I Agreed My Husband Belonged With His Ex

"If she hadn't left back then, do you really think you'd have had a shot at marrying me?" Marshall said it the day we fought, his expression cold.

After that, when Brianna got sick and came to him, I stopped being jealous. When the rumors about the two of them started going around, I even gossiped along with my coworkers.

A coworker smiled and said, "Mr. Hargrove and Ms.

Sutton really are perfect together." I nodded, and nodded again, and I didn't explain that I was the one who was actually Marshall Hargrove's wife.

Then I turned around and saw him standing behind me, the smile on his face fading, little by little. Chapter 1 Marshall and I had reached the breaking point.

Brianna called Marshall. Marshall and I had the same phone, same model, same color. We both used clear cases and the default ringtone. It rang, and I picked it up without thinking.

A woman's voice came through, light and soft, and only then did I realize I'd answered the wrong phone.

I said one thing. "Hold on." Marshall came out of the study, and I held the phone out to him. "It's Brianna." He took it.

His brows drew together, just slightly, before he could stop himself. I knew he didn't want me to hear the call.

I left the room on my own, and I couldn't be bothered to hear what he said to Brianna. When I came back out, I was getting ready to leave for work. Marshall's eyes settled on me.

His lips parted. "That was Brianna. She's in the hospital. Surgery today." I looked at him and nodded. Marshall gave a small laugh, careless about it. "Babe.

You're not jealous anymore?" I huffed out a laugh. My voice came out level. "Why would I be jealous?" Marshall's expression visibly faltered.

I picked up my bag and headed for the door, and I even remembered to give him a thoughtful reminder on the way out. "Shouldn't you be going?" I went down to the parking garage and drove to the hospital.

I hadn't expected Brianna to be at our hospital. She was a dancer. After she stepped away from the stage, she'd become a social media influencer and a model.

Once she was admitted, plenty of the doctors and nurses recognized her. So now I'd be running into her at work, too. There's no dodging the one person you'd rather never see.

Half an hour later, Marshall turned up in Brianna's room as well. At lunch break, the nurses were standing around murmuring to each other.

As I passed, a few of them called me over. "Dr. Odom. Dr. Odom." "Did you see Brianna Sutton? The one in the private suite?" "She looks exactly like she does in her videos.

She's gorgeous." She was. Brianna really was beautiful. She was thin, fineboned, with very fair skin. I went to the cafeteria for lunch.

Marshall texted me. "I'll pick you up when you get off tonight. We can go home together." I turned him down without a second's hesitation. "No need.

I'm working late." I didn't want to become the thing my coworkers gossiped about. I put my phone away and went back to my office to work.

I got through the day's work and all my patients. I told Mrs. Swann not to make dinner for me. I ate out first, then took my time getting home.

Even being alone with Marshall, even sitting down to a meal with him, had become hard.

It started the day he lied and told me he was away on business in Dallas, when he was really at Brianna's performance. From then on, the two of us were on a countdown.

Marshall was in Dallas on business, and a storm broke over Chicago. My mother called. "Millie, Grandma's not going to make it." I called Marshall. He didn't pick up.

Every flight that night was canceled. The airport shut down. I couldn't get a car, and there was no way at all to get there that night.

Once she heard about the rain in Chicago, my mother called again.

She was fighting hard to keep the tears out of her voice. "Millie, is it raining hard where you are?" Chapter 2 "The rain's too heavy," my mother said. "Don't come home yet.

Wait until it stops, and come back with Marshall. Grandma has something she wants to say to the two of you." The next day, the rain in Chicago stopped. Marshall called me back.

His tone was cool and even, with almost nothing moving in it. "I'm still in Dallas on business. What is it?" He was in Dallas. He couldn't get back either.

I got a ticket on the earliest flight to Savannah. The moment I landed, I went straight to the hospital there. Grandma really was slipping away, and I got to see her one last time.

She looked past me. Her voice was low and thin, with almost no strength left in it. I leaned in close.

She asked me, "Where's Marshall?" I held her hand and held back the tears. "Grandma, he's away on business.

He can't get here." The one thing in that room that didn't match the grief was the television mounted on the wall. On the screen, an entertainment news segment was playing.

The anchor's voice was crisp and perfectly enunciated. "Today, Marshall Hargrove, heir apparent to Hargrove Group, was seen outside the Corbin Theater in Chicago.

