Page 61 of The Humiliated Wife

She was done trusting her heart to someone who wounded her.

Fiona satcross-legged on the bed in Emma’s guest room, laptop balanced on a pillow, a spreadsheet open and taunting her with its neat, impossible rows.

Rent. Utilities. Groceries. Gas. Health insurance.

Her salary from the district.

A rough estimate of what she could pick up in tutoring hours.

The balance in her checking account, so small it made her chest tighten.

She took a breath, rolled her shoulders back, and kept going.

There would be no more shared account. No more sleek apartment with its pre-paid parking and automatically refilled Nespresso pods. No more Amazon boxes arriving like clockwork with things she didn’t even remember ordering. No more dinners where someone else picked up the check.

No more “just put it on my card.”

This was her life now.

She leaned back, running a hand through her hair, eyes flicking to the pale morning light leaking through the blinds. Her commute from Sweetwater to the city wasn’t just long—it was exhausting.

She needed to be in the city.

But could she afford it?

Her cursor blinked on the “rent” line of the spreadsheet. Studio apartment rentals in her area of the city had gone up again.

Most places were too expensive. The ones that weren’t were either terrifying or almost as far away from her school as Sweetwater.

She could make it work. She had to. She could live with roommates, pack lunches, say no to dinners out, maybe sell a few of the nicer gifts she’d never really used. That leather bag she only wore once. The boots Dean had insisted were a “timeless investment.”

She closed the spreadsheet and sat with the quiet for a moment.

This wasn’t the life she’d planned.

But it was hers now.

Fiona staredat the blank page for ten minutes before she started typing.

She deleted the first draft. Too bitter.

Deleted the second. Too vague.

The third felt closer to true.

Sometimes starting over means looking at spreadsheets at 6 AM and realizing you've been living someone else's life for so long you forgot what yours costs.

I'm learning how much things actually cost. Not just rent and groceries, but independence. Dignity. The right to be yourself without wondering if someone's taking notes for later.

To everyone rebuilding: it's scary and expensive and some days you'll eat peanut butter for dinner. But it's yours. And that's worth more than I ever knew.

She hesitated, thumb hovering over the share button.

This was more personal than anything she'd posted before. More raw. But it was her choice, she had a say in what she was showing the world.

She posted it.

Within minutes, the comments started coming. Not many—her follower count was thankfully small—but real.