A Heart That Won’t Return

On my wedding day, Steven Cole didn't come.
He just had a friend deliver a card with a generous amount of cash inside.
I laughed it off. He's an ex to both of us. Why play favorites?
The rumor was, when Stevens first love got married years ago, he not only sent an extravagant gift but also showed up in person to congratulate her.
As the reception was winding down, I glanced up and saw a familiar silhouette flicker in the window of the second-floor VIP lounge.
My husband, Chad, came over and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. His tone was light. "Thank God that's over. You have no idea how terrified I was that Steven would show up and crash the wedding."
I chuckled. "As if."
"You didn't see it? He viewed our digital invitation 1,032 times. Just him."
I paused. My gaze dropped. "It doesn't matter," I said softly. "None of that matters anymore."

1
Chad Felbain and I had a marriage of convenience.
We were around the same age, with similar histories. Wed known each other for years and had a mutual respect for each others character. And, as it happened, we both needed to get married.
It was a perfect match.
On our wedding night, Chad asked if I was open to consummating the marriage.
I met his gaze with a playful smile. "I didn't exactly get married to become a nun."
He was a gentleman, always considerate of my feelings.
The lights went out, the kiss happened, but just before the final moment, he asked, "When you see me, do you think of Steven?"
After all, he and Steven used to be best friends.
I closed my eyes, my arms around his shoulders, and countered, "When you see me, do you think of Camilla?"
Id never met Camilla Reed, but from what Chad had mentioned, his ex-girlfriend was stunning.
Chad fell silent.
Thinking Id touched a nerve, I quickly apologized. "I'm sorry. Just pretend I never asked that."
He stroked my hair, his voice softening into a gentle laugh. "You don't need to apologize."
He looked at me, his expression suddenly serious. "Elara, let's make this work. A real life together. For the rest of our lives."
I nodded. "Okay."
After a moment, I added, "We'll both give it our best. But if the day ever comes when you want a divorce, you have to tell me."
The most important clause in our prenuptial agreement was honesty.
Love wasn't a requirement for our marriage. Respect was.
Once youre past the age of believing love can conquer all, you realize that all that dramatic, all-consuming passion is overrated.
I believed I deserved to be happy, even if my marriage didn't have love.

