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.

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 relationship built by connection,

lone wolf by

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

would probably not lose sleep if she was sick, but if she was in danger somewhere or by someone, I would shield her. Like I said, I provided. Protection, safety, comfort, money,

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

I was calculative. Logical.

is why I saw it a hurdle in

1/3

of the society when

12:33 Tue, Jun 4

Chapter 42

me marry

that I had to marry someone

I girl I

in the expensive

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 end of the hallway on the other side wasn’t far enough until I walked to her

determined to shine through the darkness of our marriage, standing out like the freckles on her face. Hence, her nickname. Freckles. They

everything to avoid her- business trips, late nights at

trying to. It was effortless to her, forming a bond with my parents, my grandparents, playing

had ever stood up

mc.

to forget thoughts of Lily, the girl I had promised to marry

was frustrating till I cornered her in

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

kill Arthur for every wrong thought that went through his mind about

sit on my lap and do the most unspeakable, unholy things

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