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It wasn’t exactly love, not in the way she’d grown up hearing about it. Like every little girl, she’d held the fantasy of marrying a handsome prince close in her heart, dreaming of the man that would someday fill that role in her life.
But things changed. As she got older, she learned what her family’s money could buy her, and what her looks could get her for free. The little girl who dreamed of a prince grew into a woman who didn’t deserve one.
There was a certain irony to him. He was a prince—an actual prince—though certainly not the one she’d fantasied about. But he was the one she deserved.
They weren’t in love, not really. He protected her like he would a prized possession, not because he saw value in her, but because she was his. She bore his children, not conceived from an overflow of love, but because they were just as much hers as they were his. They had a silent agreement, one that bound them in peaceful coexistence for years: permission to use the other and to be used by the other.
But there were glimpses, every now and again, of that agreement being broken. The silent breakfasts he made for them both when she’d had a late night. The hours she spent calibrating new machines to help him train. The way she slid her hand into his, or he set a gentle hand on her back, with nothing to say except, I’m here.
It wasn’t love, not exactly, not really. Their devotion to each other spanned only the length of their unspoken agreement. Anything more was simply a breach of contract.