My husband, Liam Carter, came home drunk again.

I was so pissed I put on lipstick and planted several bright kisses all over his neck.

The next morning I confronted him.

“Who kissed you? Where the hell were you last night?”

He stared at me, completely confused, then started apologizing over and over.

I thought to myself, That’ll teach you.

But after dinner, I accidentally overheard him on the phone.

“Baby, don’t kiss my face next time. My wife, Evelyn Shaw, is already suspicious.”

…

I had just finished washing the dishes when I heard that.

My hand clenched around the dishcloth on instinct.

I left two ugly smears on my shirt.

We’ve been married three years. Liam never used to come home late.

Even when he had business dinners, he would call me in advance.

Lately, he’s been coming back reeking of alcohol all the time.

I was only trying to tease him, pretending to leave those lipstick marks on his neck.

I never imagined it would drag this kind of truth out into the open.

On the balcony, still in his bathrobe, Liam continued his call.

“What’s the rush? I’ll come keep you company in a few days.”

The night wind drifted in, carrying his low, suggestive tone.

He used to talk to me like that the second day we moved in together.

After we got married, that sort of thing became mundane, and then it stopped altogether.

I stood frozen in the shadows.

There was no lying to myself anymore.

I hadn’t misheard. It wasn’t a misunderstanding.

Liam was cheating.

I flipped on the light.

Liam jumped on the balcony, hastily ending the call with a tap.

“Evelyn, what are you doing here?”

I almost laughed, but couldn’t.

This is our home.

If I’m not here, where else would I be?

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He recovered quickly. “Oh, just talking to a friend.”

“Which friend? Why don’t you keep talking?”

Liam glanced down at his phone, then set it face-down on the table behind him.

He turned to me, brows drawing together.

“Why do you always have to ask so many questions? I already explained about the lipstick. One of the guys pulled a prank while I was drunk and got someone to kiss me. If you don’t believe me, you can call Marcus.”

Marcus Reid was our partner when we started the company.

He was also my college classmate.

I knew Marcus first; I was the one who later introduced him to Liam.

In the past, when Liam said things like that, I always ended up thinking I was the problem.

That I was being annoying.

Making a big deal out of nothing.

Because Liam had always been so open with me about social events. He even had Marcus go along with him, and he’d pick up my video calls anytime.

He’d given me more than enough reason to feel secure.

Until today, when all of that security shattered.

“There’s no need,” I said quietly. “I believe you.”

That night, we lay down in bed.

Maybe Liam realized he’d been a little harsh earlier.

He started coaxing me again.

“Evelyn, it’s not that I don’t want to explain. I’m just exhausted from all these dinners lately. Anyway, you just have to trust me, okay?”

I made a noncommittal sound and turned my back to him.

“Go to sleep.”

As usual, he wrapped an arm around me.

Liam has always been good with sweet talk.

I used to let myself be soothed by him so easily.

I’ve always been ticklish and hated anyone pressing against my waist.

But he said he loved holding me to sleep.

Said he felt at ease with me there, that he slept better.

I felt sorry for how hard he worked, so I forced myself to get used to it.

That night, I lay facing away from him, eyes open.

Listening as his breathing gradually slowed and grew shallow.

When I was sure he was asleep, I lifted the blanket and gently moved his arm off me.

He didn’t stir at all.

The next morning, I woke up early as usual.

A number with no name on it flashed across my screen.

“Hello, is this Mr. Carter? We’re calling to confirm the Denver double-traveler package you booked with us earlier…”

The moment I realized it was a travel agency, my mind went blank for a second.

I’d been talking to Liam since last year about wanting to travel abroad.

I never imagined he’d already booked it behind my back.

He probably just forgot one thing—the last time we went to that travel agency, he’d given them my number.

If it weren’t for what happened yesterday, I would have been thrilled to find out early.

But now, all I feel is something stuck in my chest, neither up nor down.

Conflicted. Torn.

Tight and suffocating, like a thousand needles pricking me no matter which way I move.

I barely slept last night.

My mind was a complete mess, full of nothing but the fact that Liam had someone else outside.

By the time I dragged myself to the supermarket to buy fruit and vegetables, the exhaustion on my face was obvious.

A group of young girls happened to be standing near me, making the contrast even clearer.

They were chatting and giggling away in public.

“I’m definitely not getting married. And even if I do, I’m not staying home as some housewife. Give it a few years and you just start looking old.”

“So you’re not getting married, just dating guys, huh?”

“Yeah, like Chloe Bennett, Liam’s mistress. Your boyfriend treats you so well, he’s even taking you to Denver. No wonder you insisted we swing by so early just to get him a cute breakfast.”

The girl they were talking about smiled. “It’s not like that. This place just has a great selection of fresh fruit.”

At the mention of that familiar word, “Denver,” I instinctively turned around.

And it felt like a lightning strike.

The girl called Chloe was wearing a pair of diamond studs exactly like mine.

She even looked a lot like me.

Except she looked like me in my early twenties—young, fresh, glowing.

I looked down at myself.

I’d rushed out in a hurry, hadn’t even brushed my hair, and I was still in my pajamas.

So that trip the agency booked wasn’t for me.

Maybe it was a woman’s intuition, but she lifted her head and noticed me too.

Our eyes met.

One of her friends tugged her wrist and whispered in her ear, not as quietly as she thought.

“Chloe, that woman in front looks a lot like you. Just… older.”

Chloe glanced over at me and slowly smiled.

She pouted lightly. “How am I anything like her? I don’t have eye bags that deep. You saying that on purpose?”

