Dress-Up & Defiance
Chapter thirty-three
Marlow
Growing up, no matter how many board meetings were on the calendar or how many last-minute flights he had to catch, my dad always showed up for fall. Hayrides, pumpkin patches, haunted houses that were one electrical spark away from a lawsuit—he was there. Every time.
Halloween was my mom’s favorite season, and after she passed, he made it his personal mission to make it mine too.
He carved pumpkins like a surgeon, made the best damn cider you’ve ever tasted, and once sewed an entire unicorn costume by hand because I saw one in a catalog and casually mentioned I liked it.
Sure, he was likely over-compensating for missing so much throughout the rest of the year.
And the costume was hideous. But he was also just that dad whenever he had the opportunity to be.
The one who did too much, in the best possible way.
So yeah, dressing up for Halloween has always been kind of my thing.
I never missed a chance to go full fantasy—fairy wings, pirate boots, glitter in places it had no business being.
It was the one night a year where reality didn’t matter.
I could be anything, anyone. But this year hits different. This year I wanted to be different.
I didn’t want to be cute. Didn’t want to be whimsical or clever.
I wanted to be hot. Unapologetically, skin-tight, jaw-droppingly hot.
Just one moment to feel like I still own my own body, my own choices, my own damn narrative without feeling like I’m performing for the cameras.
To remind myself that I can still walk into a room and set it on fire, just because I feel like it.
Because work is becoming the thing Daddy warned me about—a definition more than a destiny—and Declan’s got me twisted up in ways I hate admitting.
The way his tattoos snake down his arms and across his chest like a treasure map straight to my pleasure.
The way he watches me—quiet, steady, always reading the room and adjusting without ever asking for credit.
He takes care of me when I’m not looking.
Even when he’s not sure I’ll stay. And that right there is what scares me.
I can’t tell if he’s trying to win my heart or if he’s just trying to win.
Like there’s a game clock ticking in his head and he’s betting on how long it’ll take before I cave.
Or maybe he really just wants the money.
And because I don’t know which it is—because I’ve never been in anything that felt this confusing—I do what I do best. I push.
I keep him at arm’s length. I make it hard. And it’s getting to him.
It’s getting to me, too. But I’m doing my best to ignore it.
Coincidentally, it’s also the day I’m scheduled to be at his house, and I decided to get ready for the party here.
Declan is brooding. The TV is on, lights dim, one arm slung over the back of the couch while old match footage flickers on screen.
Shirtless, tattoos on full display, muscles flexed in all the wrong ways.
He’s a walking distraction, and I’m dangerously close to throwing away my dignity just to climb into his lap.
If he wasn’t everything I know I shouldn’t want.
My maddeningly irresistible husband is getting harder to ignore with every breath I take near him.
I pause in the hallway, adjusting the neckline of my costume. It’s black leather, skin tight, strategically scandalous and everything I desired to accomplish tonight with this ensemble.
I watch my husband for a beat. “Aren’t you going to the party?” I ask, even though I probably should know. But I’ve been toggling between this house and my apartment like a product of divorce with joint custody, so we haven’t exactly had a heart-to-heart about our Halloween plans.
He doesn’t look away from the tv. “Not going.”
Okay. The brooding fütbol player was cute for a minute but now he’s starting to piss me off.
It’s been his thing ever since I told him I’m not going to play pretend with him just because the paperwork says wife. This marriage isn’t fate. It’s a mistake. But he still looks at me like I mean more. Like one emotional night in Vegas somehow turned us into something real. It didn’t.
This isn’t a love story. It’s a glitch. A drunk detour neither of us planned for. One day we’ll both look back and laugh at how reckless it was. How easy it is to mistake comfort for connection when you’re too inebriated to tell the difference.
But seriously, why does he have to be so pretty?
Unfairly pretty. This man’s face turns logic into noise.
Sharp jaw, those ridiculous lips, and a body that looks like it was designed to ruin lives.
One glance and everything I’ve planned—every carefully built reason to stay away—starts to fall apart.
Instead of having a real conversation like a grown adult, he’s been sulking. Acting like I broke his heart. He’s covered in new tattoos I never saw coming and he’s always playing broody Italian music that is beginning to grate on my nerves.
