The day his first love got divorced, my husband drank himself senseless.

I stayed up past midnight taking care of him, only to discover that his phone’s photo album was filled with pictures of her.

The next morning, after he sobered up, he said to me, “Let’s redo our wedding.”

I knew this was his way of provoking his first love into coming back.

I smiled and agreed, but not before I slipped a divorce settlement agreement into the wedding contract he signed.

"Why is the wedding contract so thick?" Max Curtis asked with a frown. He flipped through the pages one by one, yet never put pen to paper.

As one of Riverport's most well-known business elites, he wasn't a man easily fooled.

On the second-to-last page was the divorce settlement agreement I had secretly slipped in.

I kept my head down. I didn't feel very nervous.

"There seems to be a lot of settlement terms. If you have time, you can read through them slowly," I said.

He wouldn't have time.

Today was the day his first love, Sandra Lynch, returned to the country.

Back then, when Sandra got engaged, he married me in a fit of anger.

Now, Sandra was divorced. He drank himself senseless, and once he sobered up, he asked me to redo our wedding.

It was nothing more than a way to provoke Sandra into coming back.

My marriage was just a prop in their game.

Sure enough, the impatience on Max's face was obvious.

"I need to head out to pick someone up. I don't have time to read all this."

A trace of tenderness flickered through his eyes.

The impatience was for me, while the tenderness was reserved for Sandra alone.

He hurriedly signed on the pages and left.

Three days ago, Max suddenly brought up the idea of redoing the wedding.

We had been married for five years. There was no grand ceremony nor a public announcement.

Only our parents and closest friends knew about it.

Even in media reports, Max was always introduced as a bachelor.

Any gossip columns talked only about his tragic, obsessive love story with Sandra.

As his wife in a secret marriage, I didn't even qualify to have my name mentioned.

Truthfully, I had always known that Max was obsessed with his first love.

In our five years of marriage, he showed me some tenderness, but never much.

I tried to make him grow used to my presence through love, but I never once saw him smile in this house.

Until that day.

The man, who never drank, got drunk out of his mind and couldn't stop smiling.

I quietly asked around and found out Sandra had gotten divorced. I took care of him until midnight, then used Sandra's birthday to unlock his phone.

I opened the photo album. It was almost full.

Every photo was of Sandra.

There wasn't a single one of me.

The cover photo of the digital album was our wedding picture, but my face had been photoshopped into Sandra's.

I recalled how Max refused to hold a wedding when we registered our marriage, yet insisted on taking wedding photos.

So that was why.

At that moment, I finally understood that this five-year marriage had reached its end.

All that remained was us going through the process.

There was a countdown of one month.

Coincidentally, the wedding Max promised to redo for me was also exactly one month away.

With 20 days left, Max started leaving early and coming home late more often than before.

The wedding he once promised seemed like it didn't even exist.

Occasionally, I saw posts from his friends. In the corner of their photos, he was always next to a woman.

I had already seen her face countless times in his phone's photo album.

One day, one of my company's partners stopped me.

"Bring the design drafts later. We're going to the client's office to sign the contract. I hear the client is none other than Mr. Curtis' rumored lover."

I nodded in a daze.

Although they were my partners, none of them knew that Max and I were acquainted, much less that I was secretly married to him.

The client's office was located right downstairs from Max's company.

I knew this was the new company Sandra had founded after returning home. It was backed by an investment from Curtis Group.

Lately, financial news had been hyping up the old love story between the two of them.

When we entered the CEO's office, Max was there. No surprises.

He was holding an exquisitely wrapped box and handing it to the woman seated in the CEO's chair, Sandra.

The moment Max saw me, his expression froze.

Everyone in the room sensed something was off.

Sandra's gaze landed on me. A hint of amusement flickered in her eyes.

"Who's this?"

Max fell silent, as if weighing how to explain.

I smiled and introduced myself calmly.

"My name is Nicole Carroll. I'm the designer for this project. Mr. Curtis and I are…"

Max spoke at the exact same time as I did.

"College classmates."

The moment the words came out, my grip on the design drafts tightened. My knuckles turned white as the paper creased.

This wasn't the first time I had covered for Max. It also wasn't the first time he chose not to make our relationship public.

That was what a secret marriage really meant. It hid our relationship while confirming the ending we were always headed toward.

The rest of the business meeting went poorly.

Max slipped seamlessly back into his role as a ruthless business elite, representing Sandra as he pressed us aggressively during negotiations.

"Lower the price another ten percent."

