Chapter 30
THIRTY
SCARLETT
I’m still trembling when Nico collapses beside me. It’s a relief to see he’s breathing as hard as I am, because it feels like my heart is beating a mile a minute.
Even after my orgasm has died down.
I’ve never had sex like that. I didn’t even think it was possible. Is that feeling what I’ve been missing this whole time? That connection?
Maybe it’s the post-orgasm bliss, or maybe it’s the late hour. But I think I’ve lost the filter that usually keeps me guarded. Because I suddenly want to talk to Nico about it.
I don’t fight the urge to curl up under his arm. When he squeezes me closer and presses a kiss to my temple, I sigh and wrap around him.
“I didn’t know sex could feel like that,” I admit quietly.
There’s the briefest hesitation in the way Nico brushes his hand up and down my arm. But just as quickly, he relaxes and continues his touch. “Yeah?” he asks softly.
It feels good to be honest with him. “Does it always feel like that for you?”
This time, his hand freezes completely.
“Never.”
His answer only makes me want to share more. Knowing I shared something special with Nico? It’s intoxicating.
This time, my confession is whispered.
“I’ve never…trusted someone like that. I thought it would be scary, but it wasn’t. It was…empowering.”
It should scare me when Nico stops breathing, but it doesn’t. Instead of hiding away from his reaction, I lift my head and peek up at him.
He looks both terrified and confused, somehow.
“What is it?” I ask him.
That wide-eyed look stays on his face when he meets my eyes.
“I just…” His throat moves on a swallow. “I mean, weren’t you…married?”
It takes me a second to understand what he’s saying. When I do, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I roll onto my back with a tired sigh. “Yeah, looking back, it sounds ridiculous. My only defense is that I was nineteen.” Feeling suddenly embarrassed, I mumble, “Sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about sex.”
“No, it’s not that,” Nico rushes out. The bed rustles as he shifts his weight to balance on an elbow beside me. “I want to talk about it. I want to know what you’re thinking about.” His voice quiets with the slightest sign of nerves when he adds, “I meant it when I said I’m all in, Scarlett.”
I melt at the affection in his voice. What did I ever do to deserve this man’s attention?
“It’s not a pretty story,” I say in the smallest voice.
“I don’t care,” he responds instantly. “If it got you to be here with me then I’ll be nothing but grateful for it.”
The smile I give him is sad. “Try to hold on to that thought, okay?”
His only answer is to press a kiss to my hair before shifting to settle back against the headboard.
I briefly contemplate facing him, but quickly realize it will be easier not to look at him. I might be self-aware enough now to know my past wasn’t my fault, but that doesn’t mean I’m not ashamed of it on some level.
So instead, I lie on my back and stare up at the ceiling, watching the lights of the city flash around me. “I don’t even know where to start.”
Nico’s hand begins a soothing caress on my hair. “Just start at the beginning.” But when I continue to hesitate, he adds, “I mean, some of it, I can already guess. So you don’t have to go into detail about the…old-fashioned values you were raised with.”
I almost want to laugh at how politely he managed to phrase that. “Old-fashioned is putting it mildly.”
“Yeah, I know that, too,” he says with a sigh.
And I feel so raw from the sex, and blinded by the late hour, that I end up just blurting out the beginning.
“Is it considered old-fashioned if my parents arranged a marriage for me when I turned eighteen? Or is it just plain crazy?”
For a moment, everything is silent. Then…
“They did WHAT?!”
This time, I do laugh, but it lacks amusement. “Insane, right?”
Nico’s face appears above me, his brow furrowed. Thankfully, his eyes are filled with pain, not pity.
“Scarlett, that’s so fucked up. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
I shrug, numb to the memory. And to the childhood that taught me that numbness is the only way to live in a house like that.
“Believe it or not, I didn’t hate the idea when they first brought it up,” I admit, thinking back to seventeen-year-old Scarlett receiving the news.
“I mean, he was older and accomplished and good-looking, and a big part of me was flattered that he wanted to marry me. So I didn’t exactly fight it when my parents explained what was happening. ”
Anger starts to roil in Nico’s eyes. “How much older?”
I answer with a sad smile. Too old, and we both know it.
“Anyway, like I said, I didn’t really mind the match,” I continue, picking at a loose thread in the sheets. “He was nice, and I thought he was cute, and his family’s connections helped my family. So I was happy to do it.”
What I don’t tell Nico is that my husband’s “connections” were just rich people connections. He was the mayor’s son, and my being tied to him opened doors for my parents that they wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. There was nothing genuinely “helpful” about it.
“The wedding was nice, too,” I say through a sigh, looking at the city’s shadows flashing on the ceiling.
“He knew I didn’t like being the center of attention, so he organized a private wedding in the courthouse for us.
No pictures, no crowds, just us. It was a sweet memory.
” Then the memory sours. “We weren’t really together together before the wedding, but the day after we signed our marriage license, I moved in with him. ”
Nico’s muttered curse doesn’t escape my attention. I can see him dragging a hand down his face out of the corner of my eye. But he doesn’t interrupt.
“At the time, I didn’t really wonder why everything happened so quickly.
I mean, I’d been raised with traditional values, like you said, so I knew the general order of things.
I knew what his role was, and mine. None of it raised any red flags for me.
” Pulling myself to a sitting position, I slide back until I’m against the headboard.
“The first six months were great,” I say honestly.
“He would buy me flowers, take me out to dinner, surprise me with pretty clothes. Even the—” I blush.