Her friend hurried to backtrack. “You’re right, you’re right. You’re way prettier than her.”

Seriously? How old am I in your eyes that you’re calling me “auntie”?

The malice was blatant.

I laughed coldly to myself.

Liam had found a girl who was fifty percent my copy.

I didn’t know whether to say his taste hadn’t changed, or that he’d gone and found a stand-in for me before I was even “dead.”

Too bad for him: knockoff is still knockoff.

I spoke up, my voice not too loud and not too soft:

“Natural and man-made are never the same. Some noses obviously cost a lot of money. By the time you reach my age, you’ll probably need a repair job.”

Chloe’s expression shifted.

I finished paying and walked out of the supermarket with deliberate calm.

When I got home, Liam was already up.

He was adjusting his tie as he said, “By the way, I might need to go on a business trip around the middle of the month. About a week.”

My hand, midway through preparing breakfast, paused.

The dates lined up perfectly with what the travel agency had told me.

But to my face, he called it a business trip.

I looked at him quietly.

Inside, it felt like a piece of me was missing, hollowed out.

A chill seeped through me, strong enough to make a person shiver.

He didn’t notice at all. He just glanced at his phone, and his brows relaxed a little.

“I’m in a rush today. I’ll skip breakfast.”

I watched him closely.

Then I lowered my eyes to the half-prepared dishes on the counter.

Suddenly, I felt ridiculous.

So what if I’d just scored a little verbal victory over the side chick?

Everything Liam did made one thing clear: I just didn’t matter that much to him anymore.

That knot in my chest from the travel agency’s call this morning—that tiny flicker of doubt—was nothing but my own wishful thinking.

The trip abroad I’d cared about since last year, he’d booked it already.

He was just going with someone else.

He didn’t have time to eat breakfast at home, but he had time to go out and eat food someone else brought him?

Before he left, he came over and hugged me again.

“Baby, your stomach’s not great. Remember to warm up the milk before you drink it.”

My hands hung stiffly at my sides.

My whole body was rigid, like a block of wood.

I answered with a faint “mm.”

When I was finally alone, facing the spotless kitchen I’d just cleaned and the neatly arranged home I’d put together, there was none of the warmth and satisfaction I used to feel.

I never thought there was anything wrong with being a housewife.

Back then, when Liam came home, he’d automatically help me wash vegetables, wipe down the table, and praise my cooking.

Because there was love, I was happy to give.

But when one person’s love outweighs the other’s by too much, it stops being love and turns into pleasing.

My love hadn’t changed. His had faded.

This past year, whenever I asked, the answer was always that the company was busy, he had to socialize, entertain clients.

He’d say, “You’ve worked hard, baby,” but when was the last time he actually warmed up a glass of milk for me?

I believed those pretty words. I genuinely thought I was happy.

Even when I occasionally annoyed him and he grew impatient, I felt vaguely guilty.

But it turns out, between us, it had already become one-sided—me constantly trying to please him.

And those were the two words I used to hate most.

I grew up in an orphanage.

Before I was adopted, I’d seen so many kids in there desperately trying to please the adults.

Back then, I swore I would never be like that.

If someone liked me, fine. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t bother with them.

My adoptive parents later told me, “When we first saw you, we knew right away you were a kid with a strong personality.”

But after three years of marriage, I seemed to have changed a lot.

I withdrew from the company the three of us had founded together.

When Liam said he needed my shares, I didn’t hesitate to transfer them to him.

I settled into being a full-time housewife.

I thought as long as I devoted myself to taking care of our home, it didn’t matter—what was Liam’s was mine.

I was intoxicated by a love that felt blissful.

But that same love blinded me.

When my vision finally cleared, I realized all I had was a handful of bubbles.

The people who truly had my best interests at heart—I hadn’t contacted them in a long time.

I opened my messages.

The last conversation with the contacts saved as “Dad” and “Mom” was back around New Year’s.

When Liam asked me for my shares, they were firmly against it.

But Liam kept stressing how urgent it was, how much pressure he was under.

He kept saying, “We’re a family. If I do well, you’ll do well too.”

I had a huge fight with my adoptive parents over it.

Ignoring their objections, I signed the share transfer agreement.

Looking back now, I was fucking stupid.

That evening, I sat alone in the living room.

Liam texted me, saying there was an urgent contract he needed to sign in the neighboring city.

He wouldn’t be coming home tonight.

I stared at the message for two seconds.

My gut told me he was lying.

Something stirred in me, and I suddenly remembered the place I had by the sea.

He’d worked on a project with a real estate company back then and bought that place for a discounted price, putting it under my name.

Later, when we bought this villa, we followed the idea that each of us would have one property, taking turns staying in them, so that one was under his.

After we got married, he was the one running the company, and I stopped asking about any new properties we bought.

He never mentioned them to me either.

I found the keys.

Following that sudden intuition, I got in the car and drove straight to the coast.

When I arrived, the place was dark.

I didn’t know whether to feel disappointed or relieved.

Since I hadn’t been there in so long, I decided I might as well go in and take a look.

But the moment I opened the door, I froze.

I stood in the doorway for a long time, unable to move.

Was this still my house?

The shoe cabinet by the entrance was lined with several pairs of flashy high heels—thin stilettos I’d rarely worn since getting married.

The soft, understated rugs and curtains I’d picked out myself had all been replaced by pink ones I hated.

Upstairs, the sea-view room I’d reserved for myself to relax in was buried under piles of makeup and other women’s things.

The balcony where I used to stand and feel the sea breeze the instant I opened the door had turned into a dumping ground for delivery boxes.

There was hardly anywhere to step.

My eyes burned red.