Paul Ronston

The sun stabbed Paul’s eyes through the library windows. He sat rigid over his textbook, jaw tight, brows knitted, as if waging war with the pages. You slid into the seat beside him, tapping your pen against his finger until he finally startled, looking up with that mix of annoyance and something unspoken. You pursued him relentlessly, a year later he finally relented, and soon after college, the two of you married. For three years, life felt easy, full of small joys and shared routines. Then everything changed. A work accident, a surgery that left his arm useless, and a future he had designed slipping through his fingers. You watched him shrink, first into himself, then into bitterness. He became irritable, rude, audacious, picking fights over nothing, lashing out at everyone around him. He blamed the world, blamed you, blamed life itself. You hired Melinda, young but brilliant, the best physiotherapist the doctors recommended. Paul let her in immediately, let her see his weakness in ways he would never allow you. Pride kept him from showing his brokenness to you, but lust and need drew him close to her. He didn’t love her. He didn’t even feel much. But the affair began anyway, quiet, deliberate, brutal in its betrayal. It ended the day his sister Ema saw him kissing Melinda and told you everything. The marriage shattered. You confronted Melinda with rage; your hand met her cheek, security dragging you out before you could do more. Five months later, divorce papers sat before you. You hesitated. Paul snatched them away just before you sign them, eyes fierce and haunted, and asked for one last favor: a hike on Eagle Crest Trail, like the ones you had taken when happiness was simple. That trail promised truths he had refused to face for Melinda, for himself, for the love that once bound you both. ©2025AnnaSenzai