“Loved,” I said. “It’s past tense now, don’t you think?”

She sighed. “Please don’t leave me…”

“I won’t.” I stepped back so the guards could escort her back to the van. “I’ll write…”

“Really?” Her eyes looked hopeful as she walked away. “Okay, I look forward to your letters…I look forward to fixing us…”

The rain picked up its pace, transitioning from a drizzle to a downpour, but I remained standing—unable to walk away from Emma. I re-read her tiny tombstone, crying as her face crossed my mind.

Emma Rose Henderson,

A Daddy’s girl, through and through.

Gone too soon,

But never forgotten…

I stared at those words for hours, letting the rain drench me to the bone. It wasn’t until the director informed me that the gates were closing, that I walked away.

Lost and heartbroken, I spent the next few months in a dizzying haze. Despite the fact that Ava was the one behind bars, the paper continued spouting her lies as facts, slandering me, and I didn’t even bother disputing it.

I didn’t have the energy.

I submitted written testimonies through lawyers I’d hired—knowing that eventually things would sort themselves out. I didn’t even care that Ava had hired her own high profile team to block me from getting a divorce.

I no longer gave a f**k about anything.

My firm collapsed before my very eyes—everything down to the sink-ware was sold off in parts, and in the legal community, the downfall became a warning, a tell-tale of what happened when status and greed consumed one of us.

I drank every morning, letting the alcohol numb my pain. And whenever I awoke from passing out, I drank again. It was only when I started drinking coffee that I could somewhat function well enough to get anything done.

Visiting the cemetery was too painful, almost as painful as stepping inside Emma’s room. So, I hired a few people to pack it away in boxes, telling them to leave out the “E” and “H” frames; I could bear to look at those since she’d hand-picked them.

For months, I mourned the life she would never have—attempting to make sense of it all. I knew deep down that I couldn’t stay here, but I couldn’t leave as the same man that I was; I knew that I’d never get over Emma, but I needed a way to cope. A way to slowly re-integrate myself into the real world.

Stopping by a newspaper stand, my eyes caught an article about the newest hotshot lawyer in town—Michael Weston. Dressed in one of the expensive suits that Kevin once raved about, he was the talk of the city and from the words I was reading, he was cocky—only slightly cockier than I had become recently.

“Oh, you got the last one…” A woman said as she stepped next to me.

“You want this paper?”

“Well…” She blushed. “Not really the paper. I just want the ad of Michael Weston so I can show my friends my ideal dream guy.”

“Have you read some of the shit he’s said in this interview?” I raised my eyebrow. “He’s an ass**le.”

“That just makes him more loveable, don’t you think.”

“They asked him what he does when he gets less than favorable reviews.” I couldn’t believe how f**king gullible this woman looked. “Do you want to know what he said?”

“Sure.” She crossed her arms. “What does he do when he gets bad reviews?”

“He looks at his bank account,” I said. “And then he claims, and I quote, ‘I don’t recall learning that someone needs to be well-liked in order to be successful.’ He really said that.”

She practically melted into the sidewalk. “I bet he really knows how to f**k…”

I gave her the paper and walked away. Her bringing up sex was a reminder of how long it’d been since I slept with someone.

And then it hit me: Sex.

I needed some, badly.

I signed up for an online dating site, Date-Match, and slowly shed the layers of the man I used to be. I bought expensive suits—one for every day of the week. I slowly curbed my excessive drinking to make room for a new appetite, and instead of punching my walls to de-stress, I invested in Cuban cigars.

Still, the women I met online were average, and none of them seemed to be about sex. They just wanted to talk about bullshit—always leaving me restless and alone at the end of the night to drink away my sorrows; forcing me back to square one with my experiment.

Like the woman who was sitting on the edge of the bed right now, a goddamn mile-a-minute talker. She was a few years older than me, a teacher of some sort, and she couldn’t shut up for shit.

She was talking about her life in college, about some boy named Billy she once loved—some boy who never loved her back. Before she could start elaborating about the campus bond-fire where the two of them met, I realized that I couldn’t take this shit anymore.

“Billy and I would’ve been perfect together, I think,” she said. “There was even this one time that—”

“Are we going to f**k or what?” I cut her off.

“What?” She clutched her chest. “What did you just say?”

“I said, are we going to f**k or what?” I emphasized every syllable. “I didn’t reserve this hotel room so I could sit and listen to you talk all night.”

Her jaw dropped.

“I thought that…” She stuttered. “I thought that you liked me.”