Marshall Hargrove and dancer Brianna Sutton are said to have shared an enviable college romance." "This dance production is sponsored by Hargrove Group." … The sound coming out of that television was unbearable.

Grandma's eyes opened wide, and she looked at me. She gripped my hand hard, and tears ran down her cheeks and dropped onto it. Burning. Scalding. She was crying.

Her voice came out hoarse. "Millie, I'm the one who owes you an apology." I knew what she meant by that apology. She thought she had wronged me by marrying me off to Marshall.

That wasn't it at all. I liked Marshall. That was the only reason I'd been willing to marry him. After she finished saying it, her pupils contracted, and then her eyes closed.

My own heartbeat stalled. Beside her the ventilator's readings swung hard, then leveled off. Grandma was gone. The next day, Marshall rushed down. So did his parents.

His grandfather and grandmother were too old to make the trip. Grandma's funeral was over quickly. At the burial, the gray cloud cover broke apart.

The sky opened, and a shaft of light came through. We got through the funeral. My head was still fogged over.

I never brought it up in Savannah, that Marshall had lied to me about a business trip the night Grandma died. Back in Chicago. I slept until I'd lost all track of day and night.

Then I woke up and went back to my ordinary life. As if none of it had ever happened. They say losing someone you love isn't a downpour.

It's a dampness that stays with you the rest of your life. After Grandma died, I never once broke down sobbing.

It was only that on some ordinary day, out of nowhere, I'd think of her, and then I'd cry. That day, Brianna called Marshall. "Marshall, I'm sorry.

I know it's late to be bothering you. My grandmother's sick, and I wanted to ask whether you know any doctors in that field." Marshall walked out onto the balcony.

I hadn't fallen asleep yet. I could hear the two of them talking. Marshall changed his clothes and went out. Brianna's grandmother wasn't at our hospital. But word still reached me.

Marshall had gotten a senior cardiovascular specialist to operate on her. It went around our hospital. "A friend of mine from college is over at Delmont Memorial. Mr.

Hargrove donated a whole set of new equipment to them, and that's the only reason he got Dr. Stiles to take the case. And you have to understand, Dr.

Stiles never makes an exception for connections." "Is it Mr. Hargrove's grandmother having the surgery?" "No.

It's his exgirlfriend's grandmother." They exchanged looks and grinned, tongues clicking. Chapter 3 "So Mr.

Hargrove is still carrying a torch for his ex," someone said. "Could be." "God, I'm jealous.

When is our hospital ever going to get new equipment?" I was over at Delmont Memorial for a joint case conference between the hospitals, and I walked past cardiology.

I saw Marshall. Marshall, who held himself so far above everyone, could take care of a person after all. He was sitting at the bedside of an elderly woman.

Head down, peeling an apple with a paring knife and cutting it into pieces. I stood outside the door for a long time.

Marshall had never played the devoted grandson like this when my own grandmother was sick and in the hospital, before she died. We'd been married three years.

He had rarely even come back to Savannah with me. When I got home, Marshall was there. I asked him. "Marshall, did you go see Brianna?" He stopped where he was and looked at me.

I kept going. "And you're taking care of Brianna's grandmother, too?" My tone was mocking. "Who knew you had a taste for playing somebody else's grandson and waiting on her hand and foot." Marshall's brow tightened. "Emilia, what exactly are you trying to say?" Before she died, Grandma had wanted to see Marshall, to say something to him herself. "Brianna is your exgirlfriend." "You're taking care of her family with no sense of where the line is.

Did you ever think about how I'd feel?" The corner of Marshall's mouth pulled up, and a low, cold scoff escaped him. "When your family worked their angles to get you married to me, did anyone think about how I'd feel?" I went blank for a second. "Marshall, neither I nor my family ever pulled a thing on you." That faint smile of his had a sneer in it. "Emilia, you know perfectly well whether you did." Marshall looked at me, his eyelids lowering, his expression cold. "You ought to know by now.

The person I wanted to marry was never you." "If she hadn't left back then, do you really think you'd have had a shot at marrying me?" Something clamped down in my chest. "Marshall, that's what you actually think, isn't it?" He gave me a sidelong look. "Emilia, don't start." "If all you wanted was to marry me, then you got what you wanted." "You don't have to keep using what two old people owed each other a generation ago to hold me hostage." "Taking care of you and your family.

I can't do it." His words hit me square in the chest. It was the kind of hurt that goes on and on with no end to it.

