No Debts Left Between Us

1 On the morning Garrett dropped me off for my first day at Hayes Group, he offered what he thought was practical reassurance. "You’ve been living in comfort for five years, Natalie," he said, keeping one hand casually on the steering wheel of his Porsche. "It’s completely normal if you struggle at first. If anything happens, call me. And if people give you a hard time, just tell them you’re my wife. No one will dare cross you." I nodded quietly. I never made that call. Not when my marketing proposal was rejected and rewritten five times in a row, not when I worked past three in the morning every single night, and not even when my department manager stood over my desk, pointing a finger in my face and telling me to get my act together or pack my bags. Every night, I dragged my exhausted body through our front door and collapsed straight into bed. I didn't have the bandwidth to monitor his personal assistant Tiffany's Instagram stories for hidden clues. I didn't have the energy to inspect his call logs or memorize his calendar. And I certainly didn't have the breath left to cling to his lapels, begging him to tell me whether he still loved me. Then Garrett woke me in the middle of the night. "I won't be around for our anniversary tomorrow," he said, buttoning his cuffs under the dim bedroom lamp. "Tiffany's parents are forcing her into a blind date back in her hometown. I'm driving down with her." My eyelids were heavy as lead. I nodded into the pillow. A few seconds later, I bolted upright. "Wait, no," I said. A faint, knowing smirk touched the corner of Garrett’s mouth. "What? Jealous after all?" I shook my head. "I just remembered something I forgot to tell you." He paused. "My first full paycheck clears on the fifteenth," I said, my voice dry. "I’m paying you back the rest of the money for my mother’s heart surgery. Once that transaction clears, we’re entirely settled." The smirk vanished from Garrett's face. "Natalie, what the hell does that mean?" "Exactly what it sounds like." The day of my mother’s emergency coronary bypass, the hospital billing window called my name three times. Thirty-four thousand dollars. My card was declined at the terminal. Clutching the itemized statement with trembling fingers, I had dialed Garrett. He was attending a charity gala downtown. Through the receiver, I could hear the clinking of crystal champagne flutes and Tiffany’s bright, melodic laughter in the background. When I finished speaking, Garrett’s tone had been utterly detached. "I’ll have accounting wire you seventeen thousand," he had said. "The other half, figure it out yourself." It wasn't a matter of money. Just the week before, he had casually bid four hundred thousand dollars on an oil painting at an auction without blinking. He was simply teaching me a lesson. The night before the surgery, we had gotten into a bitter argument over a photo Tiffany had sent him. She was wearing a silk slip nightgown, Garrett’s tailored suit jacket draped over her bare shoulders. Mr. Hayes, the hotel AC was freezing, so I borrowed your jacket for a bit. I think it caught a little of my perfume. Should I drop it at the dry cleaners tomorrow morning? I had picked up his phone and typed back: Your seduction tactics are embarrassingly cheap. Before the screen went dark, Garrett had walked out of the ensuite bathroom. He snatched the phone from my hand, unsent my reply, and texted Tiffany: No need to dry clean it. Just bring it to the office tomorrow. Get some rest. He placed the phone face down on the nightstand and sighed heavily. "Just because you have nothing to do all day doesn't mean the rest of the world has time to obsess over nonsense." We went to sleep back-to-back, the silence between us freezing. So the next morning, standing in front of the hospital cashier, I had swallowed my pride and begged. "Garrett, please, just transfer the full amount. Treat it as a loan. I will pay you back every cent." A long silence stretched over the line before Garrett spoke. "Fine. On one condition. You apologize to Tiffany." Before I could answer, Tiffany’s sweet voice drifted through the speaker. "Mr. Hayes, please don't. Mrs. Hayes's mother is waiting for life-saving surgery. Even if she gets on her knees right now, she wouldn't mean a word of it." A flare of white-hot fury tore through my chest. "Who do you think you are to demand an apology from me?" No answer came. Garrett hung up. A minute later, seventeen thousand dollars hit my account. Exactly half. I had to swallow every scrap of dignity I had left to borrow the rest from distant relatives. Once my mother was out of the ICU, I sold two designer handbags to pay them back. Over the following weeks, I sold off jewelry, watches, vintage coats—anything of value, until I lost track of what I once owned. Now, I only owed Garrett seven hundred dollars to clear the debt. Garrett looked down at my bare left wrist. "Where’s the gold bangle?" "Sold it." His brow furrowed sharply. "I told you, all you had to do was soften up and you wouldn't owe me a dime. I never asked you to degrade yourself like this." He genuinely hadn't expected me to pick up a grueling entry-level corporate job or hawk my personal belongings just to prove a point. Because