My Dead Husband Came Back Too Late

My husband died. Then the comments showed up to tell me he was faking it. After that, comments started drifting across my vision.

Whole rows of them, sliding by like a livestream chat. Nobody else could see them.

Just me. [the male lead faked his death to test the side character lol] [side character's gonna cheat any second now. the male lead belongs to our girl!] [i want the scene where she's out in the rain begging him not to dump her, and she has no clue the heroine is inside telling him to stop kissing her.

SO good] So in this story, I was the side character. I cried until my ribs hurt, and I swore on his casket I would never look at another man.

Then, at the funeral, my bias showed up. He held his umbrella over my head and said it low, so only I would hear. "You're my brother's wife." "He's gone.

You still have me." I had been in love with that man for ten years. From a bunk bed in high school all the way to his brother's funeral. Wait. This is the test?

Chapter 1 It started with the tarot reader.

She turned the card over and looked up at me. "You'll marry twice in this life." "The one you have now isn't the one you love most." "That's garbage," I said. My face went hot.

I was ready to fight a woman over a piece of cardboard. A shadow dropped over me. A long, bony hand reached past my shoulder and took the card right out of my fingers.

I turned around and looked into Rhett Vance's eyes. "Baby, don't listen to her." He gave a small laugh and turned the card over, bored, like it was a receipt. Nothing on his face.

He didn't care. I knew that. He married me because it was easier than not marrying me. Plenty of women wanted him.

With what he had, he could have walked out and found better inside a week. I was just the one who chased him the longest.

He couldn't have the woman he loved, so he took the woman who loved him. What I didn't expect was that he would settle the bill that night, in bed. None of the usual softness.

He came at me like he was proving a point, and he was a bastard about it. I knew that look. Chin up, eyes halflidded, like he was doing me a favor. He didn't love me that much.

And I wasn't allowed to love anyone else. "Rhett." I gave in first, the way I always did. "There's only you." I promised him twice. Three times. As long as he was alive, I was his.

He said, "And if I'm dead?" I froze. "…Then still." He caught it. That twosecond gap before I answered. One eyebrow went up.

My foot was against his chest and it curled back on its own. He caught my ankle and held it there. He said, "Wren Sutton.

I could be dead, and you'd still only be allowed to love me." I said okay. I was the only one in that bed who meant it. I have thought about that line a lot since.

I wonder if he ever remembered saying it. I remembered. I wasn't there for the next part. I put it together later, from the people who were. Later that night.

He pulled on a pair of pants and leaned against the window ledge with a cigarette in his teeth, one long leg crossed over the other, phone to his ear. "The death certificate gets filed first thing tomorrow." "Officially, you were killed in the line of duty." The man on the other end kept going, all business. "After that you sit on the island for six months.

Once we have the mole, you come home." Rhett made a lazy noise in his throat.

Then the man asked, "You really not gonna tell your wife it's staged?" He wasn't only doing it for work. He was also making himself a bet.

When Rhett was seven, his mother ran off with another man. She took his little brother. She left him. He hated being betrayed more than he hated anything.

So he wanted to see whether I would break.

Only then would he let himself believe me. "You find anything?" he asked. "Tailed her two weeks," the man said. "There's no other guy." "Work, home, work, home.

She's a good woman, boss." "Honestly, everybody knows she's crazy about you." The man could not resist. "Vance, you seriously worried she thinks you're dead and goes looking?" "Let her look." He made a short, cold sound.

It did not even register with him. "She's not the only woman who wanted to marry me." He hung up and his hand found the card in his pocket. He did not even mean to.

He closed his fist around it. Stared at it for a few seconds. Then he scrubbed a hand through his hair, annoyed, and glanced back at me asleep in the dark.

He dropped it in the trash without looking. The next day was our anniversary. I waited at home for him all day. What came wasn't him. It was the news that he was dead.

Chapter 2 Somebody was talking at me about an assignment, an accident, procedure. I heard maybe a third of it. A hand pushed a sheet of paper into mine. Death certificate.

His name printed on it, and a date I will remember for the rest of my life. I went home alone.

His black coat was still on the arm of the couch, where he had left it the night before. I picked it up to throw it in the wash, and then I understood there was no point anymore.

That was when it got me. The cold came up the back of my neck and went all the way out to my fingertips. I sat there holding his coat for a long time.

Then it was the day of the funeral.

