No Longer Her Wounded Puppy

“The last thing I remembered was the cold concrete against my cheek and the metallic taste of my own blood. Above the ringing in my ears, I heard Olivia, my wife, screaming, not for me, but for Ethan, her charming assistant. I had pushed her out of the way of falling scaffolding, saving her life, only for a steel pipe to crush mine; a minor gash on Ethan' s forehead was treated like a mortal wound while my entire life drained away. As paramedics rushed Ethan onto a stretcher, my vision blurred, and the brutal truth crystallized: all my sacrifices, years working to support her dreams, meant nothing. I was worth less than her lover's superficial cut, and my love for her finally died, just moments before I did. Then, I blinked. Suddenly, the sterile hospital smell was gone, replaced by Olivia' s familiar, expensive perfume, and I was standing whole, pain-free, in the living room of our ridiculously large, empty house. It was the night of our biggest fight, a week before the accident, a fight that had set the stage for the end. "Liam, I' m tired of this," she said, tossing a black credit card onto the coffee table. "Here. A million-dollar credit line. Go buy yourself whatever you want. Just stop acting like a wounded puppy every time I spend time with Ethan. It' s pathetic." In my past life, her words had shattered me, driving me to refuse the card and plead for her love, a futile mistake. But this time, I was reborn. I calmly picked up the card, a chilling question forming on my lips: "So I can spend as much as I want?"”