8. Selene
— ? —
Selene
The mansion is dark when I arrive home, exactly as I left it.
Dylan texted somewhere between the venue and here, a message I didn’t bother reading until the car pulled into the driveway. Going back to the studio to handle some press stuff. Don’t wait up. Love you.
Don’t wait up.
As if I’ve been doing anything else for the past five years.
I let myself in through the front door and stand in the foyer. The house feels different tonight, emptier, colder. As if the walls themselves understand that this is the last time I’ll stand here as Dylan Riego’s wife.
My heels click against the marble as I make my way upstairs, and each step feels deliberate. Final. I’m not running away in a panic or fleeing in tears. I’m finally making a choice, for the first time in longer than I can remember.
The bedroom is exactly as I left it this afternoon, the detritus of getting ready scattered across every surface. Makeup brushes on the vanity. Rejected jewelry options spread across the dresser. The empty garment bags from my stylist draped over the chair in the corner.
I move past all of it and go straight to the closet.
My suitcases are stored on the top shelf, the expensive leather set Dylan bought me for our third anniversary when he promised we’d travel more. We never did. The suitcases have been sitting up there gathering dust for four years, monuments to yet another broken promise.
I pull down two of them and set them open on the bed.
Then I start to pack.
The process is surprisingly simple once I stop thinking about it.
I move through the closet with methodical efficiency, pulling items from hangers and folding them into the suitcases.
I don’t take much, a few pairs of jeans, some comfortable sweaters, the basics I’ll need to start over.
The designer gowns stay on their padded hangers.
The couture pieces that cost more than some people’s cars remain untouched.
None of it feels like mine anyway.
Dylan bought most of these clothes. He’d come home with shopping bags from boutiques I’d never heard of, presenting them like gifts but really just dressing me in the image he wanted.
The perfect wife. The elegant accessory.
The beautiful woman who’d stand beside him at industry events and reflect well on his success.
I don’t want to be that woman anymore.
At the jewelry case, I pause. Diamonds and sapphires and emeralds wink at me under the soft lighting, each piece representing some occasion Dylan felt required an expensive gesture. Anniversary earrings. Birthday bracelets. Apology necklaces for missed dinners and forgotten plans.
I close the case without taking anything.
The only jewelry that matters is already on my finger, and that won’t be coming with me either.
I turn to the vanity and pull open the locked drawer where Irish Tiu’s paperwork has been waiting.
The divorce documents are official, filled with legal language that reduces seven years of marriage to asset divisions and dissolution procedures.
I signed my sections yesterday, in a quiet ceremony of one, my pen moving across each line with surprising steadiness.
Dylan’s signature lines remain empty.
I carry the documents to the small table by the window, the one where Dylan used to leave me notes in the early days of our marriage. Good morning, beautiful. Can’t wait to come home to you. The notes stopped years ago, replaced by text messages from his assistant about schedule changes.
I set the papers down and slip off my rings, the one he gave for the proposal and our marriage band.
The rings are warm from my skin, and I turn them over in my fingers, watching them catch the light. Such a small thing to represent such a massive commitment. Such an easy thing to remove after years of trying to make it mean something.
I place the rings on top of the divorce papers and a note I put inside an envelope, perfectly centered, impossible to miss.
Then I turn back to my suitcases and keep packing.
The box of journals is buried in the back of my closet, shoved behind shoe boxes and forgotten accessories.
I pull it out and sit on the floor with it, running my fingers over the worn cardboard. This box has followed me through every move, every transition, every phase of my life. It contains the person I was before I became Dylan’s wife.
Inside are notebooks filled with my handwriting.
Character sketches for films I wanted to make.
Story ideas scrawled on napkins and receipt paper, preserved because I knew they were valuable even when no one else could see it.
Production notes from projects I actually worked on, back when I was Selene Vance, rising star, instead of Selene Riego, ornamental spouse.
I open one of the notebooks at random and find myself staring at notes from eight years ago.
