The time my husband looked at another woman like she was his entire world, I was standing right beside him.
And the worst part?
I couldn't even blame him.
Because she was supposed to be his.
Not me.
The room went silent the moment Violet walked through the door.
For three years, people had spoken about her in the past tense.
The woman who disappeared.
The woman who was never found.
The woman Louis loved so much that everyone wondered if he would ever recover.
I had heard every story.
How he proposed to her in his head a hundred times before he ever got the chance.
How he carried the ring in his pocket, waiting for the perfect moment.
How he searched for her until there was nothing left to search.
How a piece of him died the night she vanished.
I knew because I was there.
I was the person who held him together when the world fell apart.
I was the person who sat beside him through endless nights when he couldn't sleep.
I was the person who wiped away his tears when he thought no one was watching.
I was the person who loved him when he had nothing left to give.
And somehow, I convinced myself that meant something.
That maybe, somewhere between his grief and my loneliness, he had fallen in love with me.
Maybe I wasn't the woman he planned to marry.
Maybe I wasn't the woman he dreamed about.
But I was the woman who stayed.
The woman who knew every broken piece of him.
The woman who gave him a daughter.
The woman who wore his ring.
His wife.
I spent three years believing that was enough.
Until Violet came home.
Alive.
The same woman whose funeral we never had because there was never a body to bury.
The same woman whose name lived between us like a ghost.
The same woman whose engagement ring was still hanging from a chain around her neck.
Louis noticed it before he noticed anything else.
I saw it happen.
The moment his eyes landed on that ring, the world around him disappeared.
Not me.
Not our daughter standing beside him.
Not the life we built.
Her.
Always her.
"Violet..."
Her name left his mouth like a prayer.
And something inside my chest cracked.
Because I had spent three years waiting for him to say my name that way.
CZYTASZ
Before He Chose Me
RomansBefore He Chose Me Louis loved Violet first. Everyone knew it. She was his soulmate, his future, the woman he was supposed to marry. He had already bought the ring and planned the life they would build together. But before he could ask her to spend...
