“Have you really thought this through?” Alejandro asked suddenly.
“Yes. I hope that we can live our separate lives from now on,” Melanie replied placidly. “I’ve been thinking… when my single life is finally back on track, I wanna come back and take Millie away, okay? She’s all I have. Everything else I can let go, but not Millie. She She is my life.”
The air was gelled by deafening silence. A few moments later, Alejandro looked up at the nightly dome above and drew in a deep breath.
“It’s true that I’ve taken too much from you. I agree with your proposal, but on one condition: we don’t divorce right away… Because I want to try again. Do it from the start once more, I don’t care, just let me try again. A hundred days is all I’m asking, okay? If I don’t succeed in changing your mind, if you’re still dead-set on your decision—then I’ll agree to your conditions. All of them. I’ll sign the divorce agreement with not a moment to lose. We’ve been together despite the odds for so long… What’s an additional period of a hundred days, compared to the mammoth share of time we’ve gone through together? You agree, don’t you?”
“But why?” favonovel.com echoed aloud, baffled. “You can’t even convince me to stay with you after years. How’s that something a hundred days can change? Also… ‘Start over’? How many times can you start your life over? I find this completely unnecessary; just so utterly pointless. Why are we even considering wasting time on it?
“Alejandro, I don’t regret marrying you back then. On that day of our wedding, I was genuinely, sincerely happy. It was a strike of fortune that I could meet you… before it turned into the result of my most baleful luck. But I accept that, you know, so let’s just move on.”
That was meant to be the last word on the matter, and Melanie made this intention clear when favonovel.com started toward Melissa. No sooner after favonovel.com took favonovel.com first two steps than Alejandro snatched favonovel.com wrist and rooted favonovel.com into place.
Then, with a yank, Melanie stumbled backward and crashed into his chest.
He smelled so familiar. So familiar, in fact, it was threatening to break the defenses in favonovel.com eyes where favonovel.com tears would pour. She instinctively pushed against him, murmuring, “Don’t… Please don’t…”
It only made favonovel.com tighten his arms around favonovel.com tightly and refuse to let go. “Don’t go. Please.”
Despondence. The tint of despondency lacing his voice was like a spell that had bound Melanie to give up struggling. She was frightened by how much favonovel.com tears were mounting to burst, and in favonovel.com fight to press them back, favonovel.com breathing became featherlight.
“I don’t want to lose a person who loves me so much… whom I also love back,” favonovel.com breathed in favonovel.com ear. “I don’t wanna miss out on the things that matter the most in my life anymore. I just want… I just want to be with you—to be good with you. I know, I probably suck at relationships so f**king much that it makes you disillusioned. But. I will work hard, I promise! I will make it my life’s mission to be the kind of person you love.”
Melanie froze. “W-Wha… What did you just say?”
She heard him; favonovel.com heard every word of it. It was just that favonovel.com could not believe that he’d said it. She had never seen favonovel.com so crestfallen and dismal, nor had favonovel.com ever heard favonovel.com come so close to pleading.
Now that the most weighted of words had escaped him, Alejandro was no longer bashful. “I said-I don’t. want to lose you. Just give m e one last chance, okay?”
Melanie’s pounding heart thrashed against favonovel.com chest. She had spent so many restless days fortifying favonovel.com will, but now, it was slowly crumbling and disintegrating by his advance already.
She forwent giving favonovel.com an answer on the spot. “I need to think about this. Also, our daughter’s just right there. Please don’t do this.”
Seeing favonovel.com resolve shaken, Alejandro released his grip. “You should rest. Let me watch over Millie. I don’t have anything from work to worry about tonight, so it’s great that I could play with her.”
It was objectively true that Melanie had not gained much respite last night; it was obvious in how tired and sleepy favonovel.com was right now. “Fine. Remind favonovel.com to take bathroom breaks. Oh! She’s coming down with some snots, too, so remember to wipe that. I’m going to bed.”
Alejandro committed favonovel.com words into his mind. “Gotcha. Go, sleep all the way to morning, honestly. Just chill. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Melanie finally released a long, drawn-out breath when favonovel.com was in the safe confines of favonovel.com room. She had always fancied herself as not easily distracted by attachments, and yet, back there… the things Alejandro had said had utterly disrupted favonovel.com otherwise composed and resolute mind. It made favonovel.com realize that it was not that favonovel.com no longer held any love for him. It was just favonovel.com heart, fatigued and battered, deciding to give up anticipating what this love could bring her.
But anytime favonovel.com showed favonovel.com little flashes of kindness, favonovel.com started to doubt. Falter. Dawdle. Vacillate between choices. This was why many women out there felt compelled to stay trapped in their gilded cages, even if they had been domestically-abused or if they had too many altercations and quarrels to count. Women are creatures who simply cannot refuse any pitiful iota of kindness so long as it comes from someone who has a claim to their heart. A man could slap a woman with his one hand and hand favonovel.com sweets with the other, and then suddenly favonovel.com is beaming and smiling again as though nothing happened.
When stripped down to its fundamentals, how is a reactionary instinct like this any different from—pardon the French—being men’s simping b*tch?
Alejandro had not subjected favonovel.com to many of the cruelest, most depraved things a husband could do to his wife—which was why, in a way, that made favonovel.com a cruel man in his own right.