in the past, no matter how vicious our fights became, I was always the one who surrendered. The worst time had been when Tiffany accompanied him on a week-long business trip to New York. The moment he walked through the door upon his return, my eyes caught the faint, faded red mark on his collarbone. I had broken down, blocking the doorway, demanding an explanation. Garrett had looked at me with cold disgust. "Natalie, do you have any self-respect left?" I had wrapped my arms around his waist, sobbing so hard I could barely form syllables. "No! I don't! Because I love you!" My mother had happened to drop by that evening and heard every word. Her eyes had turned red as she whispered, Natalie, baby, don't talk about yourself like that. Back then, I was too busy desperately holding onto Garrett to see the heartbreak in her eyes. Looking back now, her cardiac issues had probably started showing symptoms long before that. Garrett stood over the bed, waiting for me to back down. Instead, I pulled the duvet over my shoulder and closed my eyes. "Go to sleep," I whispered. "I have to work tomorrow." The words felt strange on my tongue. For five years, that was the sentence he used on me whenever I tried to talk to him. Back then, I used to wonder how anyone could be so heartless. Now I finally understood. When you stop loving someone, rejecting them requires zero effort. You just close your eyes, and all their hurt remains locked outside. A few minutes later, he asked in the dark, "Are you really going to pay me back?" Silence hung in the room. Garrett turned to look at me. I was already fast asleep. 2 At six the next morning, Garrett left for the airport to accompany Tiffany to her hometown. I took the crowded subway to work as usual. At two in the afternoon, my phone rang. It was the hospital. "Ms. Price? Your mother has suffered acute heart failure. The doctors are resuscitating her right now." By the time I sprinted into the hospital corridor, the ICU doors were firmly shut. A nurse handed me my mother's phone. "She was gripping this when she collapsed," the nurse said gently. "The screen was still lit up. You should take a look." The screen displayed a chat thread between my mother and Tiffany. In the attached photograph, Garrett and Tiffany sat side-by-side in front of a traditional red banquet backdrop. Both wore festive corsages pinned to their lapels. On the table before them sat ornate boxes of celebratory sweets, fine wine, and red envelopes prepared by elders for an engagement ceremony. Garrett’s arm rested casually along the back of Tiffany’s chair, while Tiffany leaned into him, beaming like a radiant bride who had just sealed her future. Tiffany had typed underneath: Mrs. Price, please don't get the wrong idea. My parents didn't know Mr. Hayes was married and assumed he was the boyfriend I brought home. Mr. Hayes didn't want to embarrass my family in front of our relatives, so he agreed to take one quick photo. My mother had sent several desperate replies: Tiffany, you're a young woman too. You should know where the line is. Put Garrett on the phone. I need to speak to him. Tiffany never replied. In the call history, my mother had dialed Garrett twelve times. Not a single call had been answered. The nurse glanced at the screen, her voice filled with quiet indignation. "Who sends something like this to a woman with a severe heart condition?" I clutched the cold metal of the phone, incapable of uttering a single sound. The emergency procedure lasted over an hour. When my mother finally opened her eyes in the recovery bay, her frail hand reached out immediately to grasp mine. "Natalie... what is going on between you and Garrett?" I gently tucked the blanket around her shoulders. "He’s moved on. I’m filing for divorce." My mother froze. A long silence hung between us before she weakly shook her head. "You can't get divorced." "Mom..." "You haven't worked in five years," she gasped, her breathing labored. "Your degree is ordinary. If you leave him, how will you survive? Besides... he and that girl haven't actually crossed the physical line. Powerful men always have young girls fawning over them. It's just how the world works." She spoke with frantic urgency, and the numbers on the cardiac monitor began to spike erratically. Looking at her pale, sunken face, I swallowed back my tears and lowered my head. "Okay," I whispered. "I won't get divorced." My mother finally exhaled, her shoulders sagging into the mattress. "Don't overthink things. Just focus on living a stable life. Nothing matters more than that." I stepped out into the hallway to let her rest. Garrett was standing at the far end of the corridor. His charcoal suit was impeccably tailored. Behind him stood the hospital’s chief of medicine and the head of cardiology. The chief was briefing him in hushed, deferential tones about my mother’s condition. Garrett gave a single, authoritative nod, and within minutes, my mother was scheduled to be moved to the VIP private suite on the top floor. He possessed power and wealth. A single phone call from him could mobilize the city's finest specialists. And with that same power, he had forced me to bow my head over seventeen thousand dollars at a hospital cashier window. Once the doctors dispersed, Garrett turned his gaze toward me. "I heard what you two were talking about," he said evenly. "Since you have no intention of getting divorced, stop testing my patience with this nonsense about 'settling debts.'" I glanced at the lock screen on my phone. 