When I Stopped Fighting for Him

Adrian's girlfriend showed up at my door. He flew home overnight. Scared I'd do something to his little darling. He pushed the door open and found her thanking me. Smiling.

I used to be the most notorious jealous wife in Ashcroft Hill. Vicious with the girls he kept. Small enough about it to give him headaches.

Now the wife and the girlfriend were getting along beautifully, exactly the way he'd always wanted. His voice came out flat and not quite amused. "What are we talking about?

Let's hear it." Seven years ago he stood in front of the framed photo of my parents and swore he would love me and no one else for the rest of his life.

Seven years later he still says that sentence. Only this time I didn't throw a glass. I didn't scream at him. I didn't cry. I was just counting how many more days I had to be here.

Chapter 1 "It's a secret.

Not telling you." Cassidy hooked her arm through mine like we were old friends, then looked over at Adrian, puzzled. "Wait, didn't you have something urgent overseas?

Why are you suddenly back?" She answered her own question before the sentence finished landing. "Don't get the wrong idea. Thea's really reasonable.

She wasn't mean to me." "She knows we're actually in love. She even wished us a hundred happy years." "So all those stories in the papers were made up!" Mr.

Shen kept dabbing at his forehead by the door. Nothing showed on Adrian's face. "Don't you have a call time tomorrow?" "Mr. Shen.

Have the driver take her home." Adrian doesn't say things twice. Mr. Shen said "of course" immediately. Cassidy wasn't the least bit scared of him.

She actually leaned into me, half a pout in it. "Thea, ignore him.

Let's keep talking." I'd only just smiled when Adrian spoke again, colder now. "Cassidy." "Fine, fine." Her mouth twisted. She muttered, "Old men.

So strict." Then she straightened up, grabbed her little bag, and left, dragging her feet the whole way. Halfway to the door she turned around and trotted back.

Went up on her toes and kissed Adrian on the cheek. "Night. See you tomorrow." There was a time when I couldn't stand a single speck of dust.

If a female mosquito landed on Adrian, I'd have set traps for the entire species. Now I watched him with another woman being sweet at each other. Nothing moved in me at all.

I even had the spare attention to study Cassidy's face. Twentysomething, unlined, easy. The tabloids always said she looked like me. I never saw it before.

Now, watching the way she looked at Adrian with her whole self, I could taste it. A resemblance.

Cassidy really did leave that time, and she called back to me on the way out. "Thea, I'm coming over to hang out again!" I nodded and turned back around, and only then noticed Adrian had been watching me.

No telling how long. "She's young. She doesn't know better. Don't take it out on her." "I won't let her near you again." I answered without thinking. "It's fine.

She's sweet." "You can bring her by again sometime." Not that I'd be here in a few days. So there probably wouldn't be another time. Adrian's eyes stayed on my face, measuring.

His companies had gotten bigger every year. He'd stopped letting anything show a long time ago. But his expression darkened now, and it was obvious he didn't like it. "Thea.

You're not angry?" The question stopped me for a second. The old version of me would have gone up like a struck match. Full collapse. Because back then I actually loved Adrian.

So I did every ridiculous thing there is to do. Slapping and shoving his actress girlfriends in public was the baseline. Wine glasses off the side of his head were not rare.

Crying, screaming, cursing him out like something unhinged was standard procedure. The wives of Ashcroft Hill are gracious to a woman. The public had never seen anything like me.

The press came in like sharks on blood and stripped me down to the bone. Chapter 2 They called me the most classless, most jealous, most vicious wife in Ashcroft Hill.

The other wives all told me the same thing. "A man worth what he's worth, of course he's got a few on the side." "You went through all those hard years with him." "There's no reason to hand over the title now that the money's here." "Stop being stupid.

Stop asking a man for something he doesn't have." Nobody in that circle thinks fidelity is a real thing. The woman asking for it was a joke they told at lunch.

But once, in a studio the size of a parking space. Adrian stood in front of the framed photo of my parents and swore he would love me and no one else for the rest of his life.

Seven years. That's all it took for none of it to count. I couldn't accept it. So I said the ugliest things I could find.

I cursed him. "Adrian, you're a public toilet at this point. That's how filthy you are." "Didn't you swear you'd drop dead if you ever did this to me?" "So go on. Drop dead.

Drop dead. Drop dead." I screamed until I hyperventilated and passed out. Couldn't get air in. Nearly met my maker. Adrian was steady even before he had money.

After the money and the power, buildings could come down in front of him and he wouldn't move. But once he got me breathing again.

He pulled me into his chest like he'd almost lost something, and the fingers stroking my hair were shaking. That tremor was a spark. It almost brought a dead hope back to life.

For a second I felt the twentyyearold Adrian. That's how he used to hold me. Like I cost more than everything he owned. But inside that warm hold.

A cold sentence finished off the last of it. The twentysevenyearold Adrian sounded tired of me. "There's only you in here.

Isn't that enough?" "What exactly are you still making a scene about?" I got sick after that. Nothing serious. Just the kind that hangs on, like a rainy season that won't end.

I went quiet. The press was thrilled to watch me catch him at it. Adrian was authority in every room he entered. And his wife behaved like a woman screaming in a parking lot.

Reporters love that gap. They were waiting on me to move numbers for them. They even printed a full list of his mistresses.

Better detectives than detectives, feeding me leads for free. Meeting Cassidy was an accident. I'd been lying around at home for a few days.

The other wives meant well and couldn't stand it. They dragged me out to the stables to ride. There was one horse at the stables that was mine.

He started out as Adrian's, and he only ever answered to one person. I don't know what Adrian did to him.

However he did it, the horse went from unbreakable to doing whatever I asked. But that day, after one clean whistle.

He went off like something snapped, threw me off his back, and bolted. Everyone was still screaming when he stopped. In front of a girl.

