Page 5 of In Love with My Secret Husband

And last month, she had stopped writing anything about him.

But in the margins, in a different hand than Laina's, someone had written a phone number next to the wordsAunt Trisha called.Troy stared at it. He didn't think much of it at the time.

And seeing this, month by month, the record of his wife giving up on him, had that unnamed feeling in Troy’s chest turning into a sinkhole. And when Troy looked around the room he once shared with his wife, he could finally see what had been happening throughout their entire marriage.

Laina was still the same girl he had married seven years ago.

But it was Troy who had changed.

Troy who had forgotten why he had married her in the first place.

A few minutes ago, he hadn’t been able to understand why it bothered him, seeing her shoebox full of photos of him but there was not a single photo of Laina. Or of them.

But now, standing alone in this big, fancy house that he had thought would be enough to make Laina feel happy...

He understood now that it should have been him.

The way Laina had taken those photos because she had cherished her time with him.

He should have been the one taking photos of her.

If he had remembered why he had married her.

If he had not lost himself in chasing his own dreams at the expense of their marriage.

Troy, too, should have his own stash of photos. Maybe not in a shoebox like she did. But in his phone at least. Because when he thought about it now...he remembered the countless times he would glance her way, see her reading a book, and he would think she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Those were the moments he would be tempted to take his phone out and take a photo of her. But he never had.

Because he had also believed this day would never come.

The day when his wife would leave him.

Because he had hurt her for the last time.

I d-don’t love you anymore.

Chapter Two

THE SILENCE IN LAINA’Snew apartment was deafening.

It was something she had never experienced, and honestly, something she had never thought she’d have any reason experience. Since her job meant being around children who were at that age when noise and energy were non-negotiables, silence was usually a rarity, and a blessing because of it.

But now, though...

She had been sitting on the floor for twenty minutes, her back against the wall, her knees drawn up, her phone facedown in her lap. And throughout it, all she could hear was the sound of her own breathing.

And that sound...just wasn’t enough.

Her hand drifted to the chain at her throat. Troy’s ring hung from it, warm against her skin, hidden under her sweatshirt the way it had been hidden under every shirt she’d worn for the past seven years. She had left behind the mug, the badge, the stickers. But the ring she couldn’t leave. The ring she wore against her heart because it was the one thing about their marriage that had always felt real.

She wrapped her arms around herself, but it didn’t help. She realized now that the silence disturbed her because it allowed her to think of things that she didn’t want to think. Before this, she had nothing to hide from. Before this, even when she was on her own, she was comfortable in letting her thoughts roam free.

But that was before.

When she hadn’t yet fallen in love.

And got her heart broken.

In those days, she had embraced both the noise and the silence. Actually, if one were to ask the people who knew her, they’d say that Laina herself was the noise in everyone’s lives. She was the type to laugh freely and chat nonstop about the things she loved. Her enthusiasm matched those of her students, and she had never been the type to hold back to look cool. Her curiosity and friendliness knew no bounds. And so did her lack of organization, which often contributed to the daily noise in her life. She was always missing something. Or tripping over something.