The Billionaire's Disposable Husband

“For five years, I was the perfect husband to a woman who didn't love me. It was a contract. I was hired to help the broken heiress, Jorja Romero, heal after her fiancé left her. In return, her family funded my art, but the price was my dream-a scholarship to study painting in Paris. With only two months left on our contract, the man she never got over came back. Overnight, the fragile peace we'd built vanished, and I became invisible. At dinner, a sizzling platter of fajitas fell towards her. I threw my arm out to block it, the scalding metal searing my skin. Jorja barely glanced at my blistering arm. Instead, she rushed to her ex-fiancé, Cale, panicking over a single drop of hot oil that had splattered on his finger. On my birthday a week later, she tossed me a tube of burn cream-the same one she'd obsessively bought for Cale's tiny red mark. At a party, she took the cufflinks she once gifted me and told Cale they'd look much better on him. I had spent five years memorizing her favorite foods, comforting her through nightmares, and being her constant, silent shadow. I thought my devotion might one day be enough. But I was wrong. I wasn't her husband; I was a placeholder. The night before her engagement party to Cale, she stumbled into my room, drunk. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her lips to mine. Then she whispered the name that destroyed the last piece of my heart. "Cale... I missed you so much." In that moment, something inside me didn't just break; it was reborn in ice. The next morning, I handed her the divorce papers she would sign without reading, and booked my one-way ticket to Paris.”