Chapter 3

My life with Ethan was built on a foundation of gratitude and obligation.

After my parents died in a car crash when I was ten, his family took me in. They were my parents' closest friends. I grew up in their house, a quiet shadow trailing after their brilliant, popular son.

Ethan was a star. He was smart, athletic, and everyone loved him. Especially Chloe. They were the golden couple of our high school, and later, of their college. I watched them from the sidelines, my heart aching with a silent, hopeless crush.

He was never cruel to me, just... indifferent. I was the girl who lived in his house, the one his mom made him give rides to school. When Chloe was around, I barely existed for him. He would look right through me, his eyes already searching the crowd for her. It was a special kind of pain, to be invisible to the one person you saw so clearly.

Then, in their senior year of college, they had a massive fight and broke up.

I remember feeling a terrible, secret thrill. A tiny spark of hope lit up in the dark corner of my heart where I had hidden my feelings for him. Maybe now, he would finally see me.

But the real turning point came a few years later. Ethan' s grandmother, the matriarch of the family and the person I was closest to, got sick. On her deathbed, she grabbed my hand and Ethan' s hand and made us promise we would get married.

"You' re good for him, Ava," she had whispered, her voice weak. "You' ll ground him. And he' ll take care of you."

Ethan, wracked with grief and a sense of duty, agreed. I did too. How could I say no to the woman who had been more of a mother to me than anyone?

So we got married. It wasn't a marriage born of passion, but of circumstance and a dying wish. It was, for all intents and purposes, a contract.

Still, I was a fool. I was young and naive, and I truly believed that I could make him love me. I poured all my energy into being the perfect wife. I kept our house immaculate, I supported his career, I learned to cook all his favorite foods. I tried to build a real home on a faulty foundation, hoping my love would be strong enough to hold it all together.

And for a little while, it seemed to work.

The news that Chloe had gotten married to some wealthy heir overseas was a turning point. It was like a cloud that had been hanging over Ethan finally lifted. He started to relax around me. He started to see me.

We had two good years. He started acting like a real husband. He' d bring me flowers, he' d hold my hand when we walked down the street, he' d brag about my architectural designs to his friends. He was attentive, he was kind, he was everything I had ever dreamed he would be.

I let myself believe it was real. I let myself fall completely in love with the idea that we had finally made it. We were happy.

Then Chloe got divorced. And she came back.

And the beautiful house of cards I had so carefully built came crashing down around me.