05
He still thought I was throwing a tantrum.
It was a familiar question.
After he’d cheated on me, every time I’d
found out, every time I’d cried, he’d look at
me with such confusion and cold indifference,
and ask, “All these years, all the money, all
the company stock is in your name. Those
く
women are just a bit of fun, they’re not a
threat to you, you’re still my wife, Mrs.
Walker.
“You can have anything you want, anything
you desire, and there are all these other
women who struggle to make ends meet and
couldn’t afford a single ring that you can buy.
Chloe, what’s your deal? What else do you
want?”
Yeah, what else did I want? A life of luxury.
A life many would envy.
Even my father, after beating the crap out of
Liam, gently advised me to forget about it,
just pretend it didn’t happen, and just get
along, that love and affection were nothing
compared to material comfort.
<
I understood the logic.
But I was still bitter. Bitter that a childhood
love, a partnership built together, had turned
into a sham, a false paradise. Bitter that we had gone from being lovers to enemies.
Love begets hate, and hate wishes death, or
so they say. I never believed it until those
darkest days.
“Liam, you probably won’t believe it, but
there was a time I wanted to kill you, then kill
myself.”
I expected him to be shocked, maybe
horrified. Instead he asked, “Then why didn’t
you?”
I was stunned by that question, but laughed
<
softly. “Because that night, you called me
‘Sweetheart‘.
