Dangerous Love: You Are My One and Only Bride novel Chapter 1773

As her eyes grazed her daughter’s profile, beads of tears fell from Melanie’s eyes. “Millie, my sweet girl… Will you blame your Mommy for leaving you and your Dad one day? Mommy’s sorry, but she just doesn’t think she will find happiness in her life here. I want to try another way, a different life. But know that your Mommy won’t go far from you, and all of my love is always for you. When Mommy finally finds her footing while she lives alone, when she finally has surplus money, I’ll come and try talking your Dad into releasing you into my care, okay? Mommy really wants to bring you with her; it’s just that there’s too many uncertainties…”

Melissa’s little hand reached out to her mother’s cheek before wiping the tears away. “Mommy, what’s ‘happiness’?” she asked innocently. “Is it very big and important?”

Melanie found herself grasping at air for an answer. Is happiness ever “big and important”? She did not know; heck, she did not even know what it meant to be happy—it was cryptic, almost enigmatic, and difficult to be expatriated through words and descriptions.

The only thing Melanie knew she could explain, though, was that the life she was in right now was… depressing. Every early morning, Alejandro rose, went to work, and left Melanie alone at home to care for the kid. She was never a Capital native and she did not know anyone here; she spent most of her life in Ayashe before her marriage, and the only friends she had made here were Arianne and Tiffany. She watched her life waste away, day by day, in this claustrophobic little cage.

If he loved her—if he truly loved her, then all this… she could endure. Love was often a panacea to the malaise of mundanities, but Melanie could not even get that from him. Because of him, she left the city she grew up in and confined herself at home to be the perfect, textbook-good wife—it was being wrapped tightly in a thick, black shroud so fitting that it left not a slit for air to come in. It blindfolded her from the vibrant colors outside. It gave her no taste of his warmth or affection. It almost asphyxiated her.

Melanie had gone through many nights to understand the extent of her tragedy. And yet, she could not figure out why he refuses to let her go.

Her heart was against her squandering the remainder of her wasted life here; she wanted to be free from her chains, and she wanted that freedom to be extended to him. The only thing that could have made her abandon everything she had thought of in a heartbeat was if he tells her that he did, indeed, love her.

That hope dashed on that fateful day when Tiffany’s incident happened. His every act and reaction on that day was a painful wake-up call. She was forced to reckon with the cold, hard fact that claiming a person’s heart—especially one that had long been possessed by another woman—was a moiling task.

With Melissa slumbering in her arms, Melanie sat on the living room couch downstairs until it was one in the morning when she finally heard Alejandro’s car steering into the front yard.

It was the middle of a quiet night. The sound of car tires against the pavement was jarring and sharp, which immediately perked Melanie up. When she saw Jett helping a drunken Alejandro into the door, her habit kicked in, causing her to put Millie down to better help care for him.

A millisecond later, she stopped herself. This was what Melanie liked to do, was it not? She was always attentive to his every detail, taking great pains over his every need; it had become her habit. But what about him? He never did the same for her. To him, Melanie was a baby-pumping machine, a nonliving object that never required maintenance such as love and compassion.