Page 249 of Wrong Marriage. Right Groom
I thought I had found something real in him.
Something different from everything else I had known.
I had even stopped pressing him about the secret that bound him so unnaturally to Zara, after he once said he might tell me.
I convinced myself we could simply live around it.
That, with time, he would move on. That Zara would become nothing more than a memory instead of something he still seemed to worship.
I was wrong.
I miscalculated everything.
Sobs began to choke my throat as I moved faster, my breathing uneven, shallow.
The ache in my chest grew sharper with every step, as if something inside me was physically tearing apart.
He never loved me.
That realization settled like ice in my veins.
He would never love me.
I had been living inside something beautiful and unreal—something I had mistaken for truth because I wanted it so badly.
By the time I reached my room, my hands were shaking so badly I could barely get the door open.
I stumbled inside.
I moved like I was no longer thinking—only reacting.
My hands jerked open drawers, pulled clothes from hangers, threw them into my suitcase without folding, without care, without even looking at what I was taking.
Fabric blurred together in my vision.
My breathing came in sharp, broken bursts.
A wave of nausea rolled through me again, stronger this time.
I froze for half a second, one hand pressing instinctively to my stomach.
There was life there.
Small. Hidden.
Ours.
A child I had already begun imagining without permission. A future I hadn’t even realized I was building.
My throat tightened violently.
I swallowed hard, forcing the sickness down.
I zipped the suitcase shut with shaking hands, the sound too loud in the silence of the room.
My body felt weak, but my decision didn’t waver.
I was leaving.
