Love’s Empty Echo

When Callum abandoned me, feverish and shivering on a mountain road, just to watch a meteor shower with the young woman he had raised, I decided to divorce him.

His good friend, Emmet, advised him to try winning me back.

"Look Cal, sisters are sisters, but a wife takes priority. You’d better not mix up what matters most."

Callum, however, dismissed the idea with a confident smile.

"She’s bluffing. Does she really think she’ll go through with the divorce?"

"All these years, I’ve given her a place to belong. Without me, she wouldn’t even have a home. Leave me? She wouldn’t dare. 

"Just wait. Before the cooling-off period ends, she’ll come back crying and begging me to take her in." 

But thirty days passed, and I never looked back.

While he scoured the world searching for me, I sipped tea in a misty mountain villa, utterly at peace.

"James," I remarked to my step-brother, "your place truly feels like home."

When I handed the divorce papers to Callum Kipling, he was on his tablet, helping his step-sister, Hannah pick out her graduation dress.

Her silky voice could be heard clearly through the phone.

"Cal! I want a dress with a night-sky backdrop, adorned with stars, just as romantic as the meteor shower we watched together that night."

"Alright, we'll take our time finding one. If nothing fits, we'll have it custom-made. The little princess must be satisfied, right?"

Callum indulged her and almost signed his name at the bottom of the contract without glancing at the document I handed him.

It wasn’t until they had finished their tender exchange and he reached for a glass of water from the table that he casually glanced at the paper.

Then he laughed in disbelief.

“You’ve got quite a temper, don’t you, Eloise? All this just because I didn’t go with you to the hospital? And then you jump straight to a divorce?"

Why wouldn’t I?

That day, I had already been unwell due to my period, yet he insisted I join them at the mountaintop resort.

By nightfall, I had developed a fever.

When I begged him to take me to the hospital, he left me stranded halfway down the mountain.

"There's a clinic ten minutes down the hill. Buy some medicine yourself. I have something urgent to take care of," he said before leaving.

But with my fever reaching 102°F, how was I supposed to make my way down the mountain alone in the middle of the night?

The moment he left, I fainted.

Later, I found out that the so-called "urgent matter" was watching a meteor shower with Hannah.

"Whether I dare or not, I've already done it," I said calmly. I changed my shoes and headed for the door, utterly indifferent to his questioning.

"Since you've already signed it, I’d appreciate it if you could have someone take it to the courts to finalize the process."

I thought Callum would readily agree, relieved to end things. Instead, he erupted