11:20 AM. "Excuse me," I said, stepping past him. "I need to get back to the office." Garrett frowned. "Your mother just came out of the ICU, and you're thinking about a spreadsheet?" I met his eyes with a blank expression. "If I miss today, I lose my perfect attendance bonus. That's fifty dollars off my paycheck." 3 Garrett seized my wrist. "I wanted you to learn independence, Natalie, not use some dead-end job to throw a tantrum at me. If you genuinely want to grow, take notes from Tiffany." I pulled against his grip, but he didn't let go. "I went home with her," he continued smoothly, "and in front of all her relatives, she clarified that I was strictly her boss. She's transparent, and she knows boundaries." I didn't bother arguing. If Tiffany had genuinely cared about boundaries, she never would have brought him through her parents' front door in the first place. Staging a public misunderstanding only to deliver a coy denial was the oldest trick in the book—it only invited more scandalous speculation. I was done wasting oxygen on her games. "I need to go," I said. Garrett looked out the window at the midday heat. "I'll drive you." Knowing that taking the subway from the hospital to Apex Solutions would require two transfers and take over an hour, I agreed. In the hospital parking garage, I pulled open the front passenger door. Tiffany was already sitting there. She was holding Garrett’s phone, setting up the GPS. Seeing me, she offered an apologetic, delicate smile. "Natalie, I got terribly carsick on the winding roads yesterday," she said softly. "Would you mind sitting in the back?" Without a word, I shut the front door and got into the rear seat. As the car pulled out of the garage, Tiffany tapped a six-digit passcode into Garrett’s phone. The screen unlocked instantly. She let out a soft laugh. "Mr. Hayes, you still haven't changed your passcode back?" Garrett caught my eye in the rearview mirror before replying flatly, "Forgot to." Tiffany turned around in her seat, her eyes curved in a sweet arc as she explained to me, "Natalie, we changed it on our last business trip. Mr. Hayes was driving and asked me to navigate, but the screen kept timing out. I couldn't remember your wedding anniversary, and it felt inconvenient to keep asking him while he was focusing on the road, so I suggested setting it to my birthday." She paused, a faint blush dusting her cheeks. "I had no idea he kept it this whole time." Garrett offered a brief, dismissive smirk. "Well, it saved the hassle of resetting it every five minutes." The two of them traded remarks effortlessly, leaving no room for anyone else to exist in the conversation. In the past, I would have demanded he pull over. Once, during a road trip, I had cried in a highway rest stop for two straight hours because of a similar slight. Garrett hadn't comforted me; he had simply sat in the air-conditioned car answering emails. In the end, I was the one who had opened the door, swallowed my tears, and whispered, I'm sorry. Let's go home. Now, sitting in the back, I simply unlocked my own phone and opened Slack. A message popped up from Brenda, my project lead: The client arrived early. I took your briefing binder into the conference room for you. Don't rush, drive safe. Garrett watched me through the mirror. "Nothing to say about the passcode?" "No." His brow knit slightly. Tiffany turned back again, smiling brightly. "Natalie is so broad-minded now. By the way, Mr. Hayes and I are heading to Apex Solutions for an executive inspection this afternoon anyway. Let's all walk in together." I gripped my phone tighter. At Apex Solutions, Hayes Group's marketing subsidiary, everyone believed Tiffany was Garrett’s partner. And that I was the desperate outsider trying to get between them. 4 The car pulled up in front of the Apex building. Tiffany stepped out first, and Garrett naturally placed a hand above the door frame to shield her head. The receptionists at the front desk immediately lit up with bright smiles. "Good afternoon, Mr. Hayes, Ms. Miller!" No one paid attention to the back seat until I stepped out. The lobby fell dead silent. A junior associate whispered under her breath, "Why is she in their car?" "Don't tell me she's clinging to Mr. Hayes again..." "Ms. Miller is way too patient. I would have lost my mind." I kept my eyes forward and walked toward the elevators. Tiffany called out behind me, "Natalie!" She caught up with a gentle, concerned expression. "The team doesn't know you and Mr. Hayes are acquainted, which is why there are rumors. Do you want me to explain things to them?" I shook my head. "No need." If she publicly announced that I was Garrett’s wife, it wouldn't clear the air—it would simply brand me as a corporate nepotism hire and invalidate every single late-night spreadsheet I had sweated over. Someone nearby scoffed quietly. "The actual girlfriend doesn't even make a scene, yet the intern acts like she owns the place." Garrett heard it. He