The Love I Begged For Was Never Real novel Chapter 22

The door slammed shut in Nora's face.

Drained of all her strength, she collapsed onto the sofa, the tears she had held back finally spilling over.

It was always like this.

No matter what happened, even if the sky were falling, one call from Giselle meant Gideon would drop her without hesitation.

She remembered their first New Year's Eve as a married couple. The two families had history, but after his grandfather passed, their connection had faded.

That night, Gideon had promised to join her at the Xavier family dinner. Nora had prepared gifts early and even cooked a few of her best dishes to bring along.

But just as they were pulling up to the estate, he got a call from the Manor. Giselle had accidentally burned her hand on a sparkler and was crying for him.

Without a word of explanation, Gideon had pulled a U-turn at the next intersection and sped off.

"Go back by yourself and apologize to your parents for me. Giselle burned herself; I have to take her to the hospital."

Nora had stood outside her family's home for a long time, holding the carefully prepared gifts.

The winter wind had been biting cold. As fireworks popped and houses glowed with warmth, she had felt like a wandering ghost with nowhere to go.

That night, under her parents' disappointed, questioning stares, she had forced a smile and lied that he was pulled away on an urgent business matter.

Then there was their second anniversary.

Knowing he didn't care about the milestone, Nora had still stubbornly booked a table at a high-end restaurant just to share a meal with him. She waited three hours, her food turning ice-cold, before he finally showed up.

He sat down and his first words were, "Sorry, Giselle's cat got lost. I had to help her look for it."

He hadn't even asked how long she'd been waiting, nor did he explain why he didn't call ahead.

Taking advantage of his seemingly good mood later, she gathered her courage and handed him a small polaroid of herself while he was reading. "Gideon, could you... put a photo of me in your wallet too?"

He had looked up from his documents, eyeing her with a baffled, alien expression, as if she were making an utterly unreasonable demand.

"Sorry, I'm not used to that."

He rejected her flat out.

"But you have a picture of your sister..." Nora pressed, unwilling to let it go.

"Except for Giselle, I don't carry pictures of anyone."

He wasn't "used to" carrying his wife's photo, but he made his non-biological sister his screensaver, looking at her a hundred times a day.

The photo meant for his wallet was quietly fed into a paper shredder.