2
My marriage to Chad was more pleasant than I could have imagined.
He was a thoughtful man. He paid attention to my tastes, surprising me with little gifts. The day his salary hit his account, he transferred it all to me without a second thought.
His habits were so uncannily similar to Steven's that I didn't know whether to praise their shared history as best friends or to praise the ex-girlfriends who had trained them so well.
I accepted the transfer, kept a portion for our joint expenses, and sent the rest back to him.
He looked at me, confused. "What's this?"
"This is a partnership, not a hostile takeover. I'm not going to manage your finances."
"Besides, you have your own life, friends, work dinners. It's a pain to have to ask me for money every time."
"I have a separate account we barely use. Let's both deposit a set amount into it each month for household expenses and social obligations."
Chad didn't argue. He just nodded. "Okay."
Occasionally, he'd come home late from a work function, drunk and draped over a colleague, clinging to me like a koala when I opened the door.
Id play the part of a good wife: helping him with his shoes and clothes, wiping his face, brewing a hangover remedy.
He would cling to my hand, his voice a tender, drunken slur, repeating my name over and over. "Elara Elara Elara."
And I would answer every time, patiently. "I'm here. I'm here. I'm here."
Because we weren't in love, we never fought.
Those small moments of warmth and happiness grew into something elsea blend of familial affection and deep friendship. It wasn't love, but it felt more solid, more dependable.
I didn't have to worry if my husband loved me or someone else. I didn't have to second-guess a lipstick stain on his collar, wondering if it was a careless mistake or a deliberate betrayal.
When you remove love from the equation, you find you have so much more room for peace.
The next morning, Chad woke up and explained why hed been so drunk, thanking me for taking care of him.
"I used to feel awful the morning after drinking, but today I feel great." He waved his arms and kicked his legs in amazement, his face a mask of pure admiration. "It's a miracle."
"Steven used to go to a lot of work dinners. Hed always be miserable the next day. I felt bad for him, so I asked around and learned all the tricks for taking care of someone whos had too much."
Chad paused for a beat. "You really learned a lot for him."
I shrugged, feigning indifference. "It's nothing. You learned plenty of ways to be considerate for your girlfriend, didn't you? We're both just reaping the benefits of what our exes sowed."
Chad benefited from my care, and I benefited from his thoughtfulness.
People aren't born knowing how to love. We learn through a series of relationships, meeting different people, discovering different ways of being together. The irony is that we learn from our failed relationships and become better people, but we rarely get the chance to go back and fix our past mistakes.
Both Chad and I were deeply marked by the ghosts of our exes.
"Do you think of Steven often, when you look at me?" Chad asked.
I admitted it freely. "Sometimes. You have some of the exact same habits."
"Like what?"
"Like transferring your salary, the goodbye kiss before work every morning, the surprise flowers." I smiled. "Your ex-girlfriends must have really valued the little things."
Chads lips thinned, but he said nothing.
"Oh, by the way, that lipstick stain on your shirt last night" I started, watching his reaction carefully. "Let me be clear, I'm not accusing you of anything. But we agreed before we got married: no hiding your feelings."
I had told him explicitly that I wouldn't mind if he developed feelings for someone else.
My only condition was honesty. A divorce isn't a small thing; it involves two families. I needed to be prepared.
"Don't overthink it. The lipstick was an accident." For the first time, he frowned at me. "I swear, I'm completely innocent."
He launched into a frantic, detailed explanation of how it happened, practically offering to cut his heart out to prove his sincerity. He was so panicked I would misunderstand.
He was still explaining long after I'd tuned out.
Finally, I had to surrender. "Okay, okay, I believe you! Really, I do!"
Before he left for work, Chad did his usual routine, cupping my face for a goodbye kiss.
But instead of the light, fleeting touch it usually was, today's kiss was heavy, charged with a suppressed intensity.
He gave my cheek a playful, almost frustrated nip. "From now on, I'm not kissing you. You have to kiss me."
His tone held a rare, childish pout.
I glanced at him, surprised, then remembered what I'd said earlier. It clicked.
Even though I was truly over Steven, he was still my ex. He had left a deep and undeniable mark on my life. I probably shouldn't have brought him up so casually in the context of my marriage to Chad.
Chad, after all, was always careful. He never brought up his ex.
In that, I was wrong.
So, I followed his new rule. I stood on my toes and gave him a firm, deliberate kiss on the lips, a silent apology.

3
I started noticing more and more things about Chad that were different from Steven.
And the less I thought of Steven, the more Chad came into focus.
Time flew. A year passed since our wedding.
I knew Chad would have a surprise planned for our anniversary, so I told my colleagues I was leaving early. Relationships are a two-way street. He was good to me, and I wanted to be good to him.
What I didn't expect was to find Steven Cole waiting for me outside my office building.
A good ex should be like a dead person: gone and silent. Even with our tangled history, I never planned on seeing him again. Putting myself in someone else's shoes, I knew I wouldn't have wanted Steven to stay in touch with his ex, so I assumed his new girlfriend wouldn't want him in touch with me.
"Long time no see," Steven said, breaking the silence.
I nodded but didn't slow my pace.
"In a hurry? Rushing home to celebrate your anniversary with Chad?" he asked, a tight smile on his face.
"I am," I said, meeting his eyes without flinching. "So I don't really have time to catch up."
He hadn't expected me to be so direct. A flicker of pain crossed his face before he forced the smile wider. "No rush. I don't think Chad will have time to celebrate with you today."
"Is that so?" I said, unconcerned.
He stepped in front of me, blocking my path. "Wait."
I sighed, exasperated, and finally stopped. "Steven, what do you want?"
"Aren't you curious why Chad doesn't have time for you on your anniversary?"
"Not really. If he can't make it, he'll tell me why himself."
Steven's jaw tightened. "You trust him that much?"
"I do," I said, my voice steady. "The same way I used to trust you." I watched the color drain from his face, surprised that I felt no satisfaction, only a hollow ache.
"Whatever Chad's reason is for breaking our date, I doubt it could possibly hurt more than the day I walked in and found you in bed with your first love."