didn't say a word. He had always guarded his personal life fiercely. More importantly, in his eyes, I was never someone worth showing off. I gathered my presentation files and joined Brenda in the client meeting. The client, an account director named Miller from a legacy retail chain, knew I was new to the industry. He tossed my contract draft back across the mahogany table. "Is Hayes Group really sending rookies to handle our accounts now? You haven't shaved down the operational margins at all." I calmly explained the cost breakdown twice, pointing out the non-negotiable logistics costs. Midway through my third sentence, Miller picked up his steaming ceramic mug and deliberately tilted it, splashing hot black tea across the back of my hand. "Take it back and redo it," he snapped. The liquid was scalding. My skin flared bright red within seconds. Without flinching, I pulled a napkin from the dispenser, blotted the damp edge of the contract, and slid the backup proposal in front of him. "This version meets all three of the custom deliverables you requested earlier," I said, my voice steady. "However, the baseline manufacturing cost cannot be lowered further. If we cut it, the delivery timeline will fail, and your brand will bear the real financial loss." Miller narrowed his eyes at me. "You're not going to throw a fit?" I slipped my burned hand beneath the table, out of sight. "Getting angry doesn't close contracts," I replied evenly. "You have every right to critique our strategy. But if you resort to physical disrespect again, I will terminate this negotiation immediately and escalate the matter through our legal department." Brenda glanced at me from across the table, remaining silent. Miller stared at the numbers for two tense minutes, then pulled out his Montblanc pen and signed. The moment we exited the conference room, I rushed into the executive restroom to run cold water over the blister forming on my hand. When I first started this job, I wasn't like this. The first time a client yelled at me, I had hidden in a bathroom stall and sobbed for thirty minutes. If I made a formatting error on an Excel model, I couldn't sleep all night. When colleagues whispered that I was an unqualified drop-in, I used to confront them defensively. Eventually, I learned the cold reality of the workplace. If you didn't do something wrong, state the facts. If you made an error, own it and fix it. Whether people choose to believe your character is beyond your control. Brenda walked in carrying a tube of burn ointment. As she carefully smoothed it over my skin, she muttered, "Are you out of your mind? He threw hot tea at you—why didn't you dodge?" I offered a faint smile. "Didn't react in time." Brenda went quiet for a moment, then looked up. "Don't take the office gossip to heart. When you first transferred here, I honestly thought you were some socialite trying to steal Ms. Miller’s man." I lowered my eyes. "But you're the first one here every morning and the last one to leave," Brenda said softly. "When your spreadsheets were rejected, you redid them three times without a single complaint. When you didn't know how to run a regression model, you asked until you understood, and you never made the same mistake twice. People's mouths can lie, Natalie. But the work you put in leaves undeniable marks." A sudden tightness caught in my throat. Garrett had spent five years telling me I couldn't handle the real world. I had internalized it so deeply that I believed him. Yet here, in a sterile office restroom, someone had actually witnessed my quiet perseverance. Brenda patted my shoulder firmly. "You're young and capable. Don't waste your life getting tangled up with a man who already has a girlfriend. You have a massive future ahead of you." My chest felt heavy. "Thank you, Brenda." When I stepped out of the restroom, Garrett was leaning against the hallway wall. His gaze dropped to the raw red blister on my skin, his brow knitting tightly. "Is this why you insisted on working? Just to let low-level clients treat you like a doormat?" I looked at him calmly. "What should I have done instead? Announced I'm Mrs. Hayes and demanded he get on his knees?" Garrett’s jaw tightened. "You could have picked up the phone and called me." I almost laughed. When my mother was waiting for emergency bypass surgery, I had called him. When Tiffany paraded her subtle insults in front of me, I had called him. And every single time, his answer was the same: Stop bothering me with trivial domestic drama. I took a step to walk around him, but Garrett reached out and gripped my uninjured wrist, his eyes locked on the burn. "I'll have a private physician come by the penthouse tonight," he said. "No need." His grip tightened slightly. "Natalie, that wasn't a suggestion." Before I could pull away, a frantic commotion erupted from the open-plan office down the hall. "What do you mean the pitch pricing was wrong?!" The master rate sheet for our largest institutional client had just been submitted with catastrophic errors. And according to the email timestamp, the sender was listed as me. The quote was thirty percent below our hard bottom line. If the client held us to the bid, Apex stood to lose over three hundred thousand dollars.