Chapter 2

• JEMIMAH
• The mansion swallowed me whole the moment I stepped through its doors, and for one small, guilty second, I was almost grateful for it.
• I still had both hands clutched around the ruined back of my gown, holding it together like it was the last thing keeping me decent and keeping me whole.
• Maids rushed past me in the entrance hall, with their arms full of my suitcases. At least it would just be me and them, I thought. At least I could hide here.
• I found the room they said was mine... mine and Jeriah's and the door felt heavier than it should have as I pushed it open. It was big. Beautiful, but it didn't feel like him.
• I didn't know Jeriah, not really, but somehow I knew this wasn't his taste. It wasn't big enough, it wasn't dark enough, wasn't cold enough to be the room of a man who could look at me the way he had that morning and still sleep fine at night.
• I didn't care to figure it out. I dropped my gown-clutching hands, let the fabric gape open at my back, and collapsed onto the bed like my bones had finally given up trying to hold me together.
• I stared up at the ceiling.
• "What a life," I whispered again, quieter this time, like saying it softly might make it hurt less. It didn't. Nothing hurt less today.
• This is for them, I reminded myself. This humiliation has a price, and I already know what it's buying.
• I don't know how long I lay there before the bathroom door swung open.
• A man walked out with no shirt, just a towel barely holding on for dear life at his hips, and water still clinging to his skin like he hadn't heard anyone come in. He froze the second he saw me.
• I shot up so fast the bed nearly betrayed me. A scream climbed halfway up my throat before I clamped my own fingers over my mouth, holding it in.
• "What are you doing in my husband's room?" I managed, my voice shaking with half fury and half terror.
• His eyebrows pulled together, confusion written plainly across his face. "Husband's room?"
• I had no answer for that. My eyes dropped just for a second, just involuntarily to the towel, and the moment I realized where I was looking, I backed away like I'd been burned. We both spoke at the exact same time, our voices colliding in the space between us.
• "Who are you?"
• "Who are you?"
• He recovered first. "I'm Keon Wellington. The second son of the Wellington family."
• The words landed slow, and then all at once, like a wave that takes a second too long to actually knock you down. I turned toward him, something in my chest folding in on itself all over again.
• "You're his brother," I said, broken and quietly. "And he didn't tell you about me. That he was even getting married." I laughed, shortly and humorless. "He's that ashamed of me, huh?"
• Keon's whole face shifted. "Hold on ... you're his wife?" A pause, something working behind his eyes. "Oh. The one he's been fighting Dad about." He said it low, almost to himself, but I heard every word of it clean as a bell, and I hated how much it cost me to hear it.
• He must have seen it land on my face, because he crossed the room in two steps and caught my shoulders in his hands, steady and warm despite the cold water still beading on his arms.
• "Hey. Hey," he said, and there was something in his voice I hadn't heard from a Wellington yet ; it was gentleness, like he actually meant it. "Don't let anything in this family get to you. If you want to survive around here, just be yourself. Unapologetically. Yeah?"
• I didn't know what to do with that. Nobody had ever told me to be myself like it was a strength and not a confession.
• "But," he added, a small, teasing crack breaking through the seriousness, "you're in my room. Not the master's bedroom. You must've gotten turned around. His room's at the end of the hallway : left, not right."
• "What?" I said, and I meant it as a whole sentence, but it came out as barely a breath.
• I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten the dress, the zipper, the torn seam gaping open down my spine — I'd forgotten all of it the second his hands found my shoulders. And now, as if my body wanted to remind me exactly how exposed I really was, the dress slipped slowly and traitorously. Down past my collarbone, past the curve of my chest, threatening to bare everything I'd spent all morning trying to hold together.
• Keon caught it before I could.
• "Let me help you with that," he murmured, and he was so close now I could smell the soap still on his skin, I could feel the heat radiating off him despite the cold, damp hands that brushed against my bare skin as he pulled the fabric back into place.
• Shivers ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the air conditioning.
• For one heartbeat, one impossible, foolish heartbeat, I forgot to be ashamed of my body at all.
• And then the door slammed fully open, and Jeriah's voice tore through the room like thunder.
• "What the fuck is going on???"