knew I was sick. He had felt the heat radiating off my skin when he helped me into the passenger seat.

But when Izzy's ringtone cut through the silence of the cabin, his eyes had glazed over. It was that specific, terrifying shift in focus that only appeared when she was involved.

I need you, Marcus. I'm scared.

That was all it took.

He pulled over immediately. He told me to call an Uber. He said, "Don't be difficult, Ellie. It's an emergency."

I closed my eyes, letting the freezing rain mix with the hot tears I refused to acknowledge.

The memories hit me harder than the wind.

The gallbladder surgery. I signed the consent forms alone while he was at a polo match in the Hamptons because Izzy needed moral support.

My grandmother's funeral. The empty seat next to me, gaping like a wound, while he handled Izzy's flat tire.

The architecture award ceremony. Standing on that stage, smiling until my jaw ached, scanning the crowd for a face that wasn't there.

This was it. The cut that finally went deep enough to sever the nerve.

I didn't call an Uber. I started walking.

Each step was a heavy, wet thud against the pavement.

One step for the lies.

One step for the humiliation.

One step for the woman I used to be before I became his shadow.

By the time I reached our penthouse, I was shivering so violently my teeth clacked together. The doorman looked at me with undisguised horror, but I walked past him without a word.

The apartment was silent. It smelled like his expensive cologne and the stale air of my desperation.

I didn't go to the bedroom. I went straight to the closet.

I pulled out the suitcase I used for business trips. I didn't pack clothes. I packed my survival.

My sketchbooks. My hard drives. The deed to the small plot of land in Maine my grandmother left me.

I walked into the bathroom and looked at the woman in the mirror. Her mascara was running in dark rivulets, her hair was plastered to her skull, and her skin was ashen gray. But her eyes were clear.

For the first time in five years, the fog was gone.

I looked down at my left hand. The diamond was heavy. A shackle made of compressed carbon.

I twisted it. It stuck for a second, catching on the swollen, feverish skin of my knuckle, resisting to the very end.

Then, it slid off.

I opened the drawer where we kept the spare batteries and junk mail. I dropped the ring inside. It made a hollow, final clink against the wood.

I didn't leave a note. Notes are for people who care enough to read them.

I zipped the suitcase, walked out the door, and let the heavy oak slam shut behind me.

It was the only sound in the hallway, and it sounded exactly like freedom.