My husband doesn’t love me
Chapter 1
My ex, Ben, carried a torch for a dead girl.
Four years into our marriage, he decided to
“adopt” a younger version of her.
And wouldn’t you know it, I was the last person
on Earth to find out.
The day it all blew up, I was wearing the exact
same red dress as her.
Ben frowned at me, like I’d committed some
major fashion crime. “Red’s not really your
color, babe. You should go change.”
I didn’t change my brand–new dress.
Instead, I changed my husband, who apparently
didn’t like me in red.
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The girl next to Ben, this kid named Chloe,
pouted the second she saw I was wearing the
same dress.
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Ben leaned in, whispered something in her ear. The little thing turned around and walked away,
good as gold.
Then Ben weaved through the crowd, all
perfume and cocktail chatter, and stopped right
in front of me.
He gave me this look, like he was slightly annoyed. “Red’s not really your color, babe. You should go change.”
The whole table went silent. People started
glancing over, all sneaky–like. It was like the air
had turned to Jell–O.
Then, some twit snickered. “Oh, please. Talk
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I looked over at the voice. Ben’s cousin, Sarah.
Also, it turned out, the best friend of his dead
ex, the girl he never really got over.
Nobody bothered to tell me that he was still
hung up on someone else. Not when we got
engaged, not when we got hitched.
It wasn’t until I was about to pop, pregnant with
our son, Ethan, that I finally found out.
Four years into this charade, he gets himself a
younger version of his old flame. I was still last
to know.
I was still sitting there, not moving, not saying a
word, when Ben got a little more worked up.
“Babe? Are you gonna go change?”
My eyes drifted past the whole peanut gallery
to Ben.
Maybe it was one of those cutesy couple
things. But he was wearing a deep red tie, like a weird, silent shout–out to the color he was just dissing.
I stared at the dark red thing on his chest. And everything just went quiet.
Right before he was about to explode, I stood
up, pushed back my chair, and headed for the
exit.
Ben’s face softened a little. “Go change, and
come on back.”
I gave him a small smile, just a flicker. But I
didn’t say a single word.