“You must think that I'm stupid

You must think that I'm a fool

You must think that I'm new to this

But I have seen this all before

I'm never gonna let you close to me

Even though you mean the most to me

'Cause every time I open up, it hurts

So I'm never gonna get too close to you

Even when I mean the most to you

In case you go and leave me in the dirt

But every time you hurt me, the less that I cry

And every time you leave me, the quicker these tears dry

And every time you walk out, the less I love you

Baby, we don't stand a chance, it's sad but it's true

I'm way too good at goodbyes…”

It was ten years too soon for the song to even exist, but lying awake in bed the first night of her rebirth and gazing out at the flashing city lights and obscure moon, Isabel couldn’t help but quietly sing these words as the last tears she would ever cry over Brycen Jaeger slid down her cheeks, over her smiling red lips and dripped from her ivory chin, disappearing into the blanket.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

When she went to the hospital the next day to visit Isabel and drop off some stuff, Davina also brought along an old friend of hers.

“Izzy, this is my friend from college, Steven Bell, a lawyer. Steven, this is Isabel Jaeger, soon to be Rogers. She wants you to handle her divorce suite.”

At first, Steven was shocked. Everyone in A country knew who Brycen Jaeger was and as a result, they also knew about his wife and there were countless women eyeing the position even though it was already filled.

Stories about countless young starlets and even successful business women throwing themselves left and right into Brycen’s arms and even employing trickery to get into his bed were everywhere. So now, he would really like to know, why would this woman who had the man every woman wants, want to divorce Brycen Jaeger?

But, after listening to Isabel’s story, as a man with a wife and family, the original respect Steven held for the self-made business man came crumbling down pathetically.

“Mrs. Jaeger, are you certain that these are all the demands you want to make on your husband for this divorce?” Steven was skeptical as he looked over the draft document held in his hands.

“You two were together before Jaeger Corp became what it is today, by law, no less than half of what he is worth is what you deserve.”

“No, no. This is fine.” Isabel had a small smile on her mouth as she leaned over to peak at the letter, unaware that her sudden close proximity was causing the man a bit of unease as her light jasmine scent wafted close to him.

“The things that are Brycen’s are Brycen’s and what are mine I will have. Thank you for your concern Mr. Bell, but this is all I need.”

Steven didn’t insist on pushing his opinion and after exchanging a few more words and getting a better understanding of Isabel and Brycen’s marriage and family situation, he bade the two women farewell and left to prepare the proper documents before contacting Brycen’s lawyer to file the suite.

“So, what are your plans after things go through?” Davina asked while gorging on a bowl of spicy ramen noodles.

“Pursue my dream… and take care of my kids.”

Isabel sighed and closed her eyes as she reclined into the sofa, but she didn’t miss the small jolt in Davina’s shoulders and the electric light that flashed through her black phoenix eyes.

“By ‘pursue your dream’ do you mean…?”

Isabel curved the corner of her mouth and peeked through one eye to look at Davina who had gotten much closer to her, her eyes sparkling like a child anxious with anticipation for their Christmas present.

“Pfft!” Isabel laughed as she got up and went over to the mini bar for a bottled water.

“You said sometime before that you were going to help a friend returning from overseas pursue a certain business venture.” Isabel cracked the seal and took a long drink of water, until the bottle was half empty. “Back then, you also extended an invitation to me…”

Isabel ran her finger around the mouth of the bottle mischievously before flicking her eyes to look at Davina’s face that was red with excitement. She smiled.

“Does that offer still stand?”

“Fuck, yes!” Davina didn’t try to mask her enthusiasm.

Jumping up from the couch, she screamed in delight and rushed to squeeze Isabel in a hug as she spun around.

“Omigod, omigod, omigod! Izzy, this is amazing! I just knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

Isabel laughed as she spun around with Davina, but the smile on her face was wry.

Davina said that she knew Isabel wouldn’t let her down, but the truth was, Isabel did let her down, in the last life.

Davina had also extended her invitation back then, but because she was so caught up with Brycen and Susan’s situation, Isabel had ignored the offer, continuing down the beaten path of acting which she was only so-so at. And because she was hostile towards Susan, all the managers that Isabel was assigned after Davina resigned didn’t even bother to give her advice or chart her career properly, leaving her to run her own course haphazardly.

If it wasn’t that she at least had some talent for entertainment, her career would have gone up in smoke a long time ago.

“I’ve got to call Lauren and tell her the good news.”

Still hyper like a kid on Christmas, Davina grabbed her cellphone and rushed out of the room. Isabel didn’t stop her and turned around to grab her own cellphone. Climbing onto the bed and making herself comfortable, she dialed a string of numbers that she was very familiar with.

As usual, the phone only rang twice before the voice on the other end picked up.

