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Freedom beckoned me as it sizzled against my freckled skin. Technically, nothing was official yet, not until I put pen to notarized paper, but just the whispered promise of being released had me giddy as all get out.

I stepped out onto the sidewalk feeling like a million bucks.

The sunshine hit my bearded face and I closed my eyes, breathing in the fresh air that the downtown streets of Washington D.C.

had to offer. It was a stark contrast to the stale air in my condo that reeked of pizza boxes long forgotten and laundry not yet thrown into the wash.

I didn’t have the luxury of being prompt with clean clothes and healthy dinners.

That’s what happened when you were in the throes of divorce.

Sometimes it was still hard to believe that it was happening. I’d initiated the divorce and Matty had fought me every single step of the way. Today was supposed to be the final meeting to finalize the paperwork and issue us an official divorce. Barring any complications today, we’d both be free.

However, as I’d learned over the past eight years of our relationship, Matty and complications were too often synonymous. I had a good feeling this morning, though. After I was done proceeding with the signing of the divorce papers, today was also my first official meeting with the ORBIT board.

The process of gathering the best potential creature candidates for the board had been strenuous, but it’d only taken around a month to select the appropriate people.

Though it was horrible circumstances, the attacks on the blood centers up and down the east coast had helped make this a priority for my superiors.

As long as the creatures remained as protected as possible, I was all for a speedy construction.

Exo had been a huge help, being the first official member of ORBIT.

ORBIT stood for Other Realm Beings Integrity Trust, the first part of the name being inspired by the fact that the creatures known on Earth that had revealed themselves to the world went by the collective name of Orbs, or Other Realm Beings.

It was nickname that caught on, and since the creatures hadn’t outwardly protested about it, the name became part of regular vernacular.

Being a sangamar, a creature that needed to digest blood in order to live, as well as gaining eyesight when they ingested human blood, Exo had worked with the further creation of Orbit.

We’d worked a little bit together since we’d been in Piper, Virginia after the horrid riots that were targeted for the blood centers up and down the east coast. If it hadn’t been for his help, ORBIT wouldn’t have moved forward.

We’d held a screening process, and had to choose between multiple candidates for every species. I was delighted by the response. It seemed like the Orbs were ready to stand up to the oppressions that they faced every day.

Luckily, Exo wasn’t the only familiar face I’d had to help ground me through the selection process.

My assistant, Maxim, who’d been my assistant ever since I’d become a House delegate, had been given the choice of becoming an assistant for a regular Representative or to follow me as the newly appointed Director of Orb Affairs.

I was forever grateful to have had his support during the process.

I made the short walk to the lawyer’s office.

The condo I’d been staying in for almost two years since the start of the divorce was close enough to have a nice stroll instead of catching a taxi when I was in the mood to stretch my legs.

I felt blessed that I’d gotten the property so perfectly located in the best part of the hustling atmosphere of D.C.

My office at the Capitol was now a former meeting room, now the headquarters of ORBIT.

The fact that it was a simple bus ride from my condo made it even more appealing.

Arriving at the lawyer’s office soured my spirit a bit, but I did my best to remain positive. Matty was combative, extroverted, and angry: the exact opposite of me. Our differences had once been so appealing, but now they felt like bitter pangs I’d had to burden like long-lost battle scars.

It wasn’t until I was in the usual meeting room that I felt the tension from Matty. This was his lawyer’s office that we’d been meeting up in, per his demand, but my lawyer was already sitting at the head of the table waiting for my arrival.

“Ahh, Mr. Watson.” Gary said, greeting me by standing. He was a nice guy, but way too formal. I said my pleasantries and sat down next to him.

Matty and his shark of a lawyer were seated across us from the massive glass table.

I needed to get a table like this for ORBIT, but I tried to push my work from the forefront of my mind and focus on the task at hand.

The last thing I needed was to irritate Matty further by acting distracted.

I wanted the least path of resistance today.

I just wanted to be done.

“Glad you could make the time.” Matty sneered, crossing his arms. So much for not pissing him off.

Matty was stupidly handsome, far out of my league, even now.

His gorgeous dark skin harbored not a single flaw.

He wore his hair close to his scalp, and his brown eyes glistened from the overhead lighting.

If he wasn’t my soon to be ex-husband, he’d have appeared like an angel.

I sighed inwardly. The hardest part of this divorce was the fact that Matty wasn’t the villain here.

I was.

“Alright, should we proceed?” Gary said, eyeing Matty’s lawyer as he picked around the manila folder in front of him. “Barring anything that needs to be amended, we can capture the signatures and everything will be final.”

“Actually,” Matty’s lawyer cleared his throat, leaning forward on the table for support as I watched my husband’s eyes twinkle with a knowing glare. “There’s another issue we’d like to air out today.”

“For fuck’s sake.” I said, unable to hold it in and filter it. I knew that every outburst I didn’t bury within my soul would be held against me. But being so close to being a divorced man kept me from keeping my prior promise. “Matty, what are you doing?”

“I’m not the one doing anything,” He jeered back, arms still crossed as if they were the armor to keep him from fully unleashing his fury on the rest of us. Restraint looked good on him, for a change. “This, all of this, is because of you.”