I asked Eslin if the constant tattooing was a real emotional coping mechanism or just Declan being extra. She gave me her therapist voice and said, “It’s not our job to police how someone chooses to process pain.”
Great. But I’m the one dodging landmines while he turns himself into a moody mural. How many tattoos does one man need before he figures out how to say, I want you without bleeding it into his skin?
“It’s a mandatory team event,” I remind him. The same team that has been growing increasingly concerned about his inking habit.
“I don’t celebrate Halloween. I thought this was the land of inclusivity or whatever. My body. My choice.”
I scoff. “It’s the land of legally binding contracts, you dick. And attending team functions is part of yours.”
And this. Our other norm. Fighting. We can’t be within ten feet of each other for more than ten minutes without it spiraling into round seventeen of the same damn argument.
Me calling him out for not doing what he’s contractually obligated to do for the Strikers, and him firing right back that I’m not exactly holding up my end of a certain contract either.
He doesn’t just want me living here full-time. He wants the other marriage stuff. The touching. The kissing. The kind of earth-shattering and unholy lovemaking that feels too honest to fake. Intimacy that turns lines into dust and makes me forget I ever drew them.
Everything I felt in Vegas. Everything I swore would stay there.
The second I let Declan in, it’s not just my self-respect I’m gambling—it’s the fragile grip I have on who I am without someone to anchor me.
I know what it feels like to love something so fiercely, so completely, only to have it ripped away before I could understand what life looked like without it.
That kind of loss rewires you. And maybe it’s something I should be unpacking in therapy, but the truth is, I can’t risk loving something else that could disappear.
Not when I’m still haunted by the one person who did.
Still, here we are. Trapped in this push-pull purgatory, stuck trading jabs in a game where no one wins and both of us leave pissed off and unsatisfied.
I can feel it happening in this moment. The tension building, the silence thickening, that sharp little tilt of his jaw he gets right before he calls me out for keeping him at arm’s length.
We’re circling the same argument again, about to fall into it like muscle memory.
I don’t know if it’s the pressure from work or just being too close to him for too long, but I can’t tell what I want more—proving I’m right, or giving in to how badly he wants me.
Lately, the need to win feels less important than the way he looks at me, like losing to him wouldn’t really be losing at all.
I don’t need this right now. I can’t want him.
I storm into the kitchen, heels clicking across the tile like gunshots.
The fridge door flings open with more drama than necessary, because I’m annoyed and hot and slightly hormonally unhinged.
My hand skims the shelves, and when I don’t see that familiar row of silver cans staring back at me, I nearly lose it.
“And where the hell are my diet sodas?” I yell, head halfway in the fridge like I’m expecting them to magically appear.
“They’re gone,” Declan says coolly from behind me.
I freeze. “Excuse me?”
“I threw them out.” He says it like it’s a line item on a grocery list and not a full-blown declaration of war. “They’re trash. Artificial sweeteners, zero nutrients, and they make you crash. I replaced them with organic juices. Natural energy. Pineapple-ginger, beetroot, the good stuff.”
I turn slowly, stare at him like he’s lost his Italian mind. “You threw away my diet sodas.”
I don’t consider myself to have an addictive personality. I’m type-A, structured to a fault. Control is how I survive. But when it comes to my diet sodas? The ones I’ve been drinking since I was sixteen? Control, couth and all decorum goes out the window. I will end a fucking life.
I keep them everywhere I know I’ll be—my apartment, my car, my office, my dad’s house—strategically stashed like survival gear.
It’s one of the only non-negotiables I gave his house staff which was to always keep them stocked.
But this fucker, my husband, he didn’t just cross the line.
He bulldozed it, torched the remains, and dared me to say something.
He nods. Shrugs. “You’ll thank me eventually when you’ve got more energy than you know what to do with. Maybe more energy for your husband.”
I don’t speak. I reach into the fridge, grab the first thing I see—a lone tomato—and hurl it straight at his arrogant head. It hits him in the collarbone, bursts like a popped pimple.
“I see you still haven’t improved your aim.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”