His Wife (A Contract Marriage Story) by Heer Mangtani

Chapter 42

GABRIEL

I didn’t believe in love.

I wasn’t an arrogant man who thought love didn’t exist, because had seen it firsthand, how love brings the most powerf

men to their knees.

I just

didn’t believe love was made for me.

Love was a weakness, a distraction, a responsibility, a chore.

I loved. I loved my parents and I loved my grandparents in the way every child loves their provider, because of a sense of mediocre comfort they provided. My brother, who was younger to me and didn’t provide me with anything, I loved him. too, by sense of familiarity and looked at him as someone I had to provide for.

That’s what love had always been to me- familiarity and a relationship of providing, either you’re provided for, or you provide for someone.

That’s why I never had any relationships growing up. I slept around, but neither did I make promises, nor did I believe in any girl’s false ones,

And then, Lily came. She was a girl like anyone else- pretty eyes blonde hair, and a body she worked hard to maintain. 1 didn’t intend to keep her around, she just never left. She clung around, letting me do my own thing, insisting all she wanted was friendship.

I didn’t do friendships. I had a group of boys 1 considered brothers, and once that disintegrated, my brother was really the only friend 1 had until he chose a path I couldn’t follow or stop him from. The sense of failing him led me to find comfort in Lily.

She was familiar by then.

Comfort and familiarity- the two things I associated love by.

to fancy restaurants she liked, posed with her for pictures when she wanted, sent her gifts I knew she’d appreciate. She never tried making more of a relationship between us, because

was a lone

really, despite what Zach and Anna, my parents and grandparents think. Yes, we didn’t have any passionate and obsessive feelings between us, because those weren’t needed- for either of us. We had an arrangement that worked perfectly where she let me be as emotionally distant as I liked as long as I provided for her

didn’t mean I didn’t care for her. I would probably not lose sleep if she was sick, but if she was in danger somewhere or by someone, I would shield

what was expected of me. I bought a ring that I remembered she mentioned she really liked at her father’s company- not knowing Emerald was Her birthstone, really. I didn’t even know the green stone in the middle was an emerald. I was never an appreciator of art or jewellery or anything in between. I know I was supposed to be, with my mom being a painter, but I wasn’t.

I was calculative. Logical.

I saw it a hurdle in my plan to

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into the norms of the society when my grandfather told me he wouldn’t

12:33 Tue, Jun 4

Chapter 42

me marry

and that I had to marry someone else

girl I didn’t know, I girl I had no interest

in the expensive wedding gown and

provide for willingly. And she was a damsel; holding in tears under a facade of a miserable smile when I first saw her. Of course I wanted her as far away from me as possible, even at the

wasn’t a damsel She was determined to shine through the darkness of our marriage, standing out like the freckles

her- business trips, late nights

didn’t look like she was trying to. It was effortless to her, forming a bond with my parents, my grandparents, playing the role

had ever

mc.

frustrated how easy it was for my mind to forget thoughts of Lily, the girl I had promised to marry at

I cornered her

trip: without letting her know, but when I came back and saw her smiling in that bar with a

kill Arthur for every wrong thought that went through his mind about my wife. I

make her sit on my lap and do the

opportunity for a revenge, to do exactly what I had done to him, I realised what I wanted to