When the Love for Him Fades Away

I turned back to find the source of the voice, but everyone was avoiding my gaze.

I suddenly stopped crying. The bitterness in my heart was also desperately being swallowed down.

They were right, my family was all gone, long dead. But I had known since I was very young what I wanted and I had come this far. Why should I cry?

…

The wedding went smoothly.

Samuel gave me a lot of face and Wina did not reappear. We were like every newlywed couple, inseparable and sweet.

But on our wedding night, we sat on the same bed, silent and avoiding each other's eyes.

When we were in love, I naively thought he would give me a home and I would no longer be exposed to the wind and rain.

Now that I was truly his wife, he didn't even want to look at me.

This vintage wooden bed was the style I told him I liked three years ago. Three years later, everything had changed.

Samuel drank too much and leaned back on the bed.

After some thought, I walked over and helped him take off his jacket.

"Catherine, Catherine, don't leave me..." He stared blankly at the ceiling, tears streaming down his face.

Catherine was my name, Catherine Rick.

As my fingers touched his face, he reached out and grabbed my hand. He slowly looked at me, his eyes wet, his cheeks still flushed.

The next moment, he suddenly sat up and hugged me tightly.

He pushed me against his broad chest and the woody scent from his body instantly filled my nostrils.

He was hugging me so tightly that I could hardly breathe.

"Samuel, I'm not leaving. Never leaving."

Close to me, his warm breath sprayed on my face, tickling me. I tilted my face up towards his lips.

But just as we were about to kiss, his eyes suddenly cleared and he pushed me away heavily.

"You're not the Catherine I know. You are fucking fake, fake!"

Before I could react, he pounced on me and pressed me down on the bed.

His brows were furrowed and his eyes were bloodshot.

He grabbed my neck and roared at me, "Give it back to me! Give me the real Catherine!"

He let go and began to tear the clothes on my chest frantically. "Everything you have is fucking fake, even your feelings are fake. You plotted against me falling in love, plotted against me getting married and the next step is to have a baby? Will having a child finally make you leave me alone?"

I couldn't refute him. What he said was true, yet not entirely.

I let him vent his frustrations on me.

An hour later, blood kept flowing from beneath me uncontrollably.

Seeing me drenched in cold sweat and nearly fainting, he finally realized something was wrong.

I no longer had the strength to respond and slowly closed my eyes. I lost our first and possibly our last, child and it was a man-made accident.

I deceived Samuel once again, calculated against him once more.

I had known for a while that I was pregnant. From the moment I found out, I understood that this child was never meant to be mine.

My body was weak and naturally predisposed to miscarriages, so even if I got pregnant, there was a high chance of a natural miscarriage.

The likelihood of a smooth delivery with both mother and child safe was nearly zero. Given my physical condition, the doctor advised against keeping the baby, as it posed a risk to my own health.

But I insisted on keeping it.

I calculated and created an "accident," hoping that the deeply disappointed Samuel would turn around and feel pity for me.

In the VIP ward, the room was filled with the smell of disinfectant and the monitoring equipment beeped steadily.

Samuel looked at me without saying a word. He clenched his fists, the veins on the back of his hands bulging.

Finally, he spoke, "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were pregnant …"

"It's okay." I interrupted him before he could continue.

"Alright."

He seemed truly remorseful, lowering his head and saying nothing more.

The ward was deathly silent.

I had just adjusted my mood and was about to speak in a light-hearted tone, when his phone rang.

That call seemed like his savior, rescuing him from the suffocating atmosphere and giving him a chance to escape reality.

He left and didn't return for a long time.

At eleven o'clock, he sent me a photo on WhatsApp.

I opened it. It was a photo of him with Wina. The girl was looking at the camera, while he was not. He was drinking with his face turned away.

Two minutes later, another message came in.

[Sorry, sent by mistake.]

In that moment, my heart shattered.

I knew Wina did it on purpose, but I couldn't help but care.

My newlywed husband, drinking and seeking pleasure with another woman right after I lost our child.

From the photo, I saw the bar's logo on the deliberately shown cup and eventually, I found that bar.

When Samuel saw me, he was initially stunned. Then his expression darkened, his brows furrowing and his mouth setting in a hard line.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

His rowdy friends seemed even more brazen under the influence of alcohol. "Yo, Samuel, why did you bring a mom out to play?"

One of them jeered. "Isn't this your Cathy?"

They seemed to have lost their senses, eyes glazed over in a state of euphoria, channeling their jealousy and disdain toward him. A fat guy even reached over and pinched me.

The people around us joined in, shoving Samuel and egging him on. "Call her Cathy! Go on, call her Cathy!"

"Call her Cathy! Call her Cathy!" More and more people closed in on me with malicious intent...