Too Late For Regret, Mr. Carlisle

"You dare play those tricks again, Avery."

Bennett's voice hit the shattered windshield like hail, cold and sharp, piercing through the fog in her mind.

Avery's fingers were stained with his own blood, slipping off his phone with a wet slip. The phone fell onto his lap, but the screen was still lit.

She gasped. A shard of glass was embedded in his forehead, and a new sharp pain pierced through his skull, but compared to the coldness condensing in his chest, it was nothing.

She was dying.

The steering column crushed her ribs, pinning her firmly in the deformed SUV driver's seat. His mouth was full of the taste of blood. Outside the window, the world is a spinning white ball-a sudden blizzard is raging on the interstate highway.

She called for help.

She called her husband.

"I'm serious." He continued, his tone tinged with a tired impatience-something usually only done to junior analysts who mess up spreadsheets. "I booked dinner with Celine. Don't mess it up for me. "

Seline.

That name was like a heavy punch.

Then, another voice came through the phone speaker-a woman's soft, sweet laughter. It was Celine.

"Is that Avery?" Celine's voice was as sweet as poison. "Say hello to her for us!"

Avery's stomach suddenly tightened.

A childish and crisp voice came from the background. "Mom is here for dinner too?" Aunt Selene is taking me to eat ice cream! "

Leo. Her son.

His lively, cheerful voice, so happy to be with another woman, was the final blow. He called her Aunt Celine. That title burned like acid on Avery's skin. She is being replaced-not just as a wife, but as a mother.

The warmth of the restaurant and the faint clinking of cups and plates felt like a universe apart from her metal ice coffin.

"Did you hear that?" Bennett's voice growled in a low voice. "Your son had a great time. This time, don't blame everything on yourself. Stop putting on those ridiculous acts, go home. "

Games. He thought it was a game.

Avery wanted to speak, tried to squeeze out the word "help" from his crushed lungs, but only let out a wet rumbling. The blizzard howled through the broken window, and that sound must have drowned out her desperate cries for help.

"Listen, I have to go." His voice had already become distant. "Celine wants to help me pick out a new watch. A proper celebration. "

What to celebrate? Their shared life built on her own ashes?

The past ten years have flashed before my eyes. For ten years, she suppressed her ambitions and shaped herself into the perfect Mrs. Carlisle. She hosted his charity gala, charmingly addressing his business partners and managing his family with the precision of a multinational company CEO. She gave up her board seat at the family business, Glenn Industries-all for him, for the sake of this marriage.

For love.

She really is a fool.

"Oh, Bennett, let's buy Leo a new coat when we go out!" Selin cheerfully suggested in the background. "It's that blue one, the one he likes best."

That blue one, Avery had just helped him pick out last week.

Her character, her identity itself, is being erased bit by bit-by a woman who sees herself as a "professional victim." The "white moonlight" that supposedly saved Bennett from a small sailboat accident years ago is a story he regards as biblical.

Avery knows the truth. She had seen real hospital reports. Afterwards, Seline did nothing but call 911. But Bennett preferred that fantasy. He preferred Celine.

The cold is seeping into the marrow. A deep, relentless chill, unrelated to the snow piled up on the dashboard. Her vision began to blur. The heart that had just been pounding its broken ribs began to slow its frenzied rhythm-like a machine stopping its engine.

She remembered her father's face and the disappointment in his eyes when she told him she would give up her executive position at Glenn Industries and marry Bennett. "Don't let him extinguish your light, Avery." He had warned him.

The light has gone out. Drowning in ten years of quiet compromise and lonely nights.

The phone screen on my leg went black. The battery is depleted. The last connection with the living world was severed.

A single tear-hot on her cold skin-traced the bloodstain on her cheek. Those were not tears of sorrow, but pure, undisguised tears of anger. Angry at Bennett's cruelty, angry at Celine's lies. But the angriest is herself-weak, believing that love is enough.

She remembered the prenuptial agreement. Those clauses are so restrictive to ensure that if she leaves, she will have almost nothing. Without hesitation, she signed, blinded by love. Now she saw clearly what it was: a cage.

The wailing sirens in the distance are swallowed by the blizzard. Too far. Too late.

Her stiff, numb fingers moved toward the frosted dashboard. With the last bit of strength, she drew a clear shape on the condensed mist.

A fork.

One cancellation. A final, silent verdict for her life, her marriage, her disastrous mistakes.

The last voice in her mind was Leo's, not from the phone, but from the memory of last week when she refused to buy him a second toy: "I hate you, Mom!" You're the worst! "

He was right. She is the worst. She chose a man who could not love her, betraying him. She forgot who she was and let herself down.

Darkness swept in, thick and suffocating. As his heartbeat made its last faint beat, a desperate thought pierced through the void, burning fiercely-

If I could do it all over again......

Then, nothing remains.