Chapter One
Isabella
Our wedding anniversary rolled around again. For the first several years of our marriage, I’d have been planning for weeks. A special dinner by candlelight in the dining room where we rarely ate, preferring the tiny kitchen table most of the time. Baking a fancy dessert and arranging flowers as a centerpiece. A beautiful gift bought or even created especially for him.
The evening would end in our bedroom, which I’d have spent hours cleaning and polishing, fresh bedding and everything. More candles and flowers. Once, on our first anniversary, I had even covered the bedside lamp with a sheer scarf, but the polyester blend charred and smoked. My husband rushed the smoldering fabric into the bathroom sink and, crisis averted, we laughed together at my mistake and made love all night.
But now…although our anniversary fell on a weekend day when my husband did not work, I had not seen him since early this afternoon. Last year, I sat for hours while the candles burned down and dinner dried out in the oven. When he came home, reeking of alcohol and perfume and spewing lies, I had a meltdown, sobbing and swearing I’d never waste my time making another anniversary dinner for him.
A fact he reminded me of this afternoon when he left to go out withthe guys. To quote him, “Since you will not be troubling yourself to honor our anniversary today, I might as well be with people who appreciate me.”
Bastard!
If not for the fact that he spent a great deal of our time together pushing my well-worn buttons, I might have been crying again. But a person can only be stabbed so many timesbefore she goes numb. Or so I hoped. I wasn’t at the numb stage yet, but I looked forward to it. At least, so far today, I’d managed to remain dry eyed.
And his being out withthe guys—as if I believed that lie—meant I didn’t have him around doing his best to make me feel bad about myself. I could have, I supposed, gone out with friends, but since we’d been married, Mark had managed to drive a wedge between me and most of them. And the few I did see occasionally were going to be busy at such short notice. They all seemed to be happy whether single or coupled up, and my life was terrible and sad.
So, instead, I fell into my usualSaturday or any day I was stressedactivity—cleaning the house from top to bottom. I kept things very nice. He just didn’t seem to notice, taking the fact that we never ran out of toothpaste and the mirror in the bathroom was spotless as his due. Didn’t everyone have vacuum marks on their carpets at all times? Because if our house was not immaculate, I paid the penalty.
No ring around my toilet bowl. No speck of dust on the coffee table. No dish dirty for more than five minutes. He treated me like a servant, didn’t hesitate to punish me verbally or even physically if I didn’t obey his extensive rules.
Not that I was born that way, but I was nothing if not flexible. Obedient. Still trying to be perfect.
Unfortunately, everything was so clean, regular chores were done in just a short time, and I was looking around for something else to do for distraction. The old desk in the corner of the living room caught my eye. I’d had it for a long time, since college, actually, and I hadn’t been through the drawers in years. Cleaning out junk might be just the thing for my mood. Or at least offered a good use of my time.
Considering my cleaning fetish lately, it was amazing it had taken me so long to get to this. The drawers held a lot ofmemories but not necessarily anything I needed to hold on to. Notes from classes, pens and paper, greeting cards, an address book from when I was in high school and actually had phone numbers written down. I didn’t get a cell phone until I was sixteen—strict parents.
Reading over the numbers and names, I wondered if any of them were still the same. Silly thought that they’d still be living with their parents and using the same old land lines. I had two stacks going. Keep and toss. And this book should probably join the rest, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. To salve my conscience, I put a few more greeting cards in the black toss bag.
One drawer after another produced stacks of paper and notebooks, bits and pieces of life that had seemed too important to get rid of a decade ago. Dried-out pens, pencils too short to bother with, Sharpies that would never again stroke boldly on anything… All of it gone. It didn’t make everything perfect, didn’t mean that I felt okay about my husband out with his mistress, Luanna, the name I would never demean myself by using, on our anniversary. But I did get the declutter buzz that helped a tiny bit.
His mistress.
I’d been avoiding the thought, but I knew who she was. Embarrassing to admit, but I’d followed him once and seen him going into an apartment building. Parked around the corner, I saw them come out again and get in his car. Parked a few vehicles away on the opposite side of the street, down, I tried to tell myself it could be a coworker. Maybe they were doing the work thing he’d said he would tell me about when he got home. Then he leaned over and gave her a kiss that was still going on when my tears were a waterfall that blocked my vision and soaked the seat belt across my chest.
She might be a coworker, but whether she was or not, she was a husband-stealing whore.
By the time I stopped sobbing and wiped my eyes, they’d driven off. And of course, he didn’t come home to tell me about how he’d driven a coworker to the event that likely never existed.
So, yes, I knew about her. Were there others? Probably, but I didn’t see any reason to traumatize myself by following him again to find out. Closing the bottom drawer, it jammed on something. “Dammit, don’t I have enough problems?” I cursed some more, ramming the drawer with no success. “What is going on?”Yes, when I’m alone I talk to myself sometimes.Pulling the drawer all the way out, I set it on the floor and got down on hands and knees. “What could…ah.” Reaching to the back, I felt something and managed to grip it. Some kind of notebook it felt like. I knew what it was before I brought it into sight.
My journal.
Exhausted, I carried the trash bag out and put the “keep” items into the desk again. Then I took the journal with me to bed. Heartsick and exhausted, I thought memories of a time before I got into this mess might make me feel a little better. Pulling my weighted blanket over me, I opened the book and remembered the girl I had been. The young omega who had filled these pages, who had been so excited to accept the proposal of the wealthy, kind man who looked at me like I hung the moon. Was there anything left of her? How could I still love him? Let him treat me like a toy he grows bored with playing with?
At night, I lay awake wishing for someone who would love me for myself, like a person instead of my designation.
I had grown up believing the lie that the college student had accepted as truth, in fact, penned on the first page of her journal:
If I am a good omega, follow the rules, and don’t make waves, I’ll lead a happy, fulfilling life.
Instead, I ended up in hell. A hell that only got worse when I woke in the morning to find out that Mark had brought home the woman I saw him smooching with. He introduced her to me as his wife, and me to her as “the omega.” The omega who he had blatantly told he’d only brought her into his life to gain her father’s connections.
That night, I crawled into my bed alone, while the noises from the next room bombarded me. Grabbing the journal, I looked for old me again. One who was not trapped in a life she’d willingly walked into. And what I found was mentions of times spent with the strong omega who stood by me through college. Millie. She never believed omega and victim were synonymous. Insisted she would not settle. I hadn’t thought of her in such a long time. Had her life turned out the way she planned?
If I could find her, maybe she could help me save myself from this shell of a life.
Lost in memories, I dug into the nightstand and found an old novel I used to love, the cover tattered and torn. I read it over and over, dreaming I could one day be the omega with three bear alphas. But those dreams didn’t come true for omegas imprisoned in a marriage of convenience.