And the comments came back, rolling. [here we go. male lead faked it to test the side character] [side character's about to cheat any second. the male lead belongs to our girl!] [dumb side character can't handle temptation. thinks she hit the jackpot. wait till he comes back, she's gonna be sick about it] [the heroine is literally his exact type. six months on that island together, he'll act tough and fold anyway] [side character simped for years. the heroine just stands there and gets everything!] [i want the scene where she's out in the rain begging him not to dump her, and she has no clue the heroine is inside telling him to stop kissing her.

SO good] Reading it made me want to laugh, and it made my chest hurt at the same time. So I was the side character. That explained a lot.

No matter how good I was to Rhett, he stayed cold. But cheating? Absolutely not. And the comments said I did it at the funeral. God as my witness. I am a decent person.

The flowers on my husband's casket had not even wilted yet. I was not going to do anything.

Also, and this made me angrier than it should have: I looked around that entire room and not one man there was better looking than Rhett. Simps become simps because we're shallow.

That is the whole reason. [imagine waking up every morning for the rest of your life next to some busted dude. i'm crying] [no wonder she's bitter. doesn't matter though. the hot one belongs to the heroine] [wait. who is THAT] [oh my god the legs on him] I looked up.

In the line of people waiting to pay their respects, one face stood out. Clean jaw, steady eyes, the kind of face that makes a room quietly rearrange itself around him.

He set down a white rose. The crowd shifted. It was drizzling past the open doors. He came toward me under a black umbrella.

He stopped in front of me and said it low. "You're my brother's wife." "He's gone. You still have me." A few steps behind him, my husband's portrait stood on an easel. Rhys Vance.

The singer I had been in love with for ten years. In high school I used to hide under the covers in my room and fall asleep to his voice.

At my worst, I could not even put his face in a dream. It felt like sacrilege.

Now he was standing about eighteen inches away from me. "That's Rhett's brother." Someone beside me was explaining. The brother their mother took with her when she left.

The one Rhett refused to be in a room with. Which is why, in all the years I had been married, I had never once met him.

I was Rhys Vance's sisterinlaw. … In roughly three seconds my brain ran the following: I always knew my bias would fall in love with somebody someday, and I always knew it would ruin me, and I have always hated every woman who flaunts that kind of thing in my face.

What? You're saying that woman is me? Heh. I'm family. No. No no no. Not that kind of family. Oh, I am going to hell.

I was panicking, and my throat locked up on me, right in front of the face I had been staring at on a screen for a decade. But I couldn't just let the words drop on the floor.

I had to say something. I had to— "Ehhk." That is what came out. My throat produced the sound of a duck. I wanted to die.

I wanted to pass out on the spot, right there on the carpet. But I'm the side character. I have the constitution of an ox. I turned and got out of there. Footsteps behind me.

He stopped a few feet back and said it quietly. "Wren Sutton." He knew my name.

Chapter 3 Ten minutes later I found a dark corner of the stairwell where nobody would bother me, and I hid in it. "Anyone seen Wren?

Rhys is looking for her." Two of the Vance relatives went past on the other side of the door, their voices coming closer and then fading. "Hey.

Is it true Rhett didn't leave her a dime?" "Prenup in black and white. House is held by the company. Everything else is in the trust." "Right.

Follow a man's money and you'll find his heart. She dug for years and walked out with a suitcase." "Don't say that. Wren seems like a decent kid to me.

Her eyes are swollen shut from crying." The footsteps faded.

The comments in front of me were still rolling, still showing that island. [AAAA they finally met!!] [why does he keep staring at her, what does it mean] [his dog already likes her. dogs are more honest than men] I took a breath and turned the door handle to go home.

The second I opened it, something pulled me back in. He let go of my wrist and looked down at me. "There you are." Narrow stairwell. The door halfshoved open by the wind.

One thin slice of light on the floor. "Are you hiding from me?" Rhys's face stayed in the dark, which somehow made his voice clearer. "Do you hate me too?

The way my brother does?" I took half a step back and shook my head. "I don't hate you." God knows I could barely breathe with that face in front of me.

Of course he was taller than his brother. He filled the whole doorway. There was nowhere left for me to go.

He asked, "Do you like me, then?" Somebody walked past outside and the draft pushed the door open wider. I flinched back into the dark without thinking. That made him laugh.

He lifted his arm and blocked the gap for me. When the person was gone and the light came back, I could finally see his eyes.

Dark and warm and steady. "Do you remember me?" he asked. "Freshman year. We were in the same class." His name ran through my entire adolescence like a wire.

Sophomore year he transferred out and signed with a label. One song, and that was it. Awards, all of it. Application season, I clawed my way into an ordinary state school.

