He was the one who stared at me with bloodshot eyes and said my name, over and over, and swore he was going to marry me.
I thought my secret crush had finally, impossibly, come true. I thought the alcohol had loosened the truth from his lips.
I asked him if he knew who I was.
He said my name. Clear as day.
But the morning after the wedding, he was a different person.
"Ella, a marriage you schemed your way into. Did you really think there'd be love?"
After that, he told the world he gave me five million a month.
The truth was that card had a fifty-dollar limit, and anything over required an eight-hundred-word written request.
For me, he wouldn't approve thirty dollars' worth of cold medicine.
And him? He lavished everything on his obsession.
Thirty million dollars to make her smile, without so much as a blink.
My life, my family's lives, weren't worth fifty dollars in his eyes.
"Chester Henson, you have the nerve to bring up that night?"
"Let me make something clear. You were the one who grabbed onto me. You were the one who called my name, said you wanted to marry me. I never begged you for anything!"