When Love's Fireworks Fade Chapter 1

While taking a quiet walk around our residential neighborhood, I ran straight into my ex-husband, Tristan.

For a second, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. No one knew better than I did how much Tristan detested this town, and how much he despised this exact neighborhood.

I stopped in my tracks, offering a polite but distant greeting. "Are you back to visit your grandmother's grave?"

He stood there, impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, his eyes locked onto mine without so much as a blink. "I bought a house here. I stay here whenever I'm in town on business."

A wave of disgust washed over me, instantly killing any desire to be polite. I looked down, already mentally calculating the cost of moving somewhere else, and stepped aside to walk away.

But Tristan stepped in front of me, blocking my path. "Brooke, I regret it."

I pretended not to hear him, my eyes lighting up as I waved to someone behind him. "Jasper!"

Jasper walked over, naturally taking my hand in his.

When I first met Tristan, he wasn't the powerful tech CEO he is today. Back then, in the eyes of our classmates and neighbors, he was just a lonely, impoverished seven-year-old boy. He had no parents and no friends. His divorced parents had tossed him back and forth like a hot potato before finally dumping him on his grandmother.

Winters in Seattle were wet and bone-chilling, filled with endless drizzle. While the neighborhood kids played together, Tristan could always be seen trailing behind his grandmother, collecting cardboard and plastic bottles from recycle bins. He wore thin, worn-out clothes, constantly shivering with his head tucked into his collar.

Some of the kids from our block spread the story at school, and soon, everyone started calling him "the garbage boy."

Since we lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same school, I constantly witnessed him being bullied and mocked. Eventually, I couldn't bear to watch it anymore. I began taking care of him in secret. I would pack an extra breakfast to share with him, and I gave him my spare gloves and insulated thermos.

When my dad discovered why my things kept going missing, he let out a soft sigh and brought Tristan into our home.

From that day on, Tristan played at our house, ate at our table, showered in our bathroom, and did his homework beside me. My mother started buying everything in pairs: one blue, one pink.

On Tristan's tenth birthday, my father bought him a computer. That was the day we discovered his terrifying talent for programming.

After that, his life changed completely. He swept every local and national coding competition, his room filling up with trophies and cash prizes. At fourteen, he traveled abroad as the youngest competitor in the World Programming Championship and took first place.

I still remember the video of him holding the trophy on a bustling European street, his eyes shining brightly as he smiled into the camera. "I want to thank Mr. and Mrs. Su. Without them, I wouldn't be standing here today. And thank you, Brooke."

We were only fourteen, but watching that broadcast, my face burned crimson.

During our senior year of high school, the day he received his early admission letter to Boston Tech, he wrapped his arms around me. "Brooke, please apply to a school in Boston," he whispered softly in my ear.

For that single sentence, I left Seattle and enrolled in a mediocre local college in Boston.

I had always been ordinary: ordinary grades, an ordinary life, an ordinary degree. I was nothing like Tristan. He was a man of extremes. When he loved something, he loved it to the point of obsession. He loved programming, and he worked himself to exhaustion to launch his startup. He loved me, too, often running across campus just to eat breakfast with me after pulling an all-nighter at his office.

But when he hated, he hated with equal intensity.

During our freshman year, Tristan used his hacking skills to break into his biological father's small logistics firm, systematically ruining his most lucrative contracts. During our junior year, while his startup was in its most critical phase, he took a night off to throw a lavish party, celebrating the day his mother's second marriage collapsed.

Looking back, the way he treated me after he fell out of love was entirely consistent with who he had always been.