I’ve been alone all my life. Until Evan. When he first started sleeping over, it was hard to fall asleep. Unless he fucked me to the point of exhaustion, which was often.

You’d think it’d be easy going back to being alone. I was a pro at it for years and worse yet, I was proud of it. The train goes by and the sound cuts through the white noise of the city. The windows are closed, but I still hear it. I can even feel the rumble and vibrations as I try to lie still on the bed. And that’s when I get a hint of Evan’s scent. When I’m alone, missing him, I sleep on his side of the bed. It’s easiest the first night he’s gone. It smells just like him. Each day it gets a little harder and working late nights gets more appealing. But even the masculine scent that drifts toward me as I inch my head closer to his pillow isn’t enough to comfort me. Why would it? I’m losing him and everything we had.

I toss the heavy comforter off my body and sit up, wiping the sleep from my eyes and dangling my feet over the side of the bed. It’s nearly 1:00 a.m. and pitch black in the room. I should be sleeping, considering the fatigue plaguing my body and all too conscious it should come easy.

My fingers run through my long hair, separating it and braiding it loosely before I take a sip of water from the glass on the nightstand. If I get up and start working, I know I won’t sleep at all tonight. The very thought makes my heart thump harder. Work is killing me, lack of sleep is destroying me. But both are because I’m completely and utterly alone.

Just breathe. I let my head fall back and slowly creep back under the covers. All I need to do is breathe.

But that hope is short lived as I hear Evan climb the stairs. I had one condition to him coming home, and that was leaving me the bedroom. Even if it hurts me, I’d rather feel pain in his absence than a fraction of that pain in his presence.

I close my eyes as I hear the door open. For a moment I think I should pretend to be asleep, but I don’t want any more lies in our relationship. Whatever our relationship even is now.

“I thought you were going to sleep on the sofa?” I ask him and then hold my breath. I should want him to leave. That’s what a sane woman who’s getting a divorce should want. But there isn’t an ounce of me that wants to see him walk out that door.