My One Year Husband Wants Me Forever

Chapter 2

FIONA

The day I realized my marriage was a lie started like any other.

For three years, that had been the strange pattern of my life—everything looked normal on the surface, but something underneath always felt wrong.

I just didn’t know how wrong it truly was.

The first person to tell me my marriage was a mistake had been my mother.

Of course, she didn’t say it with concern. She said it with a laugh.

I still remembered the day I brought Tommy home after he agreed to marry me. My mother had looked him up and down slowly, like she was examining something unpleasant.

Tommy stood beside me awkwardly, wearing the same cheap shirt he always wore to work.

“You want to marry him?” she asked.

Her voice dripped with disbelief.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

She turned to my foster father and laughed.

“This boy works for you, doesn’t he?” she said.

My foster father nodded. “He gets something close to the minimum wage at the workshop.”

That only made her laugh harder.

“Fiona,” she said, shaking her head, “you could have chosen anyone. And you chose the poorest man you could find?”

My cheeks burned, but Tommy stayed silent beside me.

I squeezed his hand.

“I don’t care about money,” I said firmly. “I love him.”

My mother rolled her eyes like I had just said something childish.

“Love doesn’t pay bills,” she replied.

But I didn’t listen to her, and that was simply because Tommy had always been kind to me.

Tommy was the only one who spoke to me like I mattered. The only one who didn’t look at my body with judgment or whisper behind my back.

He listened to me. He smiled at me. And when I asked him to marry me, he said yes.

At the time, it felt like the happiest moment of my life.

Our honeymoon should have been perfect.

But even then, something was wrong. The first night, I sat on the hotel bed in my new white nightdress, my heart beating fast.

I had never been intimate with anyone before.

Tommy stood near the door, checking his phone.

“I need to go meet someone,” he said casually.

My smile faded.

“Tonight?”

“It’s just business.”

“But… we just got here.”

He shrugged. “It won’t take long.”

I watched him leave the room.

That night, I fell asleep alone. And it didn’t stop there. For most of the honeymoon, Tommy was gone.

Every time I asked where he was going, he gave another excuse.

“Talking to potential clients.”

“Handling work.”

Once, I asked quietly, “Can I come with you?”

He looked surprised.

“I thought you were tired,” he said.

After that, I stopped asking.

Instead, I focused on helping him. Because if our marriage wasn’t full of love, maybe it could at least be full of success.

And success was something I understood very well.

I had always been good with technology and marketing. Numbers made sense to me. Systems made sense to me.

So I built Tommy’s new business from the ground up.

I designed the website. I ran the marketing campaigns. I created partnerships and strategies. While he handled meetings and appearances, I worked behind the scenes—often late into the night.

Slowly, the company grew. Then it exploded.

Within three years, Tommy became incredibly wealthy. He purchased new cars, a huge house and we went on constant luxury vacations.

People who once mocked him now begged for his attention. And through it all, I stayed beside him, still hoping that one day he would finally look at me with love.

But he never did.

The day everything fell apart started with nausea.

I woke up feeling strange. My stomach churned, and my head felt heavy. After throwing up twice, I decided to visit the hospital. The doctor ran a few tests and told me to rest more.

By the time I returned home, it was early evening, and the house was strangely quiet.

Sighing tiredly, I walked upstairs, heading to the master bedroom to see if Tommy was back.

When I opened the bedroom door, I stopped. The room was a huge mess, especially from the papers that lay all over the place.

I started cleaning automatically.

It had become a habit.

As I lifted a pile of papers from the bedside table, a page slipped out and fell to the floor.

My name caught my eye immediately.

Fiona Pepple.

I bent down and picked it up.

At first, I only skimmed the words, but as I kept reading, my heart skipped a beat.

I read it again. And again.

The words didn’t make sense.

“This document confirms that the ceremonial union between Fiona Pepple and Thomas Markin was never legally registered…”

My hands started shaking.

What?

I flipped through the rest of the papers. The document confirmed that there was no marriage license, no court registration, no legal record.

According to every document in my hands, Tommy and I had never been legally married.

A strange sound escaped my throat. Then I suddenly started laughing uncontrollably.

“This is ridiculous,” I said out loud.

My voice echoed in the empty room.

“It’s a mistake.”

It had to be.

Three years of marriage couldn’t just… disappear.

Still laughing nervously, I gathered the papers and walked downstairs.

That was when the front door opened and voices floated into the house, laughing. My brows furrowed as I heard a woman’s voice.

I stepped into the living room just as Tommy walked in. And beside him was Anna, my sister.

What was going on here?

She was clinging to his arm, her head resting against his shoulder. They were laughing about something until they saw me, and they both froze just as their eyes met mine.

The room suddenly felt very cold.

Slowly, I walked forward and faced Tommy, ignoring Anna who stood stiffly beside him.

The papers trembled in my hand.

“Can you explain this?” I asked.

My voice sounded strangely calm. Tommy glanced at them briefly, then he shrugged.

Anna didn’t even bother looking.

Instead, she crossed her arms and stared at me with the same cold expression she’d had since we were children. And to make it worse, Tommy put his arm around her shoulder while I stared at them in disbelief.

“How long?” I whispered.

Neither of them answered.

My chest tightened.

“How long have you been sleeping together?”

Tommy sighed like I was being annoying.

“A few years,” he said casually.

The room spun.

“A few… years?”

Anna smirked.

“You didn’t actually think he loved you, did you?” she said.

The words hit like knives.

I turned to Tommy.

“Tell me she’s lying.”

He didn’t. Instead, he leaned against the wall lazily.

“You were simply useful,” he said. “And available.”

I felt my insides boil with rage as I listened to him.

“Available?” I asked, keeping my voice down despite the anger I felt. “What do you mean available?”

“I honestly don't have time for explanations right now, Fiona,” Tommy replied, waving his hand dismissively at me. “You already know what it is. I never loved you. My heart belongs to Anna, so yeah maybe you now have the answer to the question you asked earlier.”

His words shattered something inside me, and now, the rage I felt exploded through my chest. My hands were shaking now, and I could feel hot tears burning in my eyes.

Without another word, I grabbed my bag and stormed out of the house, slamming the door shut behind me.