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.

pictures when she wanted, sent her gifts I knew she’d appreciate. She never tried making more of a relationship between us, because I didn’t know how. I didn’t know there could be a

was a lone wolf

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

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

years, I did 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 pretended to like what she did and picked up the pieces I disliked the most to hang in my own house so she wouldn’t get disheartened if they don’t sell as

I was calculative. Logical.

a hurdle in my

1/3

society when my grandfather told me

12:33 Tue, Jun 4

Chapter 42

me marry

that I had to marry someone else

know, I girl I had no interest

ordinary, a misfit standing in the expensive

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,

I realised that day. She wasn’t a damsel She was determined to shine through the darkness of our marriage,

avoid her- business trips,

so easily, it baffled me. The worst part? She didn’t look like she was trying to. It was effortless to her, forming a bond with my parents,

had ever stood up to

mc.

forget thoughts of Lily, the girl I

frustrating till I cornered her in the

of my system, but the want for more never left. So I took the coward’s way out- left for my trip: without letting her know, but when I came back and saw her smiling in that bar with a man that wasn’t me. I lost the remaining

went through his mind about

my lap and do the most unspeakable, unholy things to her- all day, every

for an opportunity for a revenge, to do exactly