He said them so lightly, and they landed on me with all their weight. I pulled in a hard breath, and the cold came pouring back down into me.

My eyes stung and swelled, and the only way to keep from making a sound was to hold my breath as hard as I could. Brianna's grandmother was discharged.

And Marshall went to pick her up himself. I thought about my grandmother, getting thinner and thinner in her hospital bed.

The whole time she was in the hospital, Marshall showed up once. He blamed her. Decades ago, my grandmother's husband and Marshall's grandfather met in Vietnam.

My grandmother's husband saved his life, and never made it home himself. Back then the two families were worlds apart, and both of them moved. And they lost touch.

It was only in recent years that my grandmother and his grandmother found each other again. The first time I met Marshall, it wasn't because our families introduced us.

It was at a hospital fundraising gala, during my internship, before I graduated. One of the guests nearly got his hands where they didn't belong.

Marshall stepped in without making anything of it. He walked me out of the ballroom. He had a strong brow and a clean, hard jawline.

Something about him was spare and refined, and expensive. He said, "Don't come to events like this again. Be careful.

Don't let anyone take you in." I let out a breath and thanked him. "Um, thank you.

Although you seem a little drunk." There was a faint smell of alcohol on him. "Could we exchange numbers?" Marshall shook his head. "I have a girlfriend.

I only helped you because it was the right thing to do." I thought better of him after that, but not in a romantic way. I just thought he was a good person.

Chapter 4 So when the family did introduce us, I was a little surprised. Before that, Grandma had gone at me again and again, coaxing me into agreeing to meet him just once.

Then I saw him, and all at once there was nothing left to think about. I was willing to be with him.

I asked her, "Grandma, are you sure he doesn't have a girlfriend?" Grandma looked at me, all smiles. "Of course. Would I be introducing you to somebody who had a girlfriend?

He had one before. They broke up six months ago." Once I started spending time with Marshall, I realized he didn't seem to remember me. My feelings for him were too obvious.

He believed the marriage was a setup my family had engineered from start to finish. Purely to get me married into the Hargroves so I could climb up on their name.

After the fight with Marshall, it came clear to me. There was no good ending waiting for the two of us. I started trying to let him go, slowly.

When Brianna called him, when she asked him to come look after her at the hospital, I didn't get angry either. At the hospital, I could hear the rumors about him and Brianna.

I stayed completely outside of it. As long as you don't care, it can't hurt you. It hurts because there's still something there. I ate dinner before I went home. I opened the door.

Marshall and I met each other's eyes. He said, "Working late?" I nodded. "Yeah. Working late." I didn't say anything else.

I went around him, into the bedroom for a change of clothes, on my way to the shower. Marshall caught my arm. He started explaining. "Brianna got hurt dancing.

She had the surgery today.

Her grandmother was only just discharged, and she isn't in any shape to take care of her." I nodded and made a couple of agreeable noises. "Then you should take good care of her." "I saw her drinking coffee and soda this afternoon.

As the patient's family, you'd want to remind her to go easy on those while she's healing." I'm a surgeon, so I even took care to walk him through what to watch for.

A small crease came between Marshall's brows. I had no idea what he was thinking. I went straight to the bathroom. The next day. Marshall was going to the hospital.

I was getting ready for work. He offered to go with me. I turned him down, smiling. "I have a joint case conference at another hospital." Marshall nodded.

It wasn't until the conference ended that I got back to my own hospital. By the time I did, it was already the lunch break. I ate in the cafeteria and started back toward my office.

I passed the nurses' station. A few nurses covering the lunch shift were sitting together, talking about nothing, yawning when it got to them and sipping their coffee. "Dr.

Odom." I stopped.

Two of them snuck a look at each other, and there was no hiding the gossip in their eyes. "Come look at this." I smiled and took the phone. "Brianna Sutton, the patient in the private suite here.

She's an influencer." "So Mr. Hargrove is her boyfriend after all." "No wonder we've been seeing him at the hospital every day." "Mr. Hargrove and Ms.

Sutton really are perfect together." I nodded and handed the phone back. "They really are." "Have you two eaten yet?

I picked up a box of cookies." The smiles at the corners of both their eyes vanished all at once. I turned around, puzzled, and looked straight into a pair of dark, narrow eyes.

It caught me completely off guard. Everything around us went quiet, and the smile dropped off my face. Behind me, the tall, straightbacked figure of a man had gone still