The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 149

Lexi let out a cold, mocking scoff. She leaned her back against the peeling wall and shot him a withering glare.

"Dr. Foster, do you have any idea how brilliant, how incredibly happy and proud she was when I first met her?"

She kept her back pressed against the wall, her gaze drifting toward the closed front door, as if staring into a distant, untouchable past.

"We were freshmen in college. We shared the same dorm room. Did you know she was supposed to go to the Olympics?"

Garrison froze entirely.

The Olympics?

"She absolutely crushed the qualifiers. Ranked third in the entire nation." Lexi's voice was dead flat. "Her coach said her potential was limitless. Two more years of intense training, and she was practically guaranteed a medal. She was so incredibly happy. She used to tell me every single day that when she finally won that medal, she was going to hang it right in the center of her living room."

Lexi paused.

"And then she got pregnant."

Garrison's heart physically skipped a beat.

"She never told you, did she?"

Lexi looked right at him, her eyes stripped of all accusation, leaving only a devastating truth. "She didn't tell a single soul. She went to the athletic board and processed her retirement papers entirely alone. Her coach called her screaming, demanding to know if she had lost her mind, telling her millions of people would kill for an opportunity like that. And all she did was apologize. Over and over and over again into the phone."

Garrison flashed back to those months. It was true—she had never said a single word about it. She had just sat quietly in the house every day. He had arrogantly assumed she was just a naturally docile, unambitious woman who liked staying indoors.

He had absolutely no idea... that she had just slaughtered her own dreams for him.

"And then there was the full-ride fellowship for grad school," Lexi pressed on relentlessly. "Her grades were flawless. Her thesis advisor adored her and guaranteed her a spot in the Master's program. She was planning to study sports psychology so she could stay in the athletic world even after retiring from swimming."

She stared at Garrison, her eyes as dark and stagnant as a frozen lake.

"She never went to grad school either. Because her morning sickness with Archie was so violent she couldn't physically get out of bed, and she missed the enrollment deadline."

"And the part that shocked all of us the most—just a few days later, she formally withdrew from the university entirely."

Garrison opened his mouth, desperately wanting to say something, but his vocal cords refused to work.

He had only found out about that specific detail years later.

Garrison's hands clenched so hard his knuckles ached with the force of his regrets.

"Do you know... why she went to Antarctica?"

Lexi stared straight through him.

"Because in her entire life, she has never once lived for herself. When she was a kid and her mom died, she had to be the perfectly behaved daughter. When she got married, she had to be the perfectly obedient wife. When she got pregnant, she had to silently endure it. When she got divorced, she had to leave with quiet dignity."

She paused, letting the silence hang heavy.

"Antarctica was the very first time she ever did something just for herself. When she told me she was going, there was finally light in her eyes again. I hadn't seen that light in years."

Garrison slumped against the wall, entirely incapable of uttering a single word.

He thought back to all those years. She was always sitting quietly in the corner, never demanding he come home, never asking for a single luxurious thing. He had blindly assumed it was just her nature. He assumed she didn't want anything.

She just never dared to ask.

She had violently extinguished her own brilliance, just so she wouldn't blind him.