How the hell was he still this raw about everything?

I stood up, gripping the glass table and fearing that it would shatter. “We have been separated for two years, why are you dragging this on?”

“Twenty-one months,” He corrected me. That was pretty common, his attitude bouncing off of me. “I still don’t understand why this is happening.”

“That’s a lie.” And it was. We’d talked about why it wasn’t working anymore between us at nauseating length.

While most of it had involved Matty yelling and me succumbing to the same after being calm didn’t work, the discussions still happened.

I knew exactly what he was aiming at. I’d married the man, I knew what the real reason behind his bullshit was even if he didn’t want to recognize it.

“No, this is you trying to make me hurt as badly as I hurt you for wanting a divorce. You know that I want to be done and you can’t stand it. Just be fucking truthful for once in your life and realize that we aren’t good for each other anymore!”

I sat down again, exhausted from expending the energy. This is what I hated. I wasn’t an angry guy, I never had been. But Matty brought me to match his level, or rather, I felt no other option than to match his output, and it always made me feel like shit for going to that place.

Matty stood then, his arms uncrossing and flying wildly while he spewed his truth. “Fine! I do want you to hurt, Wallace. That’s why I keep changing the terms of the divorce. I don’t understand how you can be so ready to let me go when nothing bad happened for all of this to be happening!”

“I’m not going to explain myself anymore.” I said with a sigh.

The truth was Matty was right. Nothing major had happened.

There’d been no cheating, no unsightly affair, no major hiccups that needed to be dusted off the shelf of the life we’d built together.

That was the problem. It was the little things that added up into a shitstorm of things I’d been unable to overlook anymore.

For starters, we’d always struggled with our sexual chemistry.

We were heavily attracted to one another, that wasn’t the issue.

For whatever reason, we’d always struggled in knowing what the other wanted or how to proceed when we were in the middle of having sex and something went slightly amiss.

It was hard to describe, but things just felt askew way too often.

Another contributor to this was I missed topping. Matty was more comfortable topping, and while I enjoyed bottoming every once in a while, it wasn’t enjoyable for me in the long run. While I’d tried talking to this with my husband before, it had fallen on tuned out ears.

The hardest thing to deal with was how hard it was to communicate when we were angry or upset, which had been perfectly exemplified in this lawyer’s meeting room.

I hated raised voices and read a lot into the way things were spoken.

Matty was the antithesis. He preferred to get things out in the open as soon as possible while I was much more of a let-me-think-this-over-for-a-while-before-opening-my-mouth type of guy.

I also felt like I couldn’t do some of the things that brought me joy.

Our entire relationship, I’d conceded to what he wanted.

He wanted to watch movies and get drunk, I did it.

He wanted to go to a club and dance the night away, consider me dressed.

But I realized over the years that I’d put away my passions for him.

God forbid I stepped away to play video games for a few hours.

I was a serious gamer before I’d met him, and I wanted to get back to that.

But that took time away from us, or so he’d said.

The truth was, I’d lost my sense of self while we’d been together, too preoccupied to make sure he was happy that I neglected to check in with myself to make sure I was happy. And the truth was, I hadn’t been in a long time.

Having strained communication and strained intimacy didn’t bode well.

Matty saw these things as minimal, things to be sorted out over brunch.

To me, these things made a relationship, or at least the relationship I wanted to have.

One morning, I’d just woken up and said this wasn’t working anymore and I wanted a divorce.

Matty had played naive, wondering where this had been coming from, as if our entire relationship hadn’t been evidence enough of these things growing and growing without being properly addressed.

Which made me the bad guy. I didn’t care that I was the darkness to his light, at least by his account. I just wanted out. At thirty-four, I wasn’t getting any younger and I wanted to live my fucking life.

Matty sighed, sitting back down and recrossing his arms, his tactical armor fully intact. “You know what? Let’s just sign the papers.”

His lawyer looked horrified. “But what about the townhouse? We can still ask for it. You’re entitled to half of the property.”

“So let’s sell it like the current paperwork states and split the earnings.” Matty gave me a mournful gaze, reminding me of the husband I longed thought gone. “I don’t want to hurt you anymore by keeping our marriage over your head. We both deserve better than that.”

I nodded, relaxing into my chair. “I’m so sorry that I hurt you, Matty. Really, I am. But I just can’t be the man you want anymore.”

“I know.” The break in his voice almost made me leap out of my chair and comfort him, but I resisted.

Matty quickly wiped his eyes on the side of his arm and slid the papers in front of his lawyer over. He scrawled his name over the documents and slid them back to his lawyer with heavy eyes. He got up and brought them to Gary, who moved them to me just as fast. One flick of the pen and it was over.

Plucking the pen provided from Gary’s grasp, I scribbled my name underneath Matty’s. And just like that, Matthew Bryant Culbertson and Wallace Oliver Watson were no longer married.

My now ex-husband stood up, striding across the room, stopping only to look back at me from the ajar door as he pressed it open further.

“Goodbye, Wallace.”

I gave him a small smile. “Goodbye, Matty.”

He walked out of my life in simple steps, but my heart felt heavy all over again. It was over. It was finally over.

I was free.