“Hello?”

Hearing the flat and expressionless tone used by the other person, Isabel felt her eye twitch.

“So, you were like this even in the past, huh.”

“…Hello?”

“You really won’t say anything else?”

“…”

Hearing the familiar silence on the other end of the line, Isabel rolled her eyes. Even ten years before she met him, this guy was like this.

“This is ‘Tom’, right?”

“Who are you?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Why should I tell you? Besides, you’ll know once you finish tracking my call, right?” Isabel grinned at the small clattering sound she heard on the other side. Finally, she managed to one-up this bastard.

“It doesn’t matter if you know who I am, or not. I have a story for you, are you interested?”

Inside the sick room, the woman wearing a white hospital gown was reclining on the pillows with her legs crossed. The thin gown had rolled up her thigh, fully exposing her slender legs as she twirled a lock of dark hair around her ivory fingers with a devilish, toying smile playing on her red lips while she spoke into the phone.

In the hallway, the young nurse that had wanted to enter quickly closed the door after being greeted by such a seductive and dazzling sight. She was still slightly dizzy from the star effect and her face was bright red as she patted her chest to quiet her heart.

Hugging the autograph material to her chest, she made the quick decision to come back later when her heart didn’t feel like it would fall in love at next glance.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

Later that afternoon, Isabel was curled up on her bed like a lazy cat while sucking a lollipop and doing some online shopping on her phone when the room door was suddenly and violently pushed open and someone that she never expected to visit her while she was in the hospital came through the doors.

Dressed in a dark blue, Armani chrome suit, his dark hair combed back to show off his killer facial contours that seemed even more pronounced and deeply set in his anger, Brycen Jaeger at 5” 9, with stellar body proportions was definitely the embodiment of every woman’s dream.

Although he was now worth less than scum in her heart, Isabel couldn’t stop herself from appreciating Brycen’s posture, the man was hot.

Coming into the room and seeing the woman curled languidly on the bed, Brycen couldn’t help but halt momentarily in his tracks as all angry thoughts he had been brewing flew out the window.

Isabel was wearing a red spaghetti strapped mini dress that, because of her unruly posture, was barely covering her butt as she sprawled on her tummy. Because it had been a really long time since she last relaxed, after having a bath and changing into her own clothes, Isabel didn’t bother to comb or style her hair and it was an unkempt, dark mess, scattering across her shoulders, down her back and splaying onto the bed around her, giving her a kind of natural, seductive air.

Between her teeth, a flesh colored lollipop was lightly trapped, the tongue she was using to toy with it paused in a half caressing motion and her golden eyes were open big with surprise, looking like a startled deer in headlights. The image was provocative and cute, tempting anyone who saw to want to pounce on her.

For a moment, Brycen was stunned and unable to return to himself as he stared at the woman on the bed. Was this really that clingy and nauseating wife of his whom he had ignored for the past several years? When did she become so… dazzling? He could have sworn that when he last saw her she wasn’t this pleasing to the eyes. Something changed.

Aware of the man’s eyes skimming over her body, Isabel wasn’t particularly bothered. What part of her hadn’t Brycen seen? In order to entice him, Isabel had always bought short and skimpy clothes that showed off her body to wear around the house, always hoping that his eyes would stay on her a little bit longer.

In fact, at one point in their relationship, she had been so desperate for his attention that she had learnt pole dancing and after making countless arrangements to make sure that he had a night off, gave him a full, live strip show.

Kelvin and Phoenix were the result of that one time and after that, he had never touched her in bed again, he even avoided sleeping in the same room with her and after several months of cat and mouse in the house, when he found out she was pregnant, he directly had a penthouse built on top of his office at the company and hardly ever came back to the house to sleep.

Thinking back on it, Isabel really wondered where her IQ had gone that she hadn’t seen the man’s obvious contempt for her.

After ogling the eye candy standing at her door for long enough, Isabel put down her phone, pulled the lollipop from her mouth and swung around to sit up at the edge of the bed, crossing her thighs, completely oblivious the hike in her skirt as she did so.

“How come you’re here? Is it really okay for you to be here instead of at the company? You’re needed there.”

Isabel’s voice managed to pull Brycen’s thoughts back from the shadows under her skirt and for a moment he was drawn in by the flesh colored candy dancing against her lips, but black lines immediately filled his forehead when he heard her words.

If it was any other day, Brycen would have taken it for her usual concern about his business, but after Kyle came to his office today, how could he not notice the real meaning behind her words.

“You came to see me, even though all this time you’ve been ignoring me? I don’t need you here.” Is basically what she was saying.

And, usually, he wouldn’t care about whatever tantrum she threw, but somehow, that seemingly spoiled and complaining tone of hers scratched at Brycen’s heart and made him feel irritated in a complex sort of way.

