Chapter 2

The next morning I woke, and coming down the stairs I caught sight of someone below.

It was Carla.

I froze for a second, then walked quickly into the dining room.

Landon was in the kitchen cooking porridge. When he saw me his tone was easy.

"You're up. I made porridge, come have some."

I stared at Carla, brow drawn tight, confused.

Before she could say a word, Landon was already explaining for her.

"She's been in a bad way, and it's not safe for a young woman to be home alone, so I told her to stay here with us for a few nights."

"Landon, she's a grown adult."

"But she's also my junior!"

At Landon's shout, the words died in my throat.

I looked at Carla sitting in the chair I had designed with my own hands.

And all at once I felt pathetic.

Our wedding home, I had planned and finished on my own.

Landon had said a grown man like him didn't understand any of that, and I could design it however I liked.

So I always did my best to work his tastes into every corner of it.

He never once noticed, and now he'd even brought Carla back into our home.

I didn't count for anything to him.

Maybe he saw how low my face had gone, because his voice softened.

"Not talking to you about it first was my fault, but you couldn't just leave her out there on her own either, could you?"

"There was a reason behind it."

I took a deep breath, and before I could speak Carla cut me off, choking up as she stood and made for the door.

"Landon, don't fight because of me. Your fiancée can't stand me. I'll just go..."

Landon's face changed in an instant. He caught her arm and drew her behind him.

He stood facing me, his eyes dark.

"There's a limit to how jealous you get to be. We get married in one day, and she's just a young girl who isn't safe at home alone, that's the only reason I brought her here. It's not like there's no reason for it."

"When did you get so cold and unreasonable?"

Hearing him say it, my heart felt like a knife working through it, cut by cut.

I wanted to argue back.

But watching him shield Carla behind him, all desire to explain drained out of me.

I was leaving tomorrow anyway. None of it meant anything.

"Do whatever you want."

With that, I went back upstairs.

Behind me came Carla's timid little question.

"Is she angry?"

Landon glanced up at me. "No, she won't be angry."

Their laughing and teasing carried up after me, and all I felt was a dense, dull ache.

It isn't that I don't get angry. It's that every time I did, no one ever soothed it.

It's that Landon played dumb, over and over, and left me to swallow it alone.

Even when I said it out loud, he'd only put on that innocent face and say he hadn't noticed.

Thinking about it now, it was never that he hadn't noticed. He just didn't care what I felt.

I finished packing, and when I came down for a drink of water they were still in the living room.

Carla was leaning softly against Landon.

"Landon, once you and your fiancée are married, will things get distant between you and me?"

"No. You'll always come first with me."

My body stopped, halfway down the stairs.