Chapter 1

On our tenth wedding anniversary, I wanted my husband, who is a photographer, to take a set of boudoir photos for me.

He refused, claiming he only knew how to photograph babies.

That evening, I helped my drunk husband back to his own room.

A portrait photo album fell to the floor.

It was full of boudoir photos of his childhood sweetheart.

When I confronted him, my husband accused me of making a big deal out of nothing, and our daughter didn't understand my reaction either.

Late that night, I saw a photo of the three of them together on his childhood sweetheart's social media.

The caption read: "Taking a break, getting ready to start the next chapter of life."

On our tenth wedding anniversary, my husband took our child out to be with another woman.

I finally realized he had been deceiving me for ten years.

————

On the second day of our tenth wedding anniversary, my husband Asher woke up with a hangover.

Perhaps he had seen that I liked his childhood sweetheart's social media post, or maybe it was because of that photo album.

His tone was slightly guilty as he tried to explain to me.

"Don't overthink it, there's nothing between Sarah and me."

In the fifteen years we've known each other, Asher has never taken a single photo of me.

He straight up ditched our planned anniversary date and took the kids to welcome another woman.

He knows exactly what he's up to.

Not wanting to waste any more words on him, I placed the prepared divorce papers in front of him.

"I'm not thinking anything. If you're free today, why don't you accompany me to the civil affairs office?"

Asher rubbed his temples and casually picked up the agreement to look at it.

"What's this? Why are we going to the civil affairs office?"

"Divorce? Just because I didn't take boudoir photos of you, you want a divorce?"

Remembering the thick photo album I saw last night, my heart still ached.

Asher is a children's photographer, yet he told me he couldn't do portrait photography.

I foolishly believed him, only to discover he had shot an entire album of  boudoir photos for Sarah.

But this decision to divorce was one I made after a sleepless night.

I nodded, not arguing with his words.

"Yeah, you can think of it that way. Anyway, this marriage has to end."

Seeing my still determined expression, Asher tossed aside that divorce agreement with a smirk.

"Come on, stop messing around. It's just a photo book, and you're not even as photogenic as her. What's worth shooting?"

He then got up to eat breakfast, complaining that the plain porridge was tasteless and telling me to switch things up.

What flavor could plain porridge possibly have?

I bet he's thinking about the seafood porridge at Sarah's place.

Every time Sarah comes back, he always finds an excuse to mooch meals at her house.

Sure enough, as Asher ate, he acted like the food had no taste and impatiently threw down his bowl and chopsticks.

He went into the bedroom, picked up our still-sleeping daughter, and headed next door to freeload.

"Sweetheart, wake up. Daddy's taking you to the pretty lady's house for breakfast. We're not eating Mommy's slop."

Slop.

Did it really take him ten years to realize it was slop?

With a loud slam of the door, my heart felt like it had been stabbed.

Thinking back on the days of neglect since marrying Asher, the bitterness and pain I'd been holding in came flooding out.

I don't want to live like this anymore.

Asher, I don't want him anymore either.