Ignored and Neglected by Her Billionaire Husband (Her Marriage in Crisis #138)

Prologue

Eliza

The shoes are too small.

I knew they would be when I borrowed them from Gabriella’s closet this morning, but she was the only person I knew with white heels, and I wanted white heels for my wedding day. So I shoved my feet into them and told myself I wouldn’t notice once the ceremony started.

I was wrong. I notice every step across this courthouse lobby, a sharp pinch through my pinky toe each time, and by the time we reach the clerk’s office, I’m pretty sure I’m bleeding.

But Gordon is holding my hand, and his palm is sweating, and when I look up at him, he’s staring at the door without blinking, his whole body rigid.

“Hey,” I say.

He doesn’t hear me. His jaw is tight, his shoulders are locked, and he’s wearing a shirt he ironed himself this morning on the floor of our studio apartment because we don’t own an ironing board. The collar is slightly crooked, and I didn’t tell him.

“Gordon.”

He blinks and looks down at me.

“Yeah?”

“You okay?”

He laughs, but it comes out shaky. “I have forty dollars in my checking account.”

“I know.”

“And a maxed-out credit card.”

“I know that too.”

“And I’m about to marry you in a courthouse because I can’t afford literally anything else, and you’re wearing borrowed shoes, and I couldn’t even get you a ring that doesn’t turn your finger green.”

I look down at my hand. The ring is from a pawn shop.

We found it two days ago, buried in a case of old jewelry, and Gordon spent twenty minutes examining it under the light, trying to convince himself it wasn’t completely worthless.

The stone is tiny, and the band is already leaving a faint green shadow on my skin.

I love it anyway.

“Eliza.” His voice cracks. “Your parents are going to kill me.”

“My parents can go to hell.”

“They said you were throwing your life away. They said I was nothing. They said-”

“I don’t care what they said.” I squeeze his hand until he looks at me again.

“I’m here, aren’t I? I drove six hours to get here.

I packed everything I own into two suitcases.

I left my entire family behind because they wouldn’t stop telling me you weren’t good enough, and I am so tired of people who don’t know anything about us deciding what we’re worth. ”

His eyes are wet. He’s trying to hide it and failing.

“I can’t give you anything,” he says. “Not yet. Maybe not for a long time. I have an acceptance letter to a school I can’t afford, and a dream that might not work out, and that’s it. That’s all I have.”

“You have me.”

“Eliza-”

“You have me,” I say again. “And I have you. And that’s enough. It has to be enough, because I didn’t come all this way to turn around.”

The clerk opens the door. She’s a middle-aged woman with reading glasses on a chain around her neck, and she looks at us like she’s seen a thousand couples just like us: young, broke, terrified, convinced that love is enough to build a life on.

Maybe she’s right to be skeptical. Maybe we’re idiots. Maybe my parents are right and I’m making the biggest mistake of my life.

But Gordon is looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters, and I can’t remember the last time anyone looked at me like that.

“Ready?” the clerk asks.

Gordon nods, and I nod, and we walk into the room.

The ceremony takes four minutes. There’s no music, no flowers, no guests. Just us and the clerk and a witness she pulled from the hallway, some guy in a janitor’s uniform who looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.

Gordon says his vows, and his voice shakes the entire time. I say mine, and I don’t realize I’m crying until he reaches up and wipes my cheek with his thumb.

“I pronounce you husband and wife,” the clerk says. “You may kiss the bride.”

He kisses me. It’s not a long kiss, or a particularly graceful one. We bump noses, and he laughs against my mouth, and I laugh too, and the janitor clears his throat, and none of it matters because we did it. We actually did it.

“Hey,” Gordon says, pulling back just far enough to look at me.

“Hey.”

“I need you to know something.”

“Okay.”

He takes my face in his hands. His palms are still sweating, and his eyes are still wet, and he’s looking at me with so much intensity that I forget to breathe.

“You’re never gonna be invisible to me,” he says. “Not ever, okay? That’s the deal. I don’t care if we’re broke for the rest of our lives. I don’t care if we never leave that shitty apartment. You’re never going to wonder if I see you, because I do. I always will. That’s the deal.”

I believe him.

I believe him with everything I have.

“That’s the deal,” I repeat, and I kiss him again, and the clerk tells us we need to clear the room for the next couple, and we stumble out into the hallway laughing, and I don’t think about my parents or the borrowed shoes or the ring that’s already turning my finger green.

I just think about him.

I don’t know that eleven years later, I’ll be wearing these same shoes in a house I don’t recognize, married to a man I can’t reach, and so invisible I can’t even get past security at his company event.

I don’t know that the deal will break.

I don’t know anything except that he’s holding my hand, and he’s looking at me like I’m everything, and for now, that’s enough.

“That’s the deal,” he says again, and he kisses me like it’s a promise.

It is.

He just won’t keep it.