He Realized Too Late Who He Killed Novel by ElaraThorne _ Novel




He Realized Too Late Who He Killed Chapter 01

Only after Sophie's condition stabilized did he remember me—the wife who had been missing for days. He called several times, but I never answered.
Finally, he left me a message on social media: "Once you're done throwing your tantrum, pick up the phone. Don't push it too far."
He had no idea that the person he had killed in his reckless rush ... was me.
***
I used to imagine what death felt like all the time.
Maybe it came as a single instant of overwhelming pain. Maybe it was a slow, quiet fading.
Or maybe it was simply like this.
The ground was splashed with a glaring, brutal red. The sharp stench of burning rubber from the tires scraping across the road hung in the air, tangled with the heavy smell of gasoline.
The woman lying in the pool of blood still had her eyes slightly open.
When she collapsed, she had felt like a feather—weightless and hollow—as she watched that black sedan disappear into the rain.
That woman was me.
And the man who had killed me with his car without even stopping to check was my childhood sweetheart and husband, Gavin.
When I was seven, the orphanage director, Isabel Harper, told all of us that when people died, they left behind a soul.
She said the soul was clear and colorless—something no one could see. So it could drift anywhere it wanted.
But back then, in the middle of that noisy crowd of children, I deliberately argued with her. I said it was all nonsense—just to get Gavin's attention.
And he did look up.
His eyes were pale blue.
They reminded me of the abandoned well in the orphanage in the dead of winter, sealed over with ice, inside and out.
Even when spring came, what thawed from it remained cold enough to cut straight to the bone.
Those eyes never changed.
They looked the same when he ran away from the orphanage with me, when he agreed to be with me, when he said he loved me, and when he gave me up for someone else.
I rose to my feet amid the clamor of voices and traffic, staring blankly at the other me lying on the ground.
Once the soul left the body, it would temporarily follow the perpetrator.
So I had no choice but to drift after that familiar car all the way to the hospital.
Gavin's steps were hurried as he lifted the unconscious Sophie from the back seat and rushed her into the ER. When he brushed past me, his lips were pressed into a tight line with anxiety.
It was an expression I had never seen on him before.
Anxiety and worry—emotions so natural, so ordinary—were something I had spent more than 20 years trying and failing to receive from him.
Gavin had always been calm, composed, perfectly controlled. For more than two decades, he had moved through life beside me with flawless detachment.
ER nurses and doctors quickly shoved a gurney forward, shouting for everyone nearby to clear the way.
The red light outside the operating room flicked on.
It was the same searing red as the pool of blood on the wind-lashed road not long before.
Gavin sat on a bench in the hallway, waiting with his brow drawn tight. Every so often, he took out his phone, but he never unlocked it to check.
On the screen was a missed call—from me, 10 minutes earlier.
I slowly crouched beside the bench and tilted my head up at the operating room doors, unsure if he could hear me.

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