(A/N: The key word here is ‘seemingly’.)

Gripping the papers in his hand that he had gotten from Kyle, Brycen held them out to her.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Still rolling the lollipop against her lips, Isabel raised a slender eyebrow as she glanced over the papers in front of her face and she was surprised, because these papers were the very ones she and Steven had discussed and drawn up this morning.

“Wow, Mr. Bell works fast, doesn’t he? I thought it would take him a few days at least, but it’s hardly been five hours.”

Isabel’s words and the smile on her bright, moist and seductive lips were like a slap to Brycen’s face.

“You—you really want to divorce me?”

Brycen couldn’t believe it. This woman had stubbornly clung on to him for twelve whole years despite his neglect and cold treatment and even went as far as to seduce him into having sex with her and getting pregnant. She loved him more that she cared about herself. She wouldn’t give up on him; this had to be another one of her tantrums.

Unknowingly, Brycen tried to convince himself like that, but Isabel’s easy and careless reply shot down his delusions.

“Is that a problem?”

In a little red dress with her dark hair falling about her carelessly, one arm was propping her up against the bed and her legs were crossed. The woman raised one eyebrow lazily as she didn’t even bother looking at him, instead focusing on the lollipop she was spinning between her fingers.

She opened her red lips and stretched out her small pink tongue to wrap around the flesh colored candy. She licked it round and around then pushed it into her mouth before retrieving it to tap against her smiling lips.

“Brycen, let’s be real; we’ve never had any true feelings in our relationship no matter how much we tried. We should have ended things long ago but I was selfish and stubborn, for that, I’ll apologize. I’m sorry.”

Isabel gave a sweet smile and continued. “I didn’t realize how much of a nuisance I was to you until I saw you with that girl on the roof yesterday. That smile of yours gave me quite a scare, knocked me right out. I didn’t know you could smile like that; you never smiled like that to me. So, I’ve made the decision to give you your freedom and all I want in return, is full custody of the twins.”

Isabel had been flipping through her phone while she talked so she didn’t see that with every word she spoke, the color of Brycen’s face became worse and worse until it became frightfully pale when she mentioned that he never smiled at her.

Brycen couldn’t help but touch his clean shaved jaw as he watched the woman who looked so free and at ease while scrolling through her phone and licking at her lollipop without paying him the slightest attention.

In all the years they were together, had he really, truly, never once smiled at her? That wasn’t possible, right?

Done messing around on her phone, Isabel looked up to see Brycen, caressing his jaw in a slow motion while looking at her with a thoughtful (?) expression, but she could care less about what he was thinking. She asked directly.

“Will you sign? I haven’t made any outrageous requests or anything.”

Feeling a nagging ache in her lower back, Isabel frowned and stretched her arms above her head, unaware that because there was too little fabric in her dress, the garment was straining due her actions, pulling the neckline and revealing the flesh of her full chest and even the beginnings of her cherry blossom, pink colored areola since she wasn’t wearing a bra. .

Seeing her actions, a thought flashed through Brycen’s mind and his moment of muddle-headedness caused by the change in Isabel’s temperament was quickly replaced by derision.

Sure enough, this woman really wasn’t able to let him go. Playing this tactic of loosening the reigns to grasp them firmer, did she take him for an idiot? Well, granted that he almost fell for it; if she hadn’t made such a blatant move of seduction by purposely revealing her chest to him, she might have succeeded

As usual, she only knew how to use her body and good looks to trick him. It was disgusting.

“Nothing outrageous you say? You’re practically trying to take my children away from me. Phoenix and Kelvin are my own blood, I will never allow that.” Who knows how his kids would turn out if they were to be raised by such a shameless woman.

If only Isabel knew Brycen’s thoughts at that moment she would have stared wide eyed and cursed.

Fuck! What was called being narcissistic? This was, ah! Her back was only hurting after hitting it when she fell, alright! Who the hell wanted to seduce him? She was over him a whole lifetime ago. And, hasn’t she been the one raising her children all this time without him? GTFO!

Unfortunately, or fortunately, she didn’t know his thoughts. So after stretching like a lazy cat and yawning, producing some tears that brightened her eyes, she only looked at him, propping her elbow on her crossed legs and putting her chin in her palm before stating blandly.

“You can’t have them.”

“What?”

“Phoenix and Kelvin are mine. I won’t give them to you.”

“Woman, don’t reach too far. Do you really think you have the capability?”

Brycen gave her fierce glare but Isabel only smiled while biting down on the soft center of the lollipop she had reached, chewing the thin candy coat and the gum within before flicking the stick away towards the corner. The white plastic stick flew, hit the wall and bounced back, straight into the waste bin.

“I’ll see you in court.”