He Made Me Financially Dependent So I’d Never Leave — He Forgot I Used to Be a Risk Analyst, and I’d Been Preparing for Eleven Months

I do.” I reached for my car door, and something in him dropped, and underneath the anger was, for one unguarded second, something almost like grief.

“Do you actually need anything from me anymore, Charlotte?” he asked, quietly.

And it was, I think, the most honest question he had asked me in ten years.

“We share three children,” I said.

“So yes.

I need you.