Page 147 of Marrying the Savage

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“No.” She wraps the torn dress tighter around herself, but the gesture only makes her look younger, smaller, more offended by the world than she would ever allow herself to admit. “Not tomorrow. Not by some assistant who thinks I am approximately Elena-shaped. I want to choose them myself.”

I watch her. She holds my gaze.

“You want to leave the house,” I say.

“I want to shop.”

“No.”

Her eyes narrow. “That was fast.”

“It was a simple answer.”

“Try a more intelligent one.”

“No.”

“Still not there.”

“You are not leaving without security.”

“I didn’t say without security.”

That stops me.

She sees it. Her expression shifts, just enough to become reasonable. Dangerous, that.

“I’m not asking to roam alone with a little purse and a dream,” she says. “I am asking to buy clothes that don’t belong to your dead wife.”

“Sofia.”

“No, listen to me.” She steps closer, still holding the ruined dress together with one hand. “You married me in front of half the city. You brought me here. Everyone in this house calls me your wife, except they also dress me like a replacement haunting. If I am going to be trapped in your house, I want at least one thing that is mine.”

I say nothing.

That was better. Much better.

She’s learning how to speak to me.

Or perhaps she always knew and only needed the right wound to open.

“My own clothes,” she continues, softer now. “My own shoes. My own underwear. Things I chose. Things I can put on without wondering who wore them before me, who loved her, who watched her fall, who still sees her when they look at me.”

My hand flexes once at my side.

That one hits harder. Because I don’t see Elena when I look at Sofia.

Not once. Not even in the dress.

I saw the dress. I saw the past try to crawl into the room. Then Sofia looked at me with that sharp, furious mouth, and the past became irrelevant because the living woman in front of me demanded all the air.

But she doesn’t know that.

“You think I look at you and see her,” I say.