Page 4 of Ugly Duckling (Content Advisory #6)

One

It is what it is, and it’s not that great.

—Sutton’s secret thoughts

SUTTON

Three years ago

“Today’s your day, bestie.” Rocky smiled.

Today I got married to a man who was not the love of my life, but the one man who treated me somewhat good.

I loved him.

Not in a great love kind of way, but in a steady, this is all I’m going to get kind of way.

I know that sounded bad, but we both knew what this was.

A marriage of convenience.

We got along, and we were mostly good friends.

He wasn’t my best friend—Rocky still held that honor—but he was good to me.

He could be kind of a jerk, at times. But what man wasn’t?

“Let’s do this,” I grumbled.

I had a bad feeling about this day, though.

A premonition that I should’ve probably listened to.

I should love this man with my whole heart.

I should be excited to marry him.

I should be a lot of things, but I was none of those things.

The ceremony itself was uneventful.

We got married, he kissed me, and we went to our reception.

I was in a thousand yards of tulle and lace, and we were about to cut the cake.

“Jackson,” I said carefully. “Please don’t shove my face into this cake.”

His eyes twinkled. “I would never.”

“I’m serious,” I reiterated. “Please, please don’t do that. I don’t want wedding cake in my face. They spent an hour on my makeup.”

He snorted. “Why did they bother?”

My stomach sank.

He was always making those passive-aggressive comments.

I looked away to blink away the tears that immediately gathered in my eyes.

“Time to cut the cake!” Rocky cried out.

I turned to get a glimpse of Jackson staring at Rocky longingly.

I knew he thought she was gorgeous—she was. But he didn’t have to be so obvious about it.

For the fourth time since I’d officially tied my name to his, I asked myself what the hell I was doing.

I shouldn’t have married him.

But it was done now.

I couldn’t take it back.

Jackson caught my hand and pulled me to the table where our huge, four-tiered cake sat.

“Ohh, this smells good,” Jackson said.

I shouldn’t have fallen for it.

But, like the complete imbecile that I was, I bent down to get a good whiff of the cake.

He was right, it smelled…

“Ahhhh!” I screamed.

Why was a screaming?

Because piercing pain had engulfed my eye and face.

I somehow collapsed onto the floor, and there were screams all around me.

“Oh my god!” I heard my mom cry. “Don’t pull them out!”

“She won’t lose the eye, thank God,” I heard my mother say.

“But it’ll definitely affect her vision.

She also had to have reconstructive surgery to her face, because one of the support sticks that was holding the cake up entered right under her eye.

When she pulled away, though, it almost degloved the entire left side of her face. ”

Degloved.

That sounded bad.

“Where is her asshole husband, anyway?” Rocky snarled.

“He didn’t want to come. He felt bad,” Mom replied acerbically.

“He fucking should,” Rocky snarled.

“She told him point blank not to shove her face into that cake, too.”

I had.

“I hate him,” Rocky hissed.

Join the club.

Six months later

I gave it the good ol’ college try.

I had my face reconstructed, and all of a sudden, people liked me—especially my husband.

But apparently not enough to keep him from straying.

I’d stood by him through a lot.

The first month of our marriage I had to recover from the multiple facial surgeries that he’d caused me to need.

The second month, he’d told me he wanted to have babies. And since we both knew that he had fertility problems, we’d started seeing a fertility doctor to find out what our best options were.

The third month, he’d started acting weird, and I’d gotten an infection in my face that had caused me to need yet another surgery.

The fourth month, we’d harvested his sperm—all the sperm that he would ever be able to get, because we found out he had testicular cancer.

The fifth month, he’d had his testicles removed and I’d stuck by his side.

The sixth month, and the month that I called it quits, was the month I’d caught him cheating on me with his nurse.

Which led me to now.

“She can have all the fertilized eggs and leftover sperm.” Jackson’s eyes were lit with an inner fire. “Not like she’s ever going to find a man.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Okay, we will write that down. Anything else that you absolutely do want?”

We were in the middle of mediation.

We were deciding who got what.

Apparently, I got nothing but his sperm.

But that was fine.

He could keep his house and his cars. I could keep my credit because he was keeping all of his bullshit debt, at least there was that.

“What else do you want?” the lawyer who was performing the mediation asked.

“I just want what I came into the marriage with,” I said. “I’ll keep my RV. I’ll keep the land that I own in Dallas as well. I just want to make sure that none of his debt that he accrued before our marriage will be transferred to me.”

“That’s a given.” Jackson rolled his eyes.

I gritted my teeth to keep from spewing verbal word vomit at him.

Asshole.

“Well, if you’re both fine with these terms, then we’re done here. The judge will sign off on the divorce, and we’re finished.”

We all stood up, me faster than the others.

I was desperate to go for a run to clear my head.

“Enjoy the sperm,” Jackson said as he pushed past me on the way out the door.

I gritted my teeth. “I will.”

I wouldn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.

Prick.