He forced our profits and bottom line to the absolute limit.

After a moment of hesitation, my partner clenched his jaw and agreed. "Fine. Mr. Curtis, you certainly live up to your reputation. You saw right through our bottom line."

Max looked away and didn't dare to look at me.

The rumors were true. This man was ruthless.

Only this time, he turned on his own lawfully wedded wife.

Sandra hadn't spoken a word. She only smiled as if nothing mattered to her.

She then reached out to open the box on the table.

"Everyone, have some cake."

Unexpectedly, Max, who had been calm throughout the negotiations, snatched the box away.

"Sandra, don't touch it. You're allergic to peanut butter. Let me check first."

Witnessing that scene was painful for me.

Despite five years of being married, Max had forgotten both our wedding anniversary and my birthday. Even when I reminded him about something, he'd nonchalantly forget it completely.

Yet, he always remembered that I was allergic to peanut butter.

I had once secretly felt relieved, telling myself that maybe while every other detail proved he didn't love me, this one thing showed a hint of care.

I finally understood why.

Even that hint of care was a lie.

The project progressed quickly, but Max thought it wasn't fast enough.

More than once, he emphasized to my partner, "This is Sandra's first project since returning home. I don't want it to fail."

I watched the whole thing with growing detachment.

When we got home after the negotiations ended that day, Max lingered on the couch for a long time.

In the end, he finally explained, "We're still secretly married, after all. I just haven't found the right chance to explain yet."

"Someday, we'll make it public," Max said. "For now, our top priority is still handling this project."

I nodded, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

I didn't remind him that the real priority seemed to be the wedding that was just around the corner.

I also didn't remind him that on that very day, the divorce cooling-off period would end.

After all, in his eyes, Sandra still mattered most.

Throughout the project, Max's deliberate efforts to avoid situations where I might run into Sandra didn't go unnoticed by my partner.

Curious for gossip, she asked me, "Did you and Mr. Curtis have something going on in the past?"

I smiled. "How could that be?"

She smiled. "He's stolen a few looks at you. Those really guilty ones. It's the look of a man who isn't a complete jerk. He still stares at an ex he hasn't gotten over."

I froze for a moment and thought back carefully.

It wasn't that I hadn't noticed. It was just that everything in the past made it impossible for me to trust what I saw in his eyes.

Ten days left for the countdown.

Today, there was supposed to be a routine project meeting.

Sandra, intentionally or not, chatted with me for quite a while. I knew she had probably guessed the nature of my relationship with Max.

I responded politely, as always.

After the meeting, Max unexpectedly offered to drive me home.

It was the first time.

"Your professional ability really exceeded my expectations."

In five years of marriage, it was the first time Max had ever praised me.

My hands paused while I was packing up the documents. I looked at him in confusion.

Max hesitated for a long time before finally speaking. "Is it still possible to redo the wedding?"

I lowered my head. I knew he probably wanted to cancel it.

It was most likely because of Sandra.

"Let's cancel it. There aren't that many days left, anyway," I said. I looked up at him; I didn't call him out, unwilling to make things awkward.

Max stared at me in stunned silence. It was as if he had received an answer he never expected.

He then asked abruptly, "Don't you care at all?"

Fair enough. If this had happened in the past, I might have lost control on the spot and demanded an explanation.

Many moments of humiliation in our marriage had come from me losing my composure, even though every one of them had been caused by him.

I shook my head.

"What's there to care about? It's just a ceremony."

After a long silence, Max took the initiative to speak.

"What if I take you to an old city nearby for a getaway in a few days?"

I glanced at the countdown on my phone. There were ten days left while we were going through the process, so I declined.

I declined.

His hands on the steering wheel stiffened. He nearly ran a red light at the intersection.

"What about the beach? Or that restaurant you've always wanted to try?"

Max suggested several more ways to relax, but I turned each one down.

By the time we got out of the car, his expression had shifted from awkwardness and guilt to confusion and displeasure.

Seeing his expression, I spoke up first.

"How about we go see the old house?"

The old house was where Max and I lived when we first got married. I really did miss it a little.

Max froze for a long while. He was trying to guess my intentions.

Even after I got out of the car, he stayed seated inside. He sat there for a long time.

Finally, only one day was left as we were going through the process.

Perhaps some unspoken understanding had formed. Max and I rarely appeared together at project meetings anymore.

Occasionally, when Sandra wasn't around, Max would suddenly come downstairs. He wouldn't speak at the meeting. He would just sit there and look at me from time to time.