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His nostrils flare and his hands fist at his sides. “We are.”
We are.
We’re married.
He’s my husband. And I’m his wife.
And not for the first time today, ever since I found out, I think…
I think we’re a family.
A family.
Something that I always wanted. Something that he always wanted.
But not like this, right?
Not by lying and deceiving and tricking.
Breathing in deep, I ask, “Since when?”
His jaw tics for a second before he replies, “Since the day I asked you to sign the insurance papers.”
I frown, thinking back to the day he came to me with the papers.
I do remember it was after dinner and he came to me looking all grumpy and impatient. I didn’t mind though; I was happy and nothing could dim my happiness. I was on cloud nine, thinking that all my dreams had come true. Not only that, but the guy I chose to make my dreams with was so responsible, thinking about the future, taking care of things.
And well, he was.
Just not the way I thought.
I shake my head. “But they were insurance papers. I… I saw them and —”
“They were,” he tells me, his eyes flicking back and forth between mine, probably trying to read me. “But there was something else in there too. In the stack that I gave you.”
“But I can’t believe that I didn’t —”
“You were busy with your list.”
Ah, okay.
My grocery list. Something that I forgot about.
“And you knew how I love making those lists,” I say.
“Yes.”
“So you picked that moment deliberately.”
He doesn’t respond but he doesn’t have to. I get it.
“Like you picked that window today. Deliberately,” I keep going.
Again, no response other than the tightening of his jaw. But again, I get it.
“Why?” I ask then.
He exhales a breath like he doesn’t want to say. But he does. “I saw something on your phone.”
“What?”
Again, it looks like he doesn’t want to answer me but he speaks. “The day you told me you were pregnant, I… Your phone was on the nightstand. And while you were in the shower, I saw your text messages. With him.”
By now we all know who he is. And how he — my husband; God, my husband — reacts whenever he comes up in any conversation, so I don’t waste my time appeasing him or questioning him.
I simply ask, “And?”
At this, he exhales so sharply that his nostrils flare; his fists twitch at his sides. Actually his entire frame twitches. Then, “And what do you think? I got jealous.”
“You got jealous.”
“Yes.”
“Even after I told you that you shouldn’t. Even after I made you promise —”
His hands come up and grip the bars tightly. “Well, you can’t blame me, can you? Apparently I had something to be jealous about. Because he wasn’t just a family friend. He was your fucking fiancé.”
Now my exhales are sharp and loud.
My heart is racing and racing in my chest.
And I can’t believe it but despite my immense anger at him, I still feel bad that I twisted the truth. That I deliberately used the words in a way that would deceive him.
That I did anything at all to hurt him.
I wave those thoughts away though.
I’m not here to feel sorry for him.
“So you married me because you got jealous.”
God, it sounds so childish. So immature.
So fucked up and twisted.
That you could marry someone just because you got jealous and angry and…
I take a deep breath before I explode.
Before I go up to him and start attacking him, beating on his chest, smacking his face. Scratching his skin, drawing blood.
All because even though I’m mad at him about how he lied to me and deceived me for all these weeks, I’m waiting.
I’m still waiting for him to deny it.
For him to tell me that no, he married me because he loved me.
Because he couldn’t live without me and he didn’t know what else to do.
He didn’t know how else to make it happen other than breaking laws and forgoing morals.
Because I love him, don’t I?
I’m his Lovelorn Firefly and I crave him with every breath that I take.
I crave him in all his toxic, fucked-up glory.
My Beautiful Thorn.
When I know that no answer is forthcoming — no answer is needed anyway though because yes, he did trick me into marrying him because he was jealous, I ask, “Why, so I didn’t run off to him and leave you?”
“No,” he bursts out, vehemently, with all the conviction in the world. “Not because of that. That was never my intention.”
“So what was your intention, Ledger?” I ask, sarcastically.
I watch his fists flex around the bars, his knuckles going white, the veins of his forearms standing up. I watch as he grinds his jaw and his eyes narrow as he replies, “To not fucking kill him.”
“What?”
If I thought he was flexing his grip on the bars before, then I was wrong. He’s flexing his grip now and he’s doing it ten times harder. He’s doing it with the purpose of forcing them apart. He’s doing it with the purpose of busting through them and getting to me.