Story concept: Woman rebuilds her life after discovering her entire identity was constructed around someone else’s dreams. Not revenge but reclamation. Finding out who she is when she stops being who everyone else needs her to be.
A bitter laugh escapes my throat.
Past me had no idea how prophetic that would turn out to be.
I close the notebook and add the entire box to my small pile of things to take. These are mine. These have always been mine. They’re the only part of this life that Dylan never touched, never influenced, never tried to shape into something that served his vision instead of my own.
The suitcases are nearly full now. I’ve taken so little.
Just clothes and toiletries and these notebooks that hold the ghost of who I used to be.
The walk-in closet still looks fully stocked.
The jewelry case is still brimming. Anyone walking in would never guess that the woman who lives here has decided to leave.
But I know.
And soon, Dylan will know too.
I do one final walk through the mansion before I go.
The living room, where we used to curl up together on the couch and talk for hours about nothing and everything.
The kitchen, where Dylan once surprised me with breakfast in bed every Sunday until the Sundays became work days and the breakfasts became distant memories.
The home office, where my small desk sits in the corner, buried under clutter that isn’t mine.
Each room holds ghosts of happier times.
I remember when we first moved in, how we wandered through the empty spaces and talked about how we’d fill them.
This room could be a nursery someday, I said, and Dylan smiled and pulled me close and promised we’d have everything.
A family. A partnership. A life built together on a foundation of love and mutual respect.
The nursery never happened. The partnership dissolved. The life we were supposed to build together became Dylan’s life, with me existing somewhere in the margins.
I stop in the doorway of his office, the one room I rarely enter anymore.
His awards line the shelves, golden statues that gleam even in the darkness.
His scripts are stacked on the desk, covered in notes that aren’t mine.
His vision boards hang on the walls, filled with images from projects I had no part in creating.
This room is a temple to his success.
And I helped build it, brick by brick, sacrifice by sacrifice, until there was nothing left of me but the mortar holding his dreams together.
No more.
I close the door to his office and don’t look back.
At the front door, I pause with my suitcases beside me and my box of journals clutched against my chest.
The mansion looms behind me, all that square footage of emptiness and expensive finishes. I’ve lived here for five years, and I can count on one hand the number of times it actually felt like home. Home is supposed to be warm, welcoming, a place where you feel most like yourself.
This place has only ever made me feel like a guest in my own life.
I close my eyes and different memories resurface in the back of my mind.
The first night we spent here, sleeping on a mattress on the floor because the movers hadn’t arrived yet, laughing at how ridiculous it was to own this much house when all we needed was each other.
The party we threw for our third anniversary, filling these rooms with friends and colleagues and love that felt infinite.
The slow, creeping silence that followed, as Dylan’s career consumed more and more of his time and I found myself rattling around in these beautiful, empty rooms, waiting for someone who was always too busy to come home.
I open my eyes.
The memories don’t hurt as much as I expected. They feel disconnected. Scenes from someone else’s life, a woman I used to know but don’t quite recognize anymore.
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe I’ve been holding onto a version of my marriage that stopped existing years ago, refusing to admit that the woman who was happy here has been slowly dying ever since.
Tonight, I’m finally letting her go.
The car is waiting in the garage. I loaded my suitcases inside with the few things I’m taking.
I slide behind the wheel and sit for a moment, letting the reality of what I’m doing wash over me. I’m leaving my husband. I’m walking away from seven years of marriage, from the life I built, from the future I thought I wanted.
I should be devastated. There should be sobbing, second-guessing, desperation for one more chance to make it work.
Instead, I just feel tired.
And underneath the exhaustion, a sensation I almost don’t recognize. Relief.
For five years, I’ve been playing a role that was slowly suffocating me. The supportive wife. The understanding partner. The woman who put her own dreams on hold because her husband’s were more important.
I accepted that role because I loved Dylan, because I believed our partnership was worth the sacrifice, because I thought that someday… someday he would see what I’d given up and cherish me for it.
But Claudette’s arrival showed me the truth.