Chapter 3 - BEFORE MAREN
Nathan was not a villain when I married him.
People always want that answer after betrayal.
How did you not see?
As though love should contain forensic foresight.
We met five years earlier at a hospital fundraiser.
I was twenty-five.
He was thirty-two.
Lucio disliked him immediately.
That meant almost nothing.
Lucio disliked most men who looked at me twice.
Nathan was different because he did not become submissive around my brother.
He shook Lucio’s hand.
Held eye contact.
Then later told me:
“Your brother behaves like the room belongs to him.”
I laughed.
“It usually does.”
Nathan said:
“That sounds exhausting.”
It was.
He understood something about being close to power without wanting to become part of it.
At least then.
We married after eighteen months.
Prenup.
Separate inherited assets.
Separate premarital business interests.
Joint property treated normally.
No infidelity clause.
No provision where a cheating spouse loses everything.
Marriage was not a game show.
For four years, we were good.
Not perfect.
Good.
Nathan made coffee before I woke.
I corrected the way he loaded the dishwasher.
He hated my habit of leaving books open facedown.
I hated his socks.
We traveled.
Argued.
Made up.
Built routines.
Then pregnancy.
We had tried for nearly a year.
The positive test happened on a Tuesday morning.
Nathan sat on the bathroom floor and cried.
Real tears.
He called the baby:
“Bean.”
For three months.
I still had those memories.
That complicated anger.
May you like
Betrayal does not erase old tenderness.
It changes whether tenderness can be trusted again.
