He stopped being gentle. Stopped remembering what I liked. Stopped spending time with me. He could barely stand to look at me. I didn't understand. I racked my brain trying to figure out what I'd done wrong, why he'd become this stranger. I asked him, begged him to explain, but he never gave me a reason. He just looked at me with cold, distant eyes—like I was no one. Like I was nothing.
A year into our marriage, I got pregnant with twins. I thought the babies might bring him back to me, might restore what we'd had, might make us a real family.
I was wrong.
After that, Max only got worse. He stayed out every night—drinking, partying, never coming home. He paraded Gretchen around openly, his precious first love, showing her off at every event without a shred of shame. He didn't care about my feelings. He didn't care that his pregnant wife was watching.
I confronted him. I screamed, I cried. Every photo of them together, every whispered rumor, cut me like a knife. I sobbed and demanded to know why—why he was doing this to me, why he'd forgotten every promise he'd made, why he was betraying everything we had.
Max just stared at me, cold and mocking, like I was some raving lunatic.