Chapter Three
Once a cutie, always a cutie.
Amber
My parents…are wrong.
So wrong.
Stupendously wrong.
Yesterday, they called me an idiot and a liar when I told them I got married and would be moving out today. Dad yelled at me off and on while I packed my things—no furniture, Liam said; I would not be needing my cheap garbage furniture in my new home, he said. Mom kept sweeping in and asking if I was joking, because I had to be joking, right? She raised me better than this. I can’t marry someone and tell her after the fact. That’s insane.
I’m insane.
My father’s insane.
This must be his fault. This is his fault.
They argued well past midnight, and I think Dad slept on the floor in the living room.
I quietly packed up my boxes in my Accord and left before they woke up. If they care, they can text. But, honestly, they probably won’t.
If Limoncella moving out to live in a magical bookstore is any indication, reaching out —according to my parents—is the child’s job.
Now that I’m standing here, in Liam’s manor , sipping a coffee I picked up on my way over and staring at my bedroom …
I have no regrets.
“Well?” Liam asks, a touch of smugness in his level voice. “How’d I do?”
“No notes,” I reply, dazed, wandering into the vast, gorgeous expanse.
This bedroom alone is the size of my parents’ house, and I’m pretty sure just the black marble bathroom I’m catching a glimpse of beside an empty walk-in closet is larger than my old bedroom, but…that’s not the best part.
The best part…is the bed.
Centered amid dark lace, onyx flooring, and jet walls, the queen-size obsidian bed draws inspiration from a coffin. Lavish, full-black bedding. A headboard lined with deep rouge velvet. Decorative pillows that match.
My gaze catches on my reflection, and I turn to find a tall standing mirror—embedded in a gravestone.
Chills.
I have chills.
Wordlessly, Liam crosses the room, pulls the curtains closed, then retreats to the door and flicks the light switch.
My hand claps to my mouth as tall candelabras burdened with dark fabric roses and wound with thick metal thorns flicker to life. Their electric flame bulbs dance firelike shadows around the room across a large corner desk that calls to me like a siren.
While I run my hand over the shiny dark wood, Liam clears his throat, snapping me out of the daze. I tear my attention off the many wonderful shelves I can fill with my office supplies and find him leaning against the wall, arms folded, eyes enigmatic.
“What?” I ask.
“Praise me.” His lips soften. “I did good.”
He is the most ridiculous creature in the entire world.
All the same, I sigh and drag myself through the most glorious room I have ever laid eyes on to stop in front of him and lift my hand. “Bend down,” I note. Once he obliges, I pet his soft black hair. “Good boy.”
A tight laugh escapes him.
“I really do love it. Thank you.”
Warm, he nods, straightening up once my hand falls away. “I’m glad. I was very intentional with your enclosure.”
“Don’t call it that.”
He angles his head to the side. “The space in which I intend to keep you?”
“Somehow worse.” I sip my coffee. I think I need more. I wonder how one Doordashes something to somewhere with a gate code. I know Liam doesn’t have any bean juice on hand. He’s one of those creepy people who doesn’t rely on caffeine to function.
“Your box,” he says, definitely.
I slurp , just because I know it bothers him. “Am I a doll to you?”
He smiles, tender. “Always have been, Bambi.”
Yeesh.
It’s gonna be a long year.
I swirl my finger at him. “I will require that you keep that energy to yourself, mkay?”
Unwelcome, his fingers frame my round cheeks and tilt my face ever so slightly up. Gentle as a mother holding her newborn child, he murmurs, “No, I don’t think I will.”
“I bite, you should know.”
“Cage, then.”
I snap my teeth.
“I’ll have Bambi’s Cage engraved on the door if you keep that up.”
I step back, out of his touch, and mutter, “Let’s just get my things.”
Benevolently, he obliges to assist me in bringing my meager few boxes inside. While I arrange my office supplies on the desk of my dreams by faux firelight, he scowls and grimaces and makes weird, disapproving noises as he unpacks my clothes in the closet. “Do you own nothing worthy of you?” he snaps, at long last. “How much beige does one little angel need ?”
Enough to look like a normal person in public, I think. You know. Every single day. And so forth.
Little angels like me are not supposed to be ecstatic over the idea of sleeping in a coffin bed, or waking up to style her curls in a gravestone mirror.
“ Ack ,” Liam states, and I look across the room to where the closet light is casting a slice of brightness into my candelabra firescape. He is holding my gray pantsuit. At arm’s length. As though it quite personally offends him.
“That’s for interviews,” I elaborate. “Very professional, isn’t it?”
He grimaces toward me. “Bambi, you have such amazing assets. Why in the world would you do yourself and potential employers the disservice of covering them with… this ?”
I glance down, at my assets , and find them to be quite modest, truly. Blessedly, I do not have the figure of a fifth grader, even if I maintain the height of one, but I wouldn’t entirely write home about what I’m carrying.
Simply put, guess who’s not going to have back pain in ten years?
It’s me.
I look back up at my weird little husband guy. “I do not know how to reply to that, Liam.”
His head shakes, and he does not begrudgingly shove my pantsuit onto a hanger as he has with my other clothes. Instead, he tosses it out of the closet onto the floor. “You’re getting rid of that.”
I look between the crumpled fabric and Liam, then shrug. “’Kay.” I’ll just buy something else once my year is up. What do famous authors wear to book signings and in their fancy author photos? I’ll forego the interview attire and get that, assuming that a year without constant parental pressure, off and on jobs, and monetary stress will result in my writing the best book ever and actually becoming a famous author, of course.
Living with Liam is going to be a challenge, to say the least, but at bare minimum it won’t include witnessing a yelling fit every other hour my parents are in the same building. I value that in my homelife. My characters will value that in my homelife, too.
While I’m dreaming up a dozen different stories I could start this year and bringing the last of my boxes down the hall, my eye catches on a sliver of pink hiding beyond a cracked door.
Pink.
My lips purse, and I glance the way I’ve come, up the pale blue hall, toward white spiraling stairs that lead down into the elegant—but otherwise normal—foyer. It occurs to me at this exact moment that Liam’s house does not look how I suspected it might. Not at all.
But that slice of pink…
That’s the Liam I remember.
Nosy, I use the box I’m holding to push the door open a little wider and peek in at…
My word.
Pale pink curtains thrown wide, sunlight illuminates the white carpet covered with hundreds of stuffed animals. Dolls in their original boxes or posed on stands take up a full shelf along the far wall. White and pink bedding adorn a plush bed beyond a lace canopy dappled with butterflies, and—
Liam pulls the door closed on top of me, nudging me out of his bedroom.
I glance up at his terse glare. Each of his fingers disengages from the door handle, finding their way to his pant pocket. He chides, “Don’t snoop, Bambi.”
I can’t help my chuckle, which leaves more like a giggle than anything else. Sidestepping Liam on the way back to my room, I murmur, “My bad. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy, Cutie.” Peering back over my shoulder, I grin. “But it is nice to know your cutieness hasn’t changed a bit.”
Blushing pink beneath the starkly dark shades of his eyes and hair, Liam scrubs a hand over his face, and looks away.