The Lie He Married

Chapter One

In our second year of marriage, I finally learned where my husband spent every Valentine’s Day.

February fourteenth was his first love’s death day, he went to her grave.

Everyone knew, except me.

I asked why he kept it from me.
He said, “She is gone, I just went to see her, can you not make a scene?”
“My future is with you, I only keep a small corner of my heart for her.”

He had even deleted the offer from my dream school behind my back, just so I would live out his dead girlfriend’s dream.

Later, when he realized I had fallen for someone else, he lost it. I was done humoring him. “Don’t start,” I said. “I am only doing what you did, saving a quiet place in my heart for someone I like.”

Valentine’s Day.

Adrian Cole leaned against a headstone, grief carved into his face. His palm rested on the photo set into the stone, his lips moving.

I stepped closer and heard him, voice shaking. “Maya, this is the seventh Valentine’s I’ve spent with you.”

“Work has been busy lately, I haven’t come as often, don’t be mad.”

“I promised you I would only spend Valentine’s with you.”

“I kept my word.”

He pressed his forehead to the photo, crying without caring who saw.

“I miss you so much, Maya.”

“If I hadn’t agreed to go out with you that night, if there hadn’t been that accident, would we be married by now? Maybe we’d even have a kid.”

“I brought you a surprise this time.”

“I made your dream come true.”

“You always wanted to be a designer at Ziki Fashion, now Lena Wilde is, and she even won the Newcomer Award.”

“Look, this is the trophy, the one you always wanted.”

He held it up and gave it a little shake in front of the grave.

“When I look at her, I see you.”

“She wanted to switch majors and apply for grad school in the U.K., she thought she wasn’t admitted, but I deleted her offer.”

“How could she change her major? If she changed, how would she keep chasing your dream?”

“But that isn’t important anymore, I will make it up to her.”

I stood there frozen, listening to the truth of my rejection fall out of his mouth like nothing.

The sky flipped. My knees almost gave out.

I had stayed up night after night, begged professors for recommendations, lived in the library until closing.

I wrote and rewrote my statement, then sent off my application with shaking hands.

I checked my email over and over, heart pounding, hoping for good news each time.

He had stood behind me, telling me I would be fine, that he would wait for me to come back with a degree.

He even said he hated seeing me so anxious and offered to manage my inbox. “Lena, it hurts to watch you spiral, give me the login, I’ll tell you the second something comes in.”

Whenever I asked, he smiled and soothed me. “Nothing yet, don’t worry, if there’s any news I’ll tell you right away.”

I waited and waited until everything was settled and there was still nothing.

I sat on the curb in defeat. He held me and said, “It’s okay, Lena is brilliant, you’ll shine anywhere.”

“There are a thousand ways to make it. Maybe the universe wants you to stay in your field. If that school didn’t take you, that’s their loss.”

With his pep talks and my dad’s push, I gave up changing majors and walked into the design world with a knot in my stomach. I joined Ziki Fashion.

But the truth was brutal. He wrecked me. He deleted my offer.

He was the so-called universe.

He ruined my path, then used the work I built with sleepless nights and stacks of drafts to comfort a dead woman.

In his eyes, I existed to finish a ghost’s dream.

Whatever calm I had left snapped. It felt like the ground split.

Everything I thought I knew fell apart in an instant.

Memories crashed over me. I could hardly breathe.

The love that went from campus to wedding turned into a colossal joke, and I was the punchline.

I had even pictured where our bodies would be buried.

Cold spread through me. I strode to the headstone, yanked Adrian to his feet, and slapped him before he could blink.

My hands shook. I was gasping like I had no air.

I jabbed a finger at the photo on the stone and screamed, “Adrian Cole, this is the overtime you talked about?”

“Overtime in a cemetery, what exactly are you working on?”

Chapter Two

He froze, panic written all over his face. “Lena, what are you doing here? How did you get here?”

I scrubbed at my tears. My eyes burned, but not as much as my chest did. Every breath felt like needles.

