HIS FIRST LOVE

|VENICE|

I stood frozen outside my husband's study, the plate of cake in my grasp nearly slipping off my fingers.

"Mhm." Soren groaned. It was strained, but loud enough that I could hear it through the small crack in the door.

Against my better judgment, I moved closer to the crack and peeked through.

His broad back is to me and his shirt seemed to be half open, one hand braced flat on the desk and his taut shoulders moving. His head hangs low. His breath comes out in short, rough pulls. Slowly I watched his elbow move, up and down, his head pushed back against the seat and as he turned slightly, I saw his lips parted.

He was touching himself.

In front of him, the monitor glows blue and a woman's face fills the screen, impossibly beautiful. Laughing at something off camera, chin tipped up.

Elizabeth.

"Liz..." He breathed into the silent night, his voice low, thick with desire he's never once felt for me.

The realization wrapped around my heart in a vice grip and I ripped my gaze away. It was our six year wedding anniversary and yet he was in here, her picture his oracle as he brought himself to pleasure.

A slow bitter smile stretched my lips. So this is why he never touches me. Every night he's probably here, looking at her, wishing he lived a different life.

Wishing he wasn't with me.

My scar pulled tight as I stepped away silently and my eyes caught my reflection in the mirror wall just outside his bedroom.

I was hard to look at. Yes, it wasn't something I could deny. But rage simmered, burned in my belly. I was his wife, the woman he was meant to be loyal to, the woman who sacrificed everything for him. I didn't deserve such disrespect.

There was a time I was just as beautiful, before the accident, before I had risked everything going into that burning building to save Soren, I was the most confident woman I knew.

Now I was nothing. I let my straight hair cover the scar, shame eating at my insides, forcing me to look away.

As I walked back to the kitchen with the uneaten plate of cake still in hand, I heard heavy footsteps behind me. His.

I stopped in my tracks when I heard him call out my name. I turned to find his gray eyes on me. Soren's beautiful eyes were emotionless yet there was a warm smile on his lips as he spotted me.

"Venice, hey." His deep voice called out softly, his gaze taking in every inch of my skin. They stopped on my scar and I instinctively reached my hand up to cover it.

"I was... just passing by." I explained quickly. I was a good distance away from his study, surely he wouldn't know that I heard him, right?

He stops right in front of me and he reaches out, brows furrowed in concern. His fingers grazed my scar gently, I barely felt it but my breath caught in my throat. "Is your scar hurting?" He cupped my face and leaned in closer. "Should I call the doctor?"

"I..." I shook my head and pulled out of his grasp. "I'm fine, no need to worry." The words burned as the left me, the image of him touching himself to the image of another woman was now ingrained in my memory.

He nods with a sigh, that smile still on his lips making a reluctant one form on mine.

"It's our anniversary today." He held my hand and brought it up to his lips, kissed it. And my heart broke even further from the action.

"Is that for me?" He gestured at the cake in my other hand.

"Yes."

He grins wider and takes it. "Chocolate, my favorite. Thank you, Venice." He doesn't let go. "I have something for you as well."

We both walk to our bedroom, and my eyes linger on the study door longer than it should've, a reminder of what I had witnessed.

Hanging in the center of the room was a beautiful red dress, a familiar piece from Padòn, an expensive brand that never made clothes that were my style. Yet, I had a wardrobe full of their dresses because Soren only ever got me their dresses for every anniversary, or holiday, or birthday.

"Do you like it?" he asked, watching my face for a reaction.

"It's beautiful." I forced the smile wider. He never noticed it didn't reach my eyes. He never looked that closely.

That night we lay in the same king sized bed, both of us at each end, a foot of space between us, cold as the tile in his study. I stared at the ceiling, too raw with emotions to fall asleep.

I thought about how I ended up here, in a one-sided, loveless marriage.

I remember Soren and Elizabeth had been high school sweethearts down to college, the kind of couple everyone knew would end up together. Then she left for Asia and ended it over the phone. He fell apart after that, drowning his nights in whiskey, showing up to things half-conscious and hollow-eyed.

I'd loved him quietly, from afar long before that, never expecting anything in return, but he was my most favorite person and I never imagined I would end up crossing paths with him but then I saw him at our graduation party, drunk, swaying with a glass in his hand and no one watching him closely enough.

But I did.

A fire started after that, and chaos ensued. While everybody panicked and ran out, I ran in without a second thought.

The terrible flames caught the side of my face before I got him through the door, leaving me disfigured and badly injured. The musical I was supposed to headline the next morning went to my understudy instead, and she became a star overnight in the role that was supposed to be mine. I never got another one.

Soren quit drinking after that. He married me out of guilt, gave me everything money could buy, and none of what I actually wanted, he's been gentle with me, the epitome of a perfect husband. But he's never touched me, not once in six years, and he'd never once taken me to a party, never introduced me to his friends, and now I know he never stopped loving her.

I turned my phone over in my hand. There was an email sat open from a theater in Italy, offering me a vocal coaching position. I'd already decided.

In thirty days I'd be gone, and this marriage could end when I left the country.

I would leave Soren and start a new life...end this miserable existence for both of us.

In the morning I heard him on the stairs, telling the housekeeper not to wait on dinner for him tonight. As soon as the front door shut behind him, my phone buzzed — my old vocal warm-up alarm, set years ago just to fill the hours before he came home. I turned it off without singing a note.

A friend request sat underneath the notification, from an account I didn't recognize. I accepted it out of habit more than curiosity, and scrolled to the newest post.

It was a video, uploaded the night before. It looked like a party, a large banner overhead that read; WELCOME HOME ELIZABETH.

My stomach dropped as I heard the excited chatter in the background and then she stepped through a doorway, her smile as bright as the string lights that were hung up. And beside her, was a laughing Soren, she was pressed up against him, holding his arm.