Movein day, my roommate lay on her bed and told me about her favorite singer, Rhys Vance. By the time we graduated she wasn't a fan of anybody anymore. I was still listening.

His tickets sold out in seconds, every show. The one time I actually got a pair, I got called back to the office for a lastminute deadline.

I cried at my desk with my badge still clipped on. It wasn't about missing the show. I knew that even then.

It was that in that exact moment I understood, with no room left to argue, that he lived in one world and I lived in another. I would probably never be in a room with him.

Not once, my whole life. "I remember." I looked up at him. "It's funny.

I didn't think you'd remember me, and I definitely didn't think we'd end up related." I worked hard at making my voice come out steady. "Who would have guessed.

Next time I see you, it's at my husband's repast, at the same table." He heard me call his brother my husband. He looked at my swollen eyes.

He remembered where we were standing. "Oh." He turned slightly and put a little distance between us. Fine rain slanted in and hit the door, and the cold ran over my bare forearm.

He had touched me there a second ago.

Just for a second. "My brother was out of line." He wasn't looking at me. "How could he do that to you?" Rhys had been famous for years and had never once been in a scandal.

Clean record, quiet life, everybody liked him. Even at class reunions, years later, somebody would bring him up. "Remember when those guys were waiting for me in the parking lot?

Rhys barely ever spoke to me.

He still called the cops and then stood in front of me." "He's a genuinely good guy." I decided Rhys Vance must be one of those people who just can't help himself.

Chapter 4 That had to be why he could stand there wearing a face that made me think things I had no business thinking, and say it in that calm, decent voice: "What do you want?" "You're family.

I'll make this right for you." I am a terrible person. That was the moment I understood, with total clarity, that I was the villainess side character.

Because what went through my head was: does it count as sleeping with a fan? would it hurt his career? okay, no, probably not worth it. Restraint. Restraint!

I looked at the floor. "I don't need anything." Except his voice dropped lower and came back. "You sure you don't want anything?" "I'm sure.

You don't owe me." "Oh." Tree shadows moved outside the window. The wind shoved the door all the way open. Somebody out in the hall was calling my name. I turned to go.

He watched me go, and then he said it, slow and easy. "Wren Sutton." "Can I ask for something, then?" I stopped and turned around, confused. "What?" "Marry me." He said, "I'll take care of you for him." Rhys and I came back to the table a minute apart.

People were eating.

A few of them looked over at me and kept right on with the conversation they'd been having. "You think Vance had regrets?" "About what?" "If he'd known life was that short, he should have married someone he actually loved.

Not her." Somebody kicked him under the table, and then couldn't stop himself from checking my face anyway. [side character has no idea. the heroine goes a little cold on him and he's already unsettled] [she's out here shopping for a guy to cheat with. which busted dude is it gonna be] [when he gets back and she has to compare them, she's gonna lose it] [should have thought of that before she cheated] Comments floating.

People talking. I should have been devastated. Instead I stared at Rhett's portrait on the easel across the room. And the only thought in my head was: Marry my bias?

This is the test? Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. I guess I have no choice. I put my hands over my face and started crying, and I couldn't stop.

The harder I cried, the more the corners of my mouth twitched. What else was I supposed to do? I'm the side character with no morals who folds at the first temptation.

Baby, you died. And I got what I wanted. The people who had been talking about me saw how hard I was crying and lost the stomach to keep going.

Over in the corner, the man who'd been on the phone with Rhett that night watched me and let out a breath.

He took out his phone and sent a message to a number with no name attached. "Vance. Don't push it too far." "She's crazy about you.

She cried herself hoarse at the service today." A few seconds later the reply came back. "Noted." "I'll smooth it over when I'm home." Six months later, Rhett was coming back.

They had the mole. Everyone knew he wasn't dead. Somebody else was the one who told me. I said, "Oh." Then I went back to what I was doing.

He waited up all night, and my call never came. "She's probably still mad. You saw her at the funeral." His guys told him to just call me. He didn't call.

He was used to waiting for me to fold first. "I've spoiled her. She can call or not." What he didn't expect was that I wasn't at the airport.

I used to go at two in the morning if that's when he landed. He stood there for thirty minutes watching people come and go, and none of them were me.

He had a gift in his hand for me, and for no reason he could name, it made him furious. "Home," he said.

The driver asked, "Which home, sir?" Rhett raised an eyebrow. "Wherever my wife is." The driver hesitated a second too long. "Ma'am moved out." He frowned. "Moved where?" Chapter 5 The driver gave him an address.

