Chapter 2

Chapter 2

1

I bought Jaxton's favorite strawberry cake and returned to the house we lived in when we got married.

Before I even entered, I saw a woman sitting in the living room through the crack in the door.

When I saw her face clearly, my legs went weak, and I leaned powerlessly against the wall.

That woman was Caylee, Jaxton's ex-girlfriend.

I had never met Caylee before; I had only seen her photos on Jaxton's phone and heard about her from his friends.

It was said that Caylee and Jaxton had been together since college, but Jaxton's mother didn't like her and forced them to break up three years ago.

Since then, Jaxton had been depressed and often drowned his sorrows in booze.

On the night Jaxton and I got married, he was drunk and pinned me down, taking me roughly while calling out Caylee's name.

Afterward, he threw a box of birth control pills at me. "Take them!"

Holding the box, my eyes stung with tears. "Jaxton, we're married. Why do I have to take these? Don't you want a baby?"

His hand paused as he buttoned his shirt, then he turned and grabbed my face with disgust.

"Lilah, do you think you're worth anything? Do you actually think you can give me a child?"

"Listen carefully. I married you not because I love you but because I needed a tool for my desires."

"From now on, our relationship is confined to the bedroom. Don't entertain any other thoughts, or I won't be kind to you."

Looking at Jaxton's cold and distant expression and hearing his emotionless words, I felt suffocated.

To him, I was nothing more than a bedmate.

At that time, I didn't understand why he acted that way.

Until a month after our wedding, he got drunk again and held me passionately until midnight.

After he fell asleep, I secretly looked at his phone.

There were 1,314 photos in his album, all of Caylee.

My head buzzed, and tears streamed uncontrollably down my face. My whole body went numb and trembled.

I couldn't believe that the man who was intimate with me every night had a heart full of love for another woman.

2

In the year we had been married, Jaxton had never mentioned Caylee to me.

And now, he had brought her back to our marital home.

"Are you Lilah's sister?" Caylee's voice pulled me back to reality.

She had somehow appeared in front of me, looking me up and down with undisguised disdain.

"You even bought a cake. Are you here to celebrate Jaxton's birthday? Please, come in."

Caylee took the cake from my hands and politely invited me inside.

Every move she made, every word she spoke, made it seem like she was the mistress of this house, and I was just an outsider.

"Jaxton is really something," Caylee continued. "He told me you were in the hospital and wouldn't be back tonight, so he invited me to stay over."

I stared at Caylee's back, my eyes burning red, but I didn't cry like I used to.

She was flaunting how much Jaxton cared for her.

I should have felt sad, but for some reason, I felt nothing.

It wasn't until I saw Jaxton wearing an apron and carrying a plate of baked fish from the kitchen that my world completely collapsed.

In all the time we had been together, I never knew he could cook.

I had imagined countless times what he would look like cooking, but when I finally saw it, I couldn't feel happy.

Because he wasn't cooking for me; he was cooking for the woman he loved, Caylee.

How laughable. The things I longed for, Caylee could get effortlessly.

I wanted to question Jaxton about why he brought Caylee to our home.

But when I saw him smiling so gently at her, I swallowed all my words.

After all, among the three of us, I seemed more like the third wheel, as if I had no right to question him.