“I got here just fine.” I shook. “If I hadn’t come, I’d never know what you did to me.”

“That offer was the one I bled for. Do you know how long I waited? How hard I worked? And you just deleted it.”

“What am I to you, a puppet to finish a dead woman’s dream?”

“You’ve been lying to me since day one.”

“You never spent holidays with me.”

“You said Valentine’s is a foreign thing and we should skip it, that we’d celebrate Qixi instead.”

“Fine, I went with it.”

“And the truth? You spent it with someone else.”

“Seven years.”

“I knew you for four, we’ve been married two. From the moment I met you, you were already spending every Valentine’s with another woman.”

“I was just a tool to you.”

“My dream was a rung for you to step on.”

I almost laughed at how foolish I had been. Love had eaten my brain.

I took him at his word and gave him my heart. He handed me garbage in return.

I ran to him with all my joy, while he was wondering if that woman were alive whether they would be married by now, whether they’d have a child.

He even cut off my future.

So I was the consolation prize he settled for. A walking utility.

To hell with settling. To hell with being a prop.

When I thought about how neatly he had planned it from the first message he sent me, a dark thought flashed through me. I wanted to put a blade through Adrian and let the stone drink his blood.

I hurled my bag and umbrella at him. I did not care how I looked. Reason had left the scene.

I hated him so much I wanted him gone. If he missed her that badly, he could go keep her company.

Why chase me at all?

What did I do to deserve this?

He brought a dead woman to pick my bones clean and stamp on everything I worked for.

He clenched his fists and stood there like a statue while I raged.
“Lena, hit me, curse me, I’ll wait until you calm down and then I’ll explain.”

“Explain what.”

I should have been studying the field I loved. I should have been learning under the mentor of my dreams. All of it was gone.

Somewhere I could not see, his finger tapped delete and erased my life.

I flung my last bag at him and shoved him hard.

He staggered and hit the headstone. His watch scraped across the girl’s photo.

His face changed. He looked up and glared at me. “Are you out of your mind?”

He shoved me. I went down and slammed into the marble at my side.

A cry ripped out of me. The sharp edge split my palm and blood slicked my hand.

Drops spattered onto the ground.

Tears blurred everything. Pain kept my nerves firing.

He did not look at me. He smoothed the photo on the stone with careful fingers, as gentle as if it were skin.

He cleared the scattered things from the base, even the ring I had thrown, and set the flowers straight.

The girl in the picture wore a summer dress and a bright smile, sunlit and weightless.

His eyes were red as he stared at her. “Maya, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please forgive me.”

He kept stroking the photo, like a child caught doing wrong, whispering the same apology.

He begged a silence that would never answer.

He was insane.

I let out a thin, bitter laugh. I held my bleeding hand and found my phone in the mess. I hit record.

I sent the video to his family thread and to his guys’ group, the ones called [One Big Happy Family] and [Deeply in Love].

Those names looked more and more like a slap.

Everyone had known there was someone else in his heart. Everyone but me.

I was the fool they kept in the dark.

They tossed me any excuse and I bought it. How easy was I to fool.

Year after year on February fourteenth they covered for him. A reunion with the guys. His parents not feeling well. A last-minute work emergency.

Four straight years. I could almost applaud their teamwork.

Thinking of their faces made me want to burn it all down.

I had trusted them. I had trusted Adrian.

He did not value my trust or my love. He trampled them.

He fed me cheap lies.

They were all complicit, like executioners who killed my first love together.

He lay beside me night after night.

I thought we were the closest two people on earth. He drove the deepest knife.

He knew I hated lies and still erased my offer without blinking.

In the middle of the night, was he never afraid he would talk in his sleep and I would hear? Never thought I might finally snap?

I would not look at him again. He made me sick.

I had poured everything warm and honest into him. The thought made me feel wild. I did not want to see him for the rest of my life.

I left him one word and walked away.
“Divorce.”

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