Chapter 9
“She had surgery for an ectopic pregnancy? No way I wouldn’t have known. She’s just throwing a tantrum. She loves me too much. She’d never divorce me,” he uttered like a madman.
Jonah refused to believe it. Everything in front of him had to be some kind of nightmare, just some cruel hallucination.
He kept thinking that if he just went to sleep, everything might just return to the way it was. But as he walked through the house, he realized no bed was left. There wasn’t even a single chair.
“Why is this happening? Why?” His voice cracked as he turned to Lily, grabbing her by the shoulders. His eyes were bloodshot, his voice raw.
“Tell me this isn’t real, Lily. Tell me!”
Even Lily hadn’t expected Kayla to be so thorough and final. But in a way, this worked out perfectly. It saved her a lot of trouble.
“Jonah, calm down. Please. Just try calling her first. She’s obviously hurt–just make sure she’s okay.”
“You’re right. Yeah. You’re right.”
Suddenly feeling like he had a direction, Jonah fumbled for his phone and dialed Kayla’s number.
“Sorry, the number you’re trying to reach is unavailable.”
He tried again. And again–still nothing.
Desperate, he opened WhatsApp to send her a voice message–only to see he’d been blocked.
At the same time, Kayla’s plane was just touching down at the airport in her hometown. She immediately spotted her parents waiting outside as she pushed her luggage cart out of the terminal.
“Right here, Kayla!” Her father, Phillip George, held up a massive bouquet of pink tulips. Martha waved both hands in the air, grinning from ear to ear. The second Kayla saw them, she smiled too, but the smile cracked into sobs almost immediately.
She ran straight into Martha’s arms and broke down, crying like a child.
Everything she had bottled up for months–every slight, every heartbreak, every silent night–poured out of her in one uncontrollable wave. Right then and there, she stopped being someone’s second choice. She was home. She was back into Martha’s loving arms.
On the way back, Martha’s phone rang. The caller ID showed Jonah’s name.
Kayla took the phone and answered.
“Hey, Martha. I–I can’t find Kayla. Has she reached out to you?”
Before she could even respond, Jonah’s anxious voice came flooding through the line.
Kayla patted Martha’s hand reassuringly and gave her a look that told her not to worry.
Then she lifted the phone to her ear and spoke coldly. “Jonah, get the divorce agreement signed as soon as possible. The house is yours. I don’t want it. I already took everything I paid for, including the renovations. And by the way, don’t contact my parents again.
“Their health isn’t great, and they don’t need the stress. That’s all I have to say.”
“Wait! Kayla, don’t hang up–please just hear me out.”
At this point, Kayla was curious what kind of excuse he’d come up with.
After a long pause, Jonah finally said, slowly, deliberately. “Kayla, divorce isn’t some trivial thing you can just walk into. You don’t get to decide it all on your own. We’ve been together for eight years. I always thought you were calm and rational. You never lost your temper.
“So why now? Why would you lose it like this and destroy our entire home? Is it because of the wedding with Lily? I already explained — it’s not real. It’s just a ceremony. I’m doing it to honor what Ms. White did for me. Why can’t you just be a little more understanding?
“And another thing–these past three months, we haven’t been together once, So, how could you have had an ectopic pregnancy? If that medical report’s real… Then you must’ve cheated on me.”
