CHAPTER ONE

@henrysworld: I can't stop watching that interview. The way he talked about his wife 😭 she is SO lucky

@fanforlife_: Henry Brown is literally the perfect husband. Kind, successful, gorgeous, and romantic. Some women have all the luck in the world. Damn!

@mrs_brown_wannabe: whoever she is, she better know what she has and cherish it. I would die to be in her position. 

@realfan04: The way he smiled while mentioning her name?? That man is IN LOVE. If my man doesn’t smile like that when calling my name, I won’t marry him.

@sunflowergirl22: his wife gets to wake up next to his beautiful face every morning. God is not fair 😩

I put my phone face down on the cold marble counter. The kitchen smelled like the fried rice I had cooked for one. Again. Henry had texted at 7 pm. His text read: I’ll be late; don't wait for me. It was the same message, word for word, that he had sent to me for the last four days. At least he now sends messages. Before, he barely sent me messages; he just came and went as he liked. We barely talk at home, but most of the time when he is at home, he talks on the phone with colleagues and friends for hours.

I clicked on the interview on my laptop. He won a fan-voting award two days ago, and he had a live interview today. In the interview, he thanked his fans, colleagues, friends, and family, and then he said, “I want to especially thank my wife for being there for me. They say behind every successful man, there is a successful woman, and I believe my wife, Quinn, is that backbone holding me up.” Henry said this while blushing. It is really hard to tell whether it was real or fake. He is a great actor, so yes, it could be faked, but it looked too real, and it confused me for a moment.

I really needed to stop watching his interviews. The man on the screen and the man who once shared a bed with me were somehow the same person, and I still couldn't make sense of it. 

On screen, Henry laughed warmly at something the host said. “I love her so much, and I'd do anything to protect her,” he said when the host asked if his fans supported his marriage.

That was enough pretence for one night. I closed the laptop and stood in my thoughts.

We met in our second year at university. He was the guy almost everyone had a crush on. I noticed him like everyone else. The difference was that he noticed me too. He had warm brown eyes, fair skin that caught the sunlight, and soft brown hair with hints of gold whenever the light hit it. He was tall, with an easy smile that made people feel comfortable around him. There was nothing overly dramatic about his features, yet somehow everything about him stood out. He was perfect.

For two years, we dated. I felt like the luckiest girl alive. I thought I knew him. Then, fame came. He got the opportunity to release a song, and in less than 3 months, he got a deal to act in a TV show. One show upon another came. His face was already on billboards, and his name was on every social media conversation. Suddenly, Henry belonged to the world, and I became the girl watching millions of strangers fall in love with the performance he put on for cameras.

We ended up getting married because I pushed for it. My mom helped me fight for it because I told her how scared I was of losing Henry to the world. My mom successfully convinced his family, and we had a secret family wedding. It wasn't my dream, though. I had dreamt of a very grand wedding, but Henry was at the peak of his career, so we couldn’t do much. My mother-in-law promised me that I would have a bigger wedding when I had my first child.

Now, I live in a beautiful apartment that has never felt like home, cooking fried rice for one on a Tuesday night, reading comments from grown-up women who would trade their whole lives to be me. If only they knew what being me actually felt like.

My phone buzzed against the counter. It was a text from Henry. “Traffic is horrible. Might spend the night at a nearby hotel,” his text read.

I turned off the light to go to bed. I tried to sleep. For a while, I wondered what made him change towards me, from when we were dating to after we got married. After a few minutes of still trying to figure things out, I heard a sound from the living room. I rushed out in silence to check what it was when I saw a figure standing in the dark.

My whole body went still.