Chapter 6
When Charlotte had first come back into the country,
Mrs. Westwood pulled Alexander aside.
She told him not to mess up a stable marriage for someone who’d already betrayed him
once.
But you know what he said?
“I can’t even stand to look at her anymore.”
“She pretends to be classy, but everything about her is forced and fake.”
“My friends laugh at her, and she doesn’t even realize it.
She wears designer gowns like she’s working a Vegas cocktail lounge.”
“I don’t see an ounce of grace in her. Nothing a real woman should have.”
And the worst part?
That dress–he picked it.
Those manners–he taught them to me.
He used to say I was radiant, untamed, the thing he loved most.
But then that same fire became “low–class,”
Something to be ashamed of.
I started staying home, worried about embarrassing him.
Stopped going to events, afraid.I’d drag him down.
I tried to become the kind of wife he wanted.
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Chapter 6
Took classes. Learned etiquette.
But word got around, and it just became another joke–me trying too hard to be something I
wasn’t.
Everything I did was wrong.
Every version of me was the wrong one.
“What, nothing to say now?”
He looked me up and down.
“Eight years, and still no kid.”
“If it weren’t for Mom, I’d have divorced you already.”
Eight years.
And not even a pregnancy scare.
It’s not like we hadn’t slept together.
But it’d been years.
His interest had gone cold long before he stopped sharing my bed.
And back when he was interested-
He never once talked about having a baby.
Even though he knew how badly I wanted one.
That…
That had always been the part that hurt the most.
He knew how to find my wounds and dig into them,
Using every fight to push me over the edge-
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Chapter 6
To make me prove to the world I was exactly what he said I was.
A crazy, classless woman.
But this time?
This time his words didn’t hurt.
They felt like freedom.
“You know what? Great.”
“Let’s get divorced. Right now.”
I looked up and locked eyes with Alexander-
And I saw it.
Real fear.
Real panic.
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