Second Choice: Wife by contract

People say I’m lucky like it’s a finished sentence.

Like luck is something that happens and stays.

Sometimes I nod when they say it. Sometimes I even smile, because it’s easier than explaining that luck can still feel lonely. That you can sleep beside a man and still feel like you’re borrowing space that doesn’t belong to you.

Ethan Cole is my husband.

That still feels strange to say. Heavy. Like a coat I didn’t try on properly before buying.

He’s kind, in the way men are kind when they don’t mean to hurt you. He remembers birthdays. Pays bills on time. Touches my lower back in public like he’s supposed to. At night, though, he turns away from me in his sleep. Or maybe he was never really facing me to begin with.

I tell myself not to overthink it. I’ve always been good at that. Making excuses. Adjusting. Shrinking my expectations until they fit the room.

This marriage wasn’t supposed to be romantic anyway.

There was paperwork. Clear terms. A mutual understanding that love wasn’t part of the deal. I agreed to it with my eyes open. I think. Some days I’m not so sure. Some days I wonder if I saw what I wanted to see.

I don’t blame him. I try not to. It feels childish to want more from someone who never promised it. But wanting isn’t something you can switch off just because it’s inconvenient.

Tonight, he came home later than usual.

I heard his voice before I saw him. That should’ve been my first sign. His voice sounded… different. Softer. Like he’d taken something off before speaking. I paused halfway down the stairs, one hand still on the railing, my foot hovering like I was deciding whether to step or retreat.

I wish I had turned back.

“I never stopped loving you.”

The words landed strangely. Not loud. Not dramatic. Almost careful. Like he was afraid of breaking something fragile.

I felt my chest tighten before my mind caught up.

For a second, I told myself he was talking to me. Which was stupid, because he never sounds like that with me. And also because I wasn’t in the room.

I didn’t need to hear her voice to know who it was.

Her name has always lived quietly between us. Unspoken, but present. Like a third chair at the table no one acknowledges. The woman before me. The woman after me. The woman I was never meant to replace.

I stood there, listening. My fingers curled around the railing so tightly it hurt, and I welcomed the pain because it gave me something to focus on. Something solid.

He kept talking. Low. Intimate. Saying things I’d never heard him say out loud. Apologizing. Explaining. Sounding… human.

I waited for the anger to come. The screaming. The tears. But none of that happened.

What I felt instead was this slow, sinking realization. Like finally admitting something I’d known for a long time but didn’t want to say because saying it would make it real.

I was never the love story.

I was the solution. The arrangement. The woman who made life easier.

And God, part of me still wanted to walk down those stairs. To interrupt. To remind him I existed. To ask him why I wasn’t enough. Why I tried so hard and still came second.

Another part of me felt embarrassed for even wanting that.

I backed away quietly. My steps were careful, controlled. Like if I moved too fast, something inside me would crack open and spill everywhere.

In the bedroom, I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at my hands. They were shaking. I pressed them together and waited for them to stop. I told myself to breathe. In. Out. Like that could fix it.

I wondered how long this had been true.

I wondered if it ever hadn’t been.

When Ethan eventually came upstairs, I was already lying down, facing the wall. I didn’t turn. I didn’t ask where he’d been. I didn’t ask who he was talking to. I didn’t trust my voice not to give me away.

He slid into bed beside me, close enough that I could feel his warmth. Familiar. Almost comforting. Almost cruel.

His hand hovered near my back. Didn’t touch.

I stared into the dark and realized something quietly terrifying.

I didn’t know whether I wanted him to reach for me…

or if I was finally ready for him not to.