I didn’t say a word as I opened the photos William had sent me yesterday and showed them to Gideon
The moment he saw the photos, the color drained from his face. He was smart enough to understand everything without me needing to explain.
The more he realized, the paler he became. His body even began to tremble uncontrollably.
After struggling for a moment, he looked up at me. It seemed like he wanted to say something, but no words came out, as if he had lost all strength and means to speak.
He knew me well. He knew that once I found out, I would never marry him.
But he couldn’t accept it. He was so close to getting what he had always wanted, only to lose it like this.
So he forced himself to calm down and looked at me seriously. “Emi, I know I shouldn’t have done something like that before our marriage. But I did it for our future.
“I wanted to fully devote myself to loving you. I wanted us to start our marriage on equal footing, so I made that mistake deliberately.”
He wasn’t trying to make excuses–he truly believed it.
To him, any man would be bothered by the fact that their wife had been with another man before.
If he didn’t resolve that feeling, it would fester and make him even more unable to love wholeheartedly. Especially when the once–burning passion faded into ordinary, daily life, that resentment would only fester.
He didn’t want to lose his love for me because of it.
To him, I had been dazzling in his youth, the person he had wanted most. He wanted to love me for a lifetime after we got
married.
He wouldn’t allow himself to do even the slightest thing that might hurt me after we got married. He wanted our marriage to last forever and not end after just a few years.
That was why he allowed himself to make that mistake the night before we got married. Now that he had a fault of his own, he wouldn’t be bothered by mine anymore.
I had experienced a failed marriage, while he had made a mistake the night before our wedding. I had slept with another man, and he had slept with another woman.
In his eyes, we were now on equal ground. That kind of balance would keep our marriage stable.
“Emi, I did it so I could love you better! We’ve known each other for so many years. You should know I’m not the type to mess around!” he said as he looked at me sincerely.
So sincere that anyone meeting his eyes would believe him. That he had done this in order to love me better.
Maybe he really did believe it and thought he had done it for my sake.
But that only proved how incompatible we were, that we had completely different values.
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