Separated Rooms for Three Years, He Panicked After I Moved Out Chapter 02

Separated Rooms for Three Years, He Panicked After I Moved Out Chapter 02

At seven that evening, he still wasn’t home.

At eight, still nothing.

At nine, my phone buzzed.

I picked it up. A text from him.

“Something came up with Chloe. I’ll be back late. Go to bed, don’t wait up.”

I stared at the message for a long time.

“Go to bed, don’t wait up.”

I’d been hearing that for three years.

It was always the same. It was always Chloe.

There was always something happening with her, and he always had to be the one to go.

She had a cold, so he had to keep her company. She was in a bad mood, so he had to comfort her. She moved from West Hollywood to Santa Monica, and he had to help. She adopted a cat, and he had to go with her to pick it out.

Once, Chloe wanted a cake from a popular bakery on the Westside. He sat in traffic on the 405 for forty minutes to buy it, drove it to her apartment, and waited until she finished eating before he finally came home.

By then, it was one in the morning.

I asked him, “Did you have dinner?”

He said, “I ate at Chloe’s.”

Then he showered and went straight into the study to work.

I should have understood then.

But I didn’t.

I kept thinking that since we were married, we should at least give each other time.

Maybe, with enough time, he would finally see me.

Maybe if I just did enough, he would be willing to look back at this home, at me.

I know now that if you don’t have a place in someone’s heart, nothing you do will ever matter.

He wouldn’t fall in love with you just because you did everything right.

I didn’t reply to his text.

Before, whenever he sent a message like that, I would always reply with an “Okay.”

Sometimes I’d add, “Drive safe.”

Tonight, I didn’t want to.

In a few days, I wouldn’t be receiving his messages anymore anyway.

I put my phone back on the coffee table and picked up the remote to change the channel.

A late-night talk show was on. The guest was laughing hysterically.

I leaned back against the sofa and was struck by how ridiculous it all was.

Here I was, in this Brentwood house, standing guard over a loveless marriage, waiting for a man to come home who had never once put me first.

And he was with his first love.

On our wedding day, he’d made it all perfectly clear.

“If it weren’t for you, Chloe and I wouldn’t have ended up like this.”

To him, I was the one who had torn them apart.

I was the one who had forced myself between them.

I was the one who had used my family’s influence to trap him in this marriage.

But that wasn’t the truth.

The truth was that my father’s company had been on the verge of collapse, desperately needing a lifeline.

His company had been slapped with a nasty antitrust lawsuit and needed my family’s connections in the justice system.

The elders from both families had dinner at a restaurant in Bel-Air, and just like that, our marriage was arranged.

No one asked if I wanted to marry him.

No one asked if he was willing to marry me.

In the eyes of our families, it was an equitable transaction.

His family provided the capital. My family provided the connections.

And Chloe became the collateral damage.

So he gave all his guilt to her, and all his coldness to me.