That arrogant, difficult horse dropped his head and gave himself to her.

She was pretty and pleased with herself, stroking his neck, laughing like a flower turned toward the sun. "Are you happy to see Mommy? Good boy." One look and I knew.

This was a girl who had never once appeared on the list of his mistresses. We didn't get a chance to look at each other.

Adrian was already standing in front of her, blocking my view. It was a full shield. Total, unthinking defense. The way a big animal covers its own soft parts without deciding to.

That's how he used to stand in front of me. Something enormous went off against my eardrums. Chapter 3 The pain arrived late, in a dense swarm, up through my arm.

Everything inside me twisted with it, like my organs had shifted out of place. Something finished breaking. The last thing I saw before I went under.

Adrian's face, the one that never moved, coming apart into panic as he ran toward me. Fracture in my left hand. Scrapes everywhere. Lucky, all things considered. Nothing internal.

There are more than a dozen staff in that house. Adrian took care of me himself. He wouldn't let anyone else near it. For those few days.

I didn't ask him who the woman at the stables was. I didn't curse him the way I used to. I just sat by the window and stared at nothing for hours. The heat was up.

The carpet was thick and soft underfoot. Adrian still knelt and put my socks on for me, like I was a doll that came apart if handled wrong.

My hands and feet going ice cold the second it gets cold is something I picked up building the company with him.

Back then a competitor set him up and the police took him in for questioning. Somebody threw his core proposal into a pond. December water. Cold enough to cut.

I went in without thinking about it. Pulled the pages up one at a time. Went numb everywhere, held on until I was back on the bank, and only then let myself pass out.

When I woke up, Adrian was doing exactly this. Putting my socks on. After I fell asleep he went outside and smoked for a long time.

Then he came back in and stood in front of the framed photo of my parents and swore, quietly. He said if he ever betrayed me, he'd die badly. Seven years went by like nothing.

For a second there. The way Adrian looked with his eyes down was identical to the way he'd looked making that promise.

Then he spoke, and it came out mild. "She didn't know anyone was on the horse. It wasn't on purpose." So that's what happens when someone climbs high enough.

Even lowering his eyes only comes out as arrogance dressed up as pity. Adrian's face stayed empty, but his voice had a sigh in it. "Thea.

Whatever you're angry about, bring it to me. Leave her alone." Every window in that house was shut. I felt a draft coming from all four directions.

The drafts came together into a blade. And went straight through me. I opened my mouth for nothing. Not one sound would come out. After that day.

Adrian started taking that girl out in public, loudly, everywhere. Cassidy went from a Dlist nobody to an Alister in a season. Nobody could touch her.

But I was the only one who knew Cassidy was different. Otherwise Adrian wouldn't have gone to that much trouble hiding her. Now that she was out, he was terrified I'd get to her.

Out in the open was safer than in the dark. That was the only reason he let her be seen. I thought my chest would hurt. There was nothing in it. Empty, and then more empty.

I was bored enough to tear up a piece of cake for the fish in the pond. "Any of you have a divorce lawyer?

Send me a few names." Two seconds of silence, and then the wives laughed, relieved. "There you go! That's the right way to think about it!" "We'll just act like we're divorced!

Or like our husbands are dead!" "And live our own nice quiet lives." The point being, nobody believed I would actually divorce Adrian.

You'd have to be braindamaged to give up being Mrs. Vance with everything that came with it. But I didn't leave Adrian back when he had nothing.

Chapter 4 So I wasn't going to stay now that he had everything. I booked the divorce lawyer and started looking at flights. There was one thing I wanted to do before I left.

Take the wives I actually liked out to dinner. When Adrian first came into money and power. Every wife in Ashcroft Hill wanted to be close to me.

Then came the endless girls, and my endless public humiliations, and one by one they stopped coming. A wife with no husband's favor and no family behind her isn't worth the effort.

When the tide goes out you find out who meant it. Four of them still came to talk sense into me. They said they were the same as me. We all thought the worst was behind us.

Turns out the worst just kept coming. Hawthorn Garden is mine. It's my name on the gate. We booked dinner at Hawthorn Garden, and got stopped at the entrance.

The doorman I knew wasn't there. Security was. They barked at us, hard and rude. "No unauthorized entry." "Move along.

The whole place is booked." The wives jumped, then their eyes went round. "Whose security are you? Have you lost your minds?" "Look at her properly.

This is the owner of Hawthorn Garden." One of them actually put hands on us. "What are you talking about.

Our owner's inside." "What's the noise about?" Cassidy came walking over from a distance. Adrian was next to her. The wives went silent. They looked at me, worried.

One of them tugged my sleeve. Terrified I'd start swinging at my husband's girlfriend in public again. "Thea, we can eat somewhere else. It doesn't have to be here." I nodded.

I turned and walked away, calm, like I hadn't seen Adrian at all. I did it fast enough that the wives had to jog to catch up.

Which is why none of us saw whatever Adrian's face did next. That night he was waiting on the couch when I got home. "Cassidy needed the location for a shoot.

That's why it was booked." "I didn't know you were hosting today." "Ask those wives when they're free. Dinner's on me." The old version of me, handed a treat right after the slap.

I'd have gone off screaming and made that house unlivable. Now I shook my head. "No need." I was taking it well, and Adrian's eyes went tight. He didn't like that either.

I yawned. "Don't worry. I'm not going to touch Cassidy." "Nothing else. I'm going to shower and go to bed." I didn't look at his face. I turned and went into the bathroom.

He came home because he was afraid of what I'd do to her. I'd just told him what he wanted to hear. He should have been satisfied.

What I didn't expect was for Adrian to break the door in halfway through and kiss me like he was taking something.

He came at me hard, with something churning underneath it I couldn't name