Chapter 3

In the middle of the night, Nolan suddenly came home.

Before I could react, he was on top of me. In the pale moonlight, I could see the fury on his face.

He started kissing me aggressively before I even had the chance to react.

"You did this on purpose, didn't you?" he sneered. "Are you so desperate to have my child that you resorted to using Grandpa to pressure me? Well, congratulations. You got what you wanted."

Nolan was strong, and I couldn't get him off me no matter how much I pushed.

That night, I felt like a lifeless puppet, forced to go along with everything he did. His touches and kisses made my skin crawl.

He soon broke the silence through gritted teeth, "Don't you like it? Didn't you have Grandpa force me to come back for this exact moment? Why are you pretending to be disgusted now?"

I buried my face in the pillow, stifling my sobs.

I regretted everything.

Having grown up together since we were young, Nolan had always been nice to me.

However, the moment my parents suggested to the Garrisons that Nolan and I should be together, he had changed.

Suddenly, he wasn't the same person.

He never smiled at me, cared for me, nor caressed my hair sweetly anymore.

He disregarded my gastritis and handed me a glass of red wine at his grandfather's birthday party. Under the guise of toasting Albert, his grandfather, he forced me to drink it all.

That night, Nolan drank too much, and Albert told me to take Nolan home.

The lights outside were bright, but not indoors. I could only make out Nolan's figure in the shadows.

"You want to be with me that badly?"

When Nolan asked me that question, my heart almost leaped out of my chest. I didn't even notice how cold his tone was.

The next morning, my whole body ached when I woke up.

The room was a mess, with the blanket lying on the floor. There wasn't even a sheet covering me, and Nolan was already gone.

Humiliation consumed me, but still, I blindly threw myself at him.

I had been naive, thinking that being married would bring us back to how we used to be. I never imagined that he would end up hating me this much.

"Why can't we just be like other couples?" I couldn't help but ask in a low voice.

Nolan paused for a moment, then let out a bitter laugh.

I found all the answers I needed in his silence.

Unlike that night, Nolan wiped my face as I drifted off, and there was a blanket covering me when I woke up the next morning.

However, he was nowhere to be found.

As I went downstairs, Chloe, the housekeeper, stopped me.

"Mrs. Garrison, I've done the grocery shopping today. What would you like to prepare for Mr. Garrison's lunch? I can help you with the ingredients."

Nolan was a picky eater. He would rather starve than touch something he didn't like.

Ever since we had gotten married, I had been preparing his lunch, but he always threw them away in disgust.

To make sure he ate properly, I started having his assistant deliver the meals without telling him I had made them.

Hearing Chloe's question, I shook my head and said, "I'm not doing that anymore from now on."

Nolan's words from last night echoed in my mind.

Albert had asked me to bring Nolan back, but I hadn't even explained why. So, Nolan had assumed that I was using Grandpa to pressure him—just like I had when we got married.

Sometimes, I couldn't understand why Nolan, who was always so stubborn, had suddenly agreed to our engagement. He had even married me after that.

My parents had told me that Nolan was the heir to the Garrisons, and there was no way he would go against Albert's wishes.

Albert had chosen me, and so, he had to marry me.

Just then, a beep from my phone snapped me out of my thoughts.

My lawyer had texted me the divorce agreement that I had requested.

A marriage like this should've ended a long time ago.