“Even the sex was sweet. I felt taken care of.”
I wrap my arms around my legs as the harder memories start to take shape.
“But then things changed. He started to work long hours, and he’d miss the dinners I’d make for him like I’d been told a good wife should.
On weekends, he’d disappear to the country club or to whatever work events he didn’t feel like telling me about.
I started to focus mostly on keeping the house spotless, making better recipes, and—” I blink furiously as I force the words past my lips.
“Making sure I was as attractive as possible for him.”
This time, Nico’s curse isn’t muttered. He slides from the bed and starts to pace.
To an extent, I understand his frustration.
I might still be working through some of the misogynistic values I was raised and conditioned with, but that doesn’t mean I’m not aware of how terrible it is that an eighteen-year-old girl was skipping dinners and spending all of her money on lingerie, just to earn the love of a man who had already vowed to love her through sickness and health.
But now that I’ve started, I need to get the rest out. I’ve never been able to get the rest out.
“By the time I turned nineteen, sex was the only thing he wanted from me. It was the only way I could get him to pay attention to me.”
What I don’t say out loud is that this is where I got good at sex. I tried anything and everything I thought my husband might like, solely with the hope that impressing him in the bedroom might make him like me again outside of it.
It didn’t work.
“Then one day, he came home drunk and horny. Which wasn’t unusual, but that night, I was really sick with the flu. It was the first time I ever said no to him.”
My stomach drops through the floor at the rest of the memory.
At the way he grabbed me and said he didn’t care, that he’d just bend me over real quick.
At the way I got really scared and pulled away, and for a split second, I thought he might force it anyway.
And even though he passed out on the couch instead, I still spent the night shell-shocked and trembling.
Nico doesn’t need to know that part.
I force my mind back to the present. “I guess after that, he decided I wasn’t worth the effort anymore. He stopped paying attention to me completely.” I pause for a deep breath, still unable to look at Nico. “And then he started to come home smelling like perfume.”
Looking back, I ignored the signs for way too long. Subconsciously, I knew he was cheating on me, but a younger Scarlett wouldn’t let herself believe it.
Not when she was doing everything a woman was supposed to do for her husband.
“The day I found another woman’s underwear in his pants pocket, I knew my marriage was over,” I say in a small voice. “I knew it would only get worse from there.”
For a moment, I’m thrown back to the memory of that night. To the way I froze in horror and realization. To the way I panicked and ran to my parents’ house, desiring consolation from my mother. To the way she waved me off and said this is just what men do.
To the way she looked me up and down and said maybe he did it because it looked like I’d put on weight.
I thought that would be the worst part of the day, but the feeling of being shooed from my childhood home and realizing the only other place I could go was my adulterous husband’s house was somehow worse.
I felt so utterly alone, and I had no idea what to do about it.
I had no friends, no other family, and I was completely tied to my husband.
I’m snapped out of my thoughts when Nico stops at the foot of the bed, wincing and rubbing his forehead.
“Okay, in full transparency, I’m trying very hard not to ask Lucas to find this piece of shit predator so I can put him six feet under. So, in the spirit of fighting that urge, please tell me you left him immediately and are no longer married.”
“Well, actually, you might laugh at this—”
“I can guarantee I won’t.”
Sighing, I crawl to the end of the bed so I can reach for Nico’s hand and pull him toward me. “Yes, I left him immediately. And no, I haven’t seen or heard from him since.” More for myself than him, after a moment, I add, “My parents, either.”
Sometimes I wonder about never hearing from my parents.
I don’t know what I expected their reaction to be about me leaving, but I expected some kind of communication in three years.
Maybe that was just my childish hope, though.
Maybe by running off, I embarrassed them to the point of wanting to disown me.
Nico drops onto the bed with a pained exhale. “Fuck, baby. I’m sorry. I mean, I’m not, because they suck, but…” He looks down where his thumb traces over the back of my hand. “I would’ve chased you,” he adds quietly.
My chest warms at that, the smallest smile touching my lips. I believe him.
The moment lightened, Nico asks curiously, “So, what exactly is the funny part?”
I huff a laugh. “The funny part is that when I went home and started to angrily dig for more signs of his cheating, I found a marriage license in his office. But it wasn’t my name that was on it.”
Nico’s brow furrows. “He was married before?”
“Not just that. When I got curious and looked up the woman’s name, I found out that she had filed for divorce. And that it was still ongoing, which meant they were still married.”
His confusion grows. “Can you be married to two people at once?”
I shake my head. “No. Which meant that my marriage wasn’t legitimate. I guess he faked the ceremony and paperwork for my sake and hid the fact that he had a wife from a neighboring state.” I look down at our hands and shrug. “Not great for my trust issues, but it did make my escape easier.”
Nico mutters something that gets lost in his hand dragging down his face. “Christ. I have no idea how to process this.”
I can’t bring myself to look at him as I say, “I get it. It’s a crazy story. But…hopefully you can see now why I don’t trust easily.”
Nico lets out a snort. “After that? I wouldn’t blame you if you never trusted the male species again.
” But then his expression softens, and he shifts closer.
“Thank you for sharing that with me. I know how big of a deal that was for you.” He leans forward to cup my cheek and touch his forehead to mine.
“Thank you for trusting me,” he whispers.
And despite everything in my life that’s taught me to be cautious—a childhood with people I’m not sure ever loved me and a marriage to a husband who only wanted me for superficial reasons—somehow, it feels right to trust Nico.