Contract Marriage to a Divorced Heiress.

Chapter Two.

High School Sweethearts.

People love a good love story.

They loved ours.

They loved hearing it like it was some kind of fairy tale, how Daniel and I met in High school, how we grew up together, how we stayed together through university, through the distance, through uncertainties, through my grandfather’s illness. They loved saying high school sweethearts, as if, it meant soulmates, loyalty, or destiny.

I used to love it too.

I met Daniel when I was seventeen. I had just moved schools, on transfer. My mum got a new Job so we had to move to the city.

I still remember the day clearly. It was my second week in school, and I still hadn't made any friends. Memories from teenage years always stick sharper than they should. Daniel was leaning against a locker, in the hallway, sleeves rolled up, laughing with his friends like he didn’t have a care in the world. I walked past, shy, books clutched to my chest, head down like I always did.

He called me. "Hey, new girl!"

Not too loudly. Just enough to make me stop.

“You’re always in a hurry,” he said, smiling at me like we already shared something private. “What are you running from?” he said with a friendly grin.

I didn’t know it then, but after that moment, I spent many years, running towards him.

Daniel was charming in that easy, effortless way. He was a people person. Always the lead in a crowd, easy eyes, wide smile, lovely charisma. So it wasn't a big deal that he was the star athlete, class rep, straight-A student, and Head of Student Government.

We became friends naturally, after that day. He'd save me a seat beside him, during classes and lunch. Partner with me during Physics practicals and English presentations. Soon I had other friends too because everyone wanted to be friends with Daniel.

He remembered things very well: my favorite snack, the subjects I hated, and how I liked my tea. He listened when I talked about my family; my dad was dead, I never met him, my Grandfather, who I hadn't seen in years, about the tension between my mum and my Grandfather; he had a powerful and rich company but my mother would rather work for someone else, because he never approved of my dad, about how everyone saw me as a burden.

“You’re more than all of that,” he used to say. “You’re just you.”

I believed him.

When my grandfather fell sick the next year, Daniel was there, holding my hand. When the weight of my family started to crush me, he held my hands and promised he’d never leave. When people whispered about money and power, he swore he didn’t care.

I once asked him why he chose to be nice to me, and he said if he was the new guy, he'd want people to be nice to him too. That's just the kind of person Daniel was. Kind. Thoughtful. Considerate.

“I’d love you even if you had nothing,” he said once. “Even if you lost everything.”

I held onto those words for years. I carried them like armor.

After high school, I moved to live with my Grandfather. He was really sick, and frail. In college, Daniel and I started dating, everyone said it was bound to happen, but Daniel said he liked the long route we took. I was 20, he was 22.

Our relationship had its ups and downs, with distance and social status trying to tear us apart. My Grandfather's company was doing very well, but his health was failing. He begged my mother to come back and run the company, but she refused, so he began to train me to be his heir.

He was very skeptical about Daniel, and even though I told him he was a good man, and he didn't care about our wealth, Grandfather would say, "Money doesn't change people; it reveals who they really are." I never understood what that meant until now.

Grandfather met with Daniel, and he agreed that he was very charming, but he said there was something about him that didn't sit right with him. So he drafted an inheritance document that claimed me as the sole heir and ensured the company always belonged to me. With that, he didn't object to our relationship anymore. My Mother didn't have a problem either.

So we got married, young. Too young, some people said. But I thought that was the point, that we were choosing each other before the world could change us. Before wealth and business and expectations could get in the way.

For a long while, it felt too good to be true. So magical. I married my best friend.

We built a life together. I trusted him with everything, my finances, my secrets, my fears. My dreams.

As the company grew, my grandfather officially named me his successor. Daniel stood behind me, patting my back, smiling proudly at the cameras.

But somewhere along the way, things began to shift.

As we grew, he started caring more about appearances. About what people thought. About being seen as important, or as an equal.

He wanted a bigger house. A faster car. Access to rooms I wasn’t always invited into. He stopped asking how my day was and started asking what deals we were closing.

At first, I told myself it was normal. Marriage changes. People grow. Love adapts.

I ignored the small things.

The way he corrected me in meetings, or spoke over me in public.

The way his gratitude slowly turned into entitlement.

And when I confronted him, when I asked if he still loved me the way he used to, he smiled and said I was imagining things.

“You’re stressed,” he told me. “The company is getting to you.”

So I tried harder.

I worked less. I smiled more. I learned how to shrink myself without realizing that’s what I was doing.

Until the day I overheard him on the phone.

He didn’t know I was home early. I stood at the top of the stairs, my heels in my hand, listening to his voice float up from the living room. Casual. Confident. Cruel.

“She was the best option,” he said, laughing softly. “Young, rich, easy to manage. Don’t act like you wouldn’t have done the same.”

I don’t remember how long I stood there, or if I cried.

I only remember how something inside me went very still.

When I confronted him, he didn’t even deny it. He just looked tired, tired of pretending, tired of being careful.

“Be realistic,” he said. “Do you think I’d still be here if you weren’t who you are?”

That was the moment I knew.

The boy in the hallway.

The promises. The vows.

They weren’t lies, but this wasn't love anymore. They were ambition dressed up as devotion.

But what changed? Or was it all a plot from the very beginning?

When he finally asked for a divorce, it didn’t hurt because I loved him. It hurt because I realized how long I’d been loving alone.

As the car continued down the road, the memory settled heavily in my chest. My driver kept his eyes on the road, quiet. He didn’t know any of this. He didn’t know the story people liked to hear. He didn’t know how ugly it really was.

I glanced at him through the mirror. His expression was calm, unreadable. Steady in a way Daniel never had been.

I looked away quickly.

Love stories, I realized, are only beautiful when you don’t know how they end.

And mine had ended long before I signed those papers.