4
Steven and I broke up right before our wedding.
The fallout was messy, but our actual breakup was quiet.
I had always known about his first love, the one hed been with for ten years. I knew they hadn't broken up because they fell out of love. Her parents thought his family wasn't wealthy enough and forced her to marry some rich heir.
It would be a lie to say it didn't bother me, but I loved Steven, so I accepted it.
And Steven was genuinely good to me.
All his passwords were my birthday. He pinned my chat to the top of his contacts. He filled our life with thoughtful, romantic gestures. He worked long hours, but from the day we moved in together, he always tried to pick me up from work. He wasn't a great cook, but he had mastered the few dishes I loved.
He had so many good qualities, enough to make a naive girl like me fall headfirst into a sweet trap with no hope of escape.
We were together for three years and never had a real fight. The occasional disagreement was always resolved with a calm, rational conversation.
I used to think that was just his personality. That I was the luckiest girl in the world to have found such a perfect man.
Only later did I understand. The reason he was so good, so perfect, was simple.
He didn't love me.
Love, in its true form, is ugly and blind. It makes you crazy. It fills you with jealousy and envy. It drives you to do irrational things.
But not Steven.
He was always patient, always understanding.
And always, just out of my reach.

5
The first time I felt like I saw the real Steven was the day his first love got divorced.
He came home late from work that night, his mood heavy. I thought hed had a bad day at the office, so I tried everything to cheer him upa massage, a back rub.
He forced a smile for me, but it never lasted long.
He was silent when we went to bed, holding me tight, his mind a million miles away.
"What's wrong?" I asked softly, running my fingers through his hair.
He pulled me closer, his voice muffled. "Nothing."
"Really?" I didn't believe him for a second.
"Really," he insisted, placing a kiss on my forehead. "Go to sleep. Good night."
I was worried about him, and my sleep was restless.
I woke up in the middle of the night to find him sitting on the windowsill, his back to me, the screen of his phone casting a pale blue light on his face.
A womans intuition is a powerful thing.
The next morning, while Steven was in the shower, I unlocked his phone.
And I saw the message from his ex.
[I'm divorced.]
Steven hadn't replied, but I wasn't naive enough to think it hadn't affected him. It was the reason for his mood, his sleepless night. I knew they had ten years of history between them. His entire youth was painted with her shadow. It would be unreasonable to expect him to feel nothing.
I told myself to be understanding.
But a part of me couldn't help the bitter thought that while everything with him was a first for memy first time holding hands, my first hug, my first kissI was not his first.
All the wonderful ways he treated me were habits hed learned with her.
It felt like once you left your school days behind, every person you fell in love with carried the imprint of their ex.
But Steven and I were about to get married. Both our families approved. We were already looking at houses.
I suppressed the sour feeling in my stomach and decided to give him some time to process it.
I was so naive back then.
I thought everyone neatly closed the door on one relationship before starting another. I never, ever considered that Steven and I would break up.
But I didn't know that so many people walk forward while constantly looking back, hurting the person beside them and the one they left behind.

6
Steven wouldn't let me leave. We were near my office, and the last thing I wanted was to cause a scene.
So I got in his car.
The moment I sat in the passenger seat, I froze.
I had spent three years in this car. I had picked out all the decorations myself. The two smiling bobbleheads on the dashboard were still there. The air freshener was still the scent Id chosen. Even the recline of the passenger seat was exactly as I had left it.
I didn't feel nostalgic. I just felt amused.
Why do people only start to appreciate what they had after it's gone?
"You know Camilla Reed, right?" Steven said, handing me a thick stack of photos. "She's back in the country."
"Oh?"
"From what I hear, Chad and Camilla have been seeing a lot of each other. Looks like they might be rekindling an old flame."
"So? What does that have to do with you?"
"Of course it has to do with me!" His voice suddenly rose with agitation. "If you can forgive Chad, why couldn't you forgive me?"
"Because my expectations for you were too high. I couldn't accept the reality of your betrayal." I gathered the photos and looked at him, my voice calm. "Do you know? When I was with you, the thought of breaking up never once crossed my mind."
"I loved you. And I truly believed that you loved me back."
"Every single day I was with you, I was happy."
"I loved the way you smelled, the feeling of safety in your arms, the simple act of walking side by side with my hand on your arm."
"My devotion to you was almost blind."
"But you, Steven, you destroyed every bit of trust I had in love and marriage."
"You turned all my commitment, all my joy, into a joke."
"Today, if Chad really is cheating on me, anyone in the world has the right to stand here and condemn him for hurting me."
"Anyone but you, Steven. You don't have that right."
"No man will ever hurt me more than you did."

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