Novel & Cerita The Husband She Took For Granted

"Did you think I’d break my promise?” "No, not that. Just…" She bit her lip, searching for the words. "You still don’t trust me." Her shoulders stiffened. "That’s not what I meant." "Then say what you mean." She hesitated before looking at me. “Ive never had anyone care to keeptheir promise to me.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “I am not anyone, I'm your husband.” She held my gaze, searching for something in my expression.

*Anna* I take a few steps backward–and bump into one of Grandmother Trudy’s priceless vases. The stand tips, wobbles, and the vase teeters on the edge, but my quick, athletic husband reaches out a hand and catches it before it can slip and fall on the marble floor. “Thank you,” I stutter, moving away from the stand before I have another accident. “You’re so… fast.” My own husband, Grant, whom I’ve been married to for almost two years briefly glances in my direction, nods, and then walks around me to go down the hallway, giving me a wide berth–like maybe I have some kind of disease.

A husband showing up because his wife looked tired. A wife realizing she was disappointed whenever he left. Tiny things. Insignificant things. Until suddenly they weren't.

Of course, that would only happen under the pretext that the man giving the speech was not my husband. Philippa took over the microphone. With a catch in her throat, she began praising Jason for being her mentor in her career. She said the last time her father's company was in crisis, he was the one who pulled strings, mobilized connections, and raised emergency funds overnight. "Meeting a man like him is the greatest blessing in my life." A wave of nausea rose in my chest looking at their pretentious performance. They used my connections, killed my child, yet they were playing the sweet lovers without any regards of others.

The man who told me that was my way to learn to be a God damn better wife? “Husband?” I scoffed. With a surge of strength I didn’t know I had, I wrenched my arm out of his grip. “Yes, you are my husband on a piece of paper! But when have you ever been an actual husband to me?” Aaron stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language. “What the hell is ‘actual’? Does it even matter? Does it fucking matter? How do I treat you?” “Yes! It mattered!” I screamed, tears of frustration stinging my eyes. “Being a husband mattered, but you weren’t one! You were never fucking one. But that’s fine, because I don’t need it anymore. I don’t need you.”

He stood up sharply, his gaze piercing. “You don’t need to worry about your mother,” he said firmly. “And I do have the right to forbid you—because I’m your husband.” He sat back down, poured himself a glass of water, and took a slow sip. Those last words—I’m your husband—hit Isabella harder than she expected. Her heart gave a strange, uneasy flutter. ‘But… isn’t this marriage only temporary?’ she thought bitterly. Then why did those words sound so real? “But, Max… aren’t we—”

"He didn't even need to do much for you to agree to marry him. All he had to do was show off his clumsy cooking skills, and he had you completely wrapped around his finger. Do you really think he wanted to be a stay-at-home husband?" She unlocked her phone. The chat history was filled with the two of them mocking me. "I burned the fried eggs, but she was so touched that she started crying. How funny. "I came home late and didn't have time to cook. She said she'd just gotten her pay and would treat me to dinner. "This is my first time eating a chain-store pizza. How novel." There were countless messages like these. It was like I was nothing but a toy to help them pass the time.

Gritting my teeth, I pushed on, “What do you mean? He is in a coma, won't you take care of him? Isn't he, your husband?” She shrugged her shoulders, her arm twisting her hair into a loose ponytail, before choking it into a bonnet, with the words ‘luna’ etched on it. “I already told you, I don't care what happens to him. That was part of the arrangement when we got married. I am sure he can handle himself. And if he can't…” she shrugged again, not bothering to finish her sentence.

Now she just watched, and he just kept trying, and there was something in that small exchange that felt more like a marriage than any grand gesture had in years. "Hartwell called again," she said, after a while. His hands didn't stop moving, but something in his shoulders went carefully still, the way they did whenever this subject came up. She noticed it. She always noticed it now, the same way she noticed herself noticing, because six months ago that stillness would have been the opening act of an argument, him building a case for why she should stay, dressed up as concern for the family, for stability, for all the things a wife was supposed to want more than her own name on a door.

"I cared about her the way you care about a business partner you respect. I admired her intelligence. I valued her company at dinners neither of us wanted to attend. I was, by every measurable standard, a perfectly adequate husband, and I have spent three years understanding that adequate was the exact wrong thing to have been." "What happened to her?" "A car accident. Two years into the marriage. She was driving back from her sister's early, alone, in weather she shouldn't have been out in, because I'd told her that morning I couldn't make the dinner I'd promised to attend with her family, and she'd said it was fine, and I'd believed her, because it was easier than staying home and finding