34 - You always gave me halves, and my mistake was thinking I could be whole with you.

***POV ISABELA***

One of the worst pains in life is seeing one of the people you love the most become your worst pain. It's looking at the person and thinking, 'I loved you so much, but I wish I had never met you.'

Descending the stairs slowly, my heart racing, and repeating in my head the whole time that I couldn’t let myself be swayed by him. I promised myself that what happened yesterday—my breakdown—would never happen again. My eyes were glued to the man standing in the middle of my living room, watching me come down the stairs. He followed my every step, hands in his pockets, with that cynical look on his face. Because that's what he is! A fake, a cynic, shameless enough to show up here after yesterday.

I finished descending the stairs and walked towards him, looking at him with disdain as I stopped in front of him.

"What do you want?" I asked coldly.

"To talk," he replied. A gentle voice, not at all like the man who was in my house yesterday, insulting me.

"I'm listening..."

Daniel looked at me for a few seconds without saying anything, sighed, took his hands out of his pockets, and crossed his arms over his chest.

"I wanted to apologize to you," he began. "I don't know what came over me... I just wanted to have our family back and lost control of my actions. I'm sorry!"

I looked at the man in front of me, wanting to laugh, ironically, of course.

He must have practiced a lot before coming here.

If I were the foolish woman I was months ago, I might have believed those lying words. But the woman I am today doesn’t believe anything. And seeing him with that gentle voice, head down, made me even more furious.

He's a good actor.

"Okay," was all I replied. I didn’t want to keep fighting, but I also wanted to keep my distance from this man.

"Okay?" he asked, not understanding my response.

"Yes. I forgive you."

"That's it? You're not going to say anything else?" he questioned, surprised. Surely, he thought I would lose control again like yesterday.

"No."

"What's wrong, Isabela? Don't treat me with this coldness. I know deep down you still love me as I never stopped loving you."

"Have you said everything you wanted to say?" I asked but didn’t wait for a response. "You can leave now."

Daniel looked at me for a few minutes, incredulous at my attitude.

"What happened to you? You don't seem like the same person, you're not my Isabela!"

"Not at all, because I'm not yours," I replied rudely.

"If you're not mine, whose are you?" he questioned, staring at me seriously. "Huh? Who's the unfortunate guy who's sleeping with you?" he asked.

Didn't I say? His mask was almost falling... he couldn't keep it up for long.

I learned the hard way that Daniel is a fake. A wolf in sheep's clothing. Cynical. Abusive.

"I'm not anyone's. I'm my own. But I understand that in your sexist mind, you're too dumb to understand."

"I'm not sexist, Isabela. You know me!" he tried to defend himself.

"I never really knew you," I replied, looking into his eyes. "I'm not talking about the physical side; I indeed slept in the same bed as yours for 15 years, but I mean your true self. I never knew who you were behind all this façade," I pointed at him with disdain. "I never got to know who you were when no one else was looking, in the silence, without anyone's company, without any eyes watching you. I never knew your true self. You never showed it to me genuinely. Everything I thought I knew was a façade; it wasn't your true self. In reality, I only knew what I invented about you. Everything I know about you is a creation of my imagination, a lapse of madness and fantasy. I thought I was so in love. I wanted our marriage to work so badly. I wanted you to be the first and last man in my life so much that I ended up forgetting to look at who you were. You weren’t some damn prince charming ready to save me from my fears and uncertainties of life; to this day, I can't be sure which one of us needs saving more. I think you manage to be more broken than I am. I fell into the illusion that I could, in some crazy way, fix you and fix what we had, and I ended up cutting myself on the pieces we left scattered along the way. They shone and seemed fixable, but all I got were deeper cuts. Your pieces managed to cut me in such a way that I bleed to this day, and the worst part is that it seems they will never stop bleeding, never heal, never scar. I've even gotten used to the pain. It's become just a small nuisance, something that, no matter how much I try to change, is still not enough. I never really knew you, and, my God, how I tried. I picked up every crumb you threw at me like a desperate person with an insatiable hunger, and from there, I created you. Every little piece, every detail, every crumb. It was always me. Because you needed to fit the role of the character I created in my head. I invented you, and I invented us, and that's why it was so hard to end this fantasy. You always gave me halves, and my mistake was thinking I could be whole with you," I vented.

I thought a lot since our last fight and concluded that, in reality, Daniel was always like this. Always this monster: 'But I was so busy trying to be the perfect wife, having the perfect marriage, that I didn't initially realize it. The signs were there, always there...

Daniel opened his mouth several times to respond, but he couldn't utter a word. For the first time in years, I managed to leave him speechless.

"Can you leave?" I asked politely. His presence was suffocating me.

"Isis asks me every night to be a family again, Isabela. Reconsider your decision. Think about our daughter," he tried to appeal.

My daughter didn’t want to stay with me because, according to her, the house wasn't the same without her father, and wouldn't be fun without him. The first few days, she stayed at my parents' house, and now she's staying at her father's house. I felt hurt, I won't lie, but that was her decision. She's already old enough to decide who to stay with, and if she prefers him, that's fine. Does it hurt? Of course. I always gave everything good and the best; even when her father was absent, I did everything so she wouldn’t feel abandoned, and now she thinks I'm the wicked witch and her father the good prince...

"Isis is already old enough to know the truth."

"What are you saying?" he asked.

"She doesn't know the real reason for our divorce. Does she know that her dear daddy has a mistress? Had another family? Of course, she doesn't know; if she did, she wouldn’t think you're the best father and husband in the world." I laughed ironically and wiped away a tear that insisted on falling.

"Don't you dare tell her," he said through gritted teeth, becoming furious.

"Or what? What will you do? Hit me again?" I asked, crossing my arms and staring at him.

I would never lower my head to him again, as I had done many, many times before.

Daniel looked at me, surprised that I was standing up to him, and grabbed my arm tightly.

"You look lovely when you're quiet, love. Our daughter doesn't need to know about our problems."

"Funny, if I had someone else, you would rush to tell her."

"I wouldn’t," he defended himself.

I laughed loudly like a madwoman.

"You would. Just yesterday, you threatened me about it. I know you would tell her; do you know why? Because you only think about yourself. You wouldn’t think about how our daughter would feel about the news, but to make her hate me, you would make a point of telling her. On the other hand, I'm not like you. Before anything else, I think about my daughter, and I haven’t told her yet what kind of man her father is because I don’t want to see her suffer that way. I know it would destroy my daughter to reveal that her father is the worst type of man there is."

"You're playing with fire," he threatened, squeezing my arm even more. His fingers were white from squeezing so hard.

"Let go of me," I asked through gritted teeth.

"And if I don't want to?" he laughed.

"She told you to let go!" I heard that deep voice that I liked so much, but at that moment, I thought, 'Damn!'