“Not in my house.”
Grady closes his eyes as he takes a deep breath. The kind a man takes when he’s choosing patience instead of anger. I was raised to be the perfect daughter and then the perfect wife, trained to smooth ruffled feathers and swallow my owndiscomfort whole. I know the shape of compromise. I’ve lived inside it my entire life.
“I’ll look the other way when you step outside our marriage and—”
He claps his hands, cutting off my reasonable argument.
“Rose, darling.” He smiles. “From here to my death, you’re the only woman I’m fucking.”
The word lands heavy and undeniable between us, leaving no room to hide. No polite exit. No careful distance.
My chest tightens. My heart hammers like it’s trying to escape me altogether.
Cheeks burning, I whirl away from the ridiculous, infuriating man I’ve married. Away from the warmth in his voice, away from the certainty I’m terrified to believe in.
Wanting him is easy. Believing him is the dangerous part.
I expect him to argue again. To follow me. To press.
Instead, there’s silence.
When I chance a glance over my shoulder, Grady is standing where I left him, hands braced on the dresser, head bowed as if he’s wrestling something inside himself. The sight of it, his restraint, his stillness, unravels something tight in my chest.
“I’ll make supper,” he says finally, voice steady. Gentle. As if we didn’t just collide like flint and steel. “You’ve had a long day.”
I don’t know how to respond to kindness after conflict. My mother never offered it. Men never bothered.
So I nod.
Dinner is simple. Stew warmed on the stove, thick with potatoes and carrots, bread sliced unevenly like he’s unused to worrying about appearances. We sit across from one another at the small table, the lamp casting a soft halo between us.
He doesn’t stare. He doesn’t avoid my face either.
He talks about the store, mundane things. Shipments delayed. Mrs. Calder complaining about the price of sugar. I listen,surprised by how easily the sound of his voice settles me. When I finish my bowl, he wordlessly reaches for it and refills it, as if this is something we’ve done a hundred times before.
No pressure. No expectation.
When we’re finished, he clears the dishes himself.
“I’ll give you time,” he says quietly. “Take as long as you need.”
He doesn’t follow me to the bedroom.
That might be the thing that undoes me most of all.
The bedroom smells faintly of soap and clean cotton. My traveling trunk sits at the foot of the bed, the latch dull with age. I open it slowly, hands trembling as I sort through my things.
This isn’t like getting dressed for a ball. There’s no audience. No applause. No sharp-eyed women measuring my worth.
There is only a man in the other room who wants me without conditions.
Washing my face at the basin, the water is lukewarm against my skin. When I unpin my hair, it spills over my shoulders in dark waves, hiding and revealing my scars in turns. I stare at my reflection longer than usual, tracing the lines I know by heart.
I think of the veil folded neatly away. Of his hands clapping together, decisive, final. Of the way he saidfrom here to my deathlike it was the simplest truth in the world.
I choose a nightdress that is soft and plain.
When I step into it, my breath catches, not with fear, but with something dangerously close to anticipation.