Nobody said anything in that car for five minutes. Then Rhett laughed, once, soft. He sat back against the leather with his eyes flat and dark, mouth tipped up.

The smile didn't reach anything above it. "Why are you giving me my brother's address?" The driver blinked at the road. "Sir, you're the one who had us put her out.

She had nowhere to go." Rhett's eyes went darker. He knew it was ugly, leaving her no money and no house. But that was the whole point.

Six months of it, and any man who came sniffing around would take one look at her bank balance and leave. She's an ordinary woman.

Strip the money off her, and who wants to sleep with a widow?

The comments loved this. [she deserves it! i've been mad about her spending his money for ages] [forget her for a second. what's wrong with the male lead, where's the slow burn we were promised] [on that island the heroine almost fell in love with his DOG and still hasn't gotten a full sentence out of him] [meanwhile he's been staring at her the whole time because he thinks she's trying to steal the dog] [but her ignoring him is definitely getting to him] [that's the DOG getting to him. she stops bringing food and the dog is stuck eating whatever he cooks. this man has zero doubts about his cooking and infinite doubts about dog theft] [so his six months were: guard dog from woman, flip calendar, wait to see wife. comes home, wife ran off with somebody] [there's still hope! once he catches the side character cheating, our girl gets her shot!] The car pulled into the garage under Rhys's building and Rhett went up.

The door was standing half open. He turned sideways and stepped through it. Sneaking in. That was what it felt like, and he hated it. He was here to get his own wife.

Which was when the other feeling landed on him, the one that felt like catching two people in the act, and everything doubled. Main bedroom, empty. Just like he thought.

Rhys had never lived in this place a day in his life. My suitcase was in the guest room.

He looked up and saw a brand new men's shirt folded on the table, with a card sitting on top of it, half written. [To my husband, Rh—] He thought about the day he decided to lie to me, and how that meant he never got his anniversary gift.

Except the shirt looked like something Rhys would wear. Cut too young for him. He had always been dismissive about anything I bought him. He'd laugh at my taste.

Cheap junk, he called it. Then I pushed open the guest room door and found the cheap junk on his body. Rhett was leaning against the window ledge.

He didn't say hello. "Why weren't you at the airport?" He and Rhys do look alike. Everything under the face is different.

Years ago, when a friend introduced us, I liked him on sight. Now I was looking at that same face and it wasn't doing anything to me. I moved out of the way of his hand. He stopped.

Every other time he came home from an assignment, I'd run at him and throw my arms around his neck, and he'd make a face like I was a lot to deal with.

Now I was the one stepping back. "Are you mad?" "I'm here, aren't I?" I pulled my hand free. "Give me my shirt back." He wouldn't let me move.

He caught my wrist and held it, and his voice cooled all the way down. "That's enough." I said, "It wasn't for you. I bought it for somebody else." The room went quiet for a beat.

He smiled a little.

There was ice all through it. "Bought it for who?" "I've been dead six months and you're already buying shirts for other men?" I said, "You died, so I was single.

I wanted to buy it the day of your funeral." His mouth twisted. "Grass hasn't even come in over my grave. Good for you." Rhett turned to leave. "Hey—" Chapter 6 He stopped.

And then he heard the rest of it. "My shirt." His face went darker, and then he laughed, because there was nothing else to do with it. He took his time about it.

Unbuttoned it slowly, let it fall open. I looked away.

He caught my hand and the harder I pulled the harder he held, and he pressed my palm flat against him. "Do you touch other people like this?" Then he threw my hand off him like it had something on it. "You make me sick." He smiled at me like the bastard he is. "You know what, I'm glad.

You worked at it for years and you never got me to love you." "That taste of yours. Cheap, like everything else about you.

Who'd want it." He changed and threw the shirt at me and slammed the door on his way out. After that day, Rhett didn't contact me.

I heard he threw a few parties to celebrate being rid of me. I used to keep tabs on him. He was too popular and it made me feel like I was standing on nothing.

The more I held on, the more he went out. I'd get jealous and he never once smoothed it over. He'd even do it on purpose.

Half joking, half not, telling me he'd seen prettier than me, more than I could count, and I didn't even make his list. "You think you can keep me on a leash? Be jealous.

See what it gets you." Good news is, I don't keep tabs anymore. What he didn't know was this. After that day, I did something he'd never dream of in a hundred years.

Rhett never posts anything. Then he posted a photo, some dinner at his place, fifteen people in the frame