Chapter 4

Gabriella lay in bed, ready to sleep. She was exhausted and forgot it was her husband’s homecoming day. Three years was a long time. Yet for three years, they only spent 36 nights together. If it wasn’t a lonely marriage, there was no other word to describe it. Izaak came out of the bathroom, a towel dangerously hung on his sexy hips. “Have you had dinner?” she politely asked, even though she wasn’t in the right condition to prepare a meal for him. “I’m thinking of a different dinner,” he answered with a hint of playfulness. Gabriella knew what he meant, but she wasn't really in the best mood for his games. “Okay then.” She turned to the other side. Her tired back was facing him. Meanwhile, Izaak cursed under his breath when Gabriella turned her back on him. No other woman would ever want to look away from him, especially when he wasn’t dressed. Only his wife. That frustrated him to the core. He quickly grabbed a shirt and pajama pants from his closet, put them on, and crawled into the bed. Gabriella felt him lay beside her, deeply sinking the mattress on his side. The scent of fresh shower gel made its way into her nose. “Sleeping?” he asked in a husky voice. He didn’t wait for her reply. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him. From a viewer's perspective, they would have looked like a lovely couple cuddling in bed. But the two of them knew it was nowhere near that. His sneaky hand, still cold from the shower, went inside her nightwear. He rubbed her flat abdomen slowly. His big palm slowly traveled up to her breast. Before he could touch her there, Gabriella spoke. “I don’t want to do it tonight. I’m tired.” His hand turned even colder as he brought it back to her stomach. He did what she didn’t expect. He held her shoulder and turned her over. They were facing each other, and Gabriella couldn't look away even if she wanted to because his arm held her in place. “Why? It’s the eighth, that’s why I came home. My parents are nagging me for grandchildren.” “I know. I’m just tired today.” “We’ve been doing this for three years, yet no offspring. Are you sure you calculated your ovulation period correctly? We can change the date. I’ll tell my secretary to change my appointment every month.” Disappointment covered Gabriella’s sensitive heart. She removed Izaak’s hand from her waist. “Ella,” he called her. ‘Ella…’ she repeated in her mind. He was the only person to call her by that nickname. Everyone else called her Gabby. For quite some time, she thought it was a special nickname that led her to believe she was special to him. The next thing he said solidified the fact that she was in delusion. “Without this, I may not come to this house at all.” Gabriella was thankful only the night lamp was on. She didn’t want him to see she was on the verge of crying. “That’s exactly what you said to me on our wedding night. You ditched me that night, and since then, you stuck to your the-eighth-day-of-the-month appointment.” He ran his palm up her forehead to feel her temperature. Gabriella felt her cheeks burn, so she immediately removed his hand. “I’m not running a fever. I’m just tired. Can’t we settle on that already?” “Fine,” he curtly said and turned his back on her. “Guess no baby this month again.” Gabriella didn’t react to his last comment. She rarely said no to him. One good thing, among the few, about him, was that he never forced her to do anything. It didn’t take long for his breath to steady. Unfortunately for Gabriella, she couldn’t sleep at all. She tossed and turned the entire night. She forced herself to sleep, but she couldn’t. Her headache worsened as a result. Her frequent movements had woken up Izaak. He held her waist in place, and in a drowsy tone, he said, “Stop moving and sleep.” Instantly, Gabriella stilled. His warm body wrapped around her strangely calmed her. On the other hand, Izaak felt her stiffen. “If you feel uncomfortable, I can go back tomorrow and do the thing.” In a blink of an eye, Gabriella forgot about the warmth he gave. She became angry inside. He thought of their marriage as just a thing he needed to do. It devastated her. “I can’t sleep,” she plainly said. “If you can’t sleep, at least let me sleep,” he said, half-asleep. At around 4 am, Gabriella was finally able to close her eyes. But she had to wake up at 6. When she woke up, Izaak was gone, and she assumed he had already left the house. That was what he always did. He would come home on the eighth day, sleep with her, hoping she would get pregnant with his child, and then leave first thing in the morning. Dine and dash. Like a one-night stand. Although she married Izaak, she would always be nothing more than a one-night stand for him. She paced towards the bathroom, sleep-deprived and tormented by a splitting headache. She took a quick shower, then sat in front of her vanity mirror to put on light makeup. A pale and haggard reflection stared back at her. She reached for the foundation, but her vision blurred, and her arm lost strength. She hit the glass bottle of perfume. It rolled, dropped on the floor, and shattered into sharp pieces. Completely out of herself, she immediately lowered herself to pick up the broken glasses. She only realized how stupid that was when she cut her fingertips, and the pain awoke her half-asleep mind. “Ah!” The sight of her own blood triggered her bottled-up grievances to blow up to the surface. She hugged her knees and cried loudly, shoulders shaking. Her wails reverberated around the room. Even her own perfume had betrayed her and inflicted pain on her. “Stupid! Stupid!” she scolded herself. “What’s wrong with my life? Why am I so unlucky?”