Scarlett
Iwake to the feeling of eyes on me.
Not warm.
Not soft.
Not anything resembling the way a fiancé is meant to look at the woman he plans to marry.
Just… eyes.
Sharp.
Cold.
Flat as polished glass.
My lashes flutter before my brain fully catches up, and when I lift my head from the pillow, I see him sitting upright beside me, body perfectly still, sheets pooled around his waist as though he hadn’t slept at all.
He’s just watching me.
Not blinking.
Not moving.
Just observing me like I’m something pinned open beneath a microscope.
A soft, tentative smile tugs at the corner of my mouth before I can think better of it.
A peace offering.
A neutraliser.
A reflex I learned long before I should’ve needed it.
“Morning…” I whisper, voice rough with sleep.
He doesn’t answer.
Doesn’t soften.
Doesn’t even tilt his head.
Just keeps looking — dissecting, calculating, letting the silence stretch so thin it becomes a blade held to my throat.
My fingers curl into the sheets.
“You were…” My voice catches, but I force the words out. “…different last night.”
Still nothing.
Not a blink.
Not a twitch.
Just an icily perfect statue of a man I’m supposed to love.
A coil of dread tightens in my stomach.
Maybe he’s mad about the argument.
Maybe he’s mad I walked away from him.
Maybe he’s mad I didn’t apologise properly.
Maybe he’s just… Noah.
And this is who he is when no one else is watching.
My mouth feels dry.
I reach for the glass of water on the nightstand, the movement slow, measured, the kind of cautious gesture prey uses when the predator is already too close to outrun.
The water tastes faintly metallic.
Or maybe that’s just the taste of panic rising up my throat.
“The blindfold was a nice touch, though…” I murmur, forcing a lightness I don’t feel at all. “Unexpected. But… creative.”
The air in the room changes.
Not dramatically.
Not loudly.
Just a small, subtle shift — like someone pressed a thumb to the pulse of the atmosphere and stopped the beat mid-drum.
Noah’s expression doesn’t move.
But something behind his eyes does.
Very slowly, like molasses poured over ice, his head tilts.
A fraction.
Just enough to make my heart lurch painfully against my ribs.
“Blindfold?” he says, voice a slow, dangerous murmur, as if tasting the word and finding poison in it.
I freeze.
He keeps looking at me with that same surgical expression — blank, polite, almost gentle — but now his eyes gleam with something sharp and venomous humming beneath the surface.
“Yes,” I say, too fast. “Last night. You were… intense.” A weak laugh. “You really didn’t need to blindfold me, but—”
“What blindfold?”
My breath stops inside my lungs like it hit a wall.
He says it again, slower this time, each syllable sharpened to a point:
“What. Blindfold?”
I feel the blood drain from my face.
He sits forward, forearms braced on his knees, his stare pinning me to the mattress as easily as if he’d put a hand on my chest.
“Scarlett,” he says, tone steady in a way that terrifies me more than shouting ever could. “What blindfold?”
My pulse hammers so violently my fingers shake around the glass.
“Noah… stop.” It comes out barely audible. “You know what I’m talking about.”
His jaw clenches — a small, tight movement that sends a cold shiver straight through me.
“Explain,” he murmurs. “Slowly.”
Something is wrong.
So deeply wrong.
The man in front of me is not confused.
He’s not surprised.
He’s not hurt.
He’s calculating.
He’s dissecting the situation second by second, threading possibilities together in that meticulous mind of his, deciding which version of this story benefits him.
And none of them benefit me.
“I—”
My throat closes.
I swallow hard, gripping the sheets.
“You came into the room. After dinner. You didn’t say anything. You just—”
My voice cracks.
His eyes don’t.
“You just put the blindfold on me,” I finish weakly.
A long, ugly silence stretches across the bed.
Noah’s expression finally shifts — not softening, not warming, just sliding into something darker, heavier, a mask cracking to reveal the rot underneath.
He laughs once.
A hollow, humourless exhale.
“Scarlett,” he says softly, “I didn’t touch you last night.” My blood turns to ice. “I didn’t come into this room until I went to bed at three thirty.” His stare sharpens. “You were asleep.”
My breath stutters out.
He stands.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
Every step he takes toward my side of the bed feels like a countdown.
He stops beside me, fingers brushing the headboard, posture so controlled it looks painful.
His voice drops to a soft, almost affectionate murmur — the kind he uses right before he ruins something.
“Tell me exactly what you think happened.”
“I—” My lungs seize. “I told you.”
“No,” he says, leaning down, his face inches from mine. “You told me a delusion.”
My heartbeat is a trapped thing against my ribs.
“Noah… someone was here.”
He smiles.
A soft, chilling curl of his lips that has nothing to do with humour.
“So now we’re inventing intruders?”
I flinch.
His hand comes up fast — too fast — fingers tilting my chin until I have no choice but to meet his stare.
“You’re lying,” he whispers. “Or you’re confused.”
A pause.
“Or you’re trying to provoke me.”
I shake my head, panic rising so fast I can barely speak.
“I’m not lying. I swear, Noah—”
He straightens abruptly, the mattress shifting under his weight as he steps back.
“Well,” he says, voice clipped and terrifyingly calm, “then you must have imagined the whole thing.”
“I didn’t—”
“Because if you didn’t imagine it—” he cuts in sharply, “—then the alternative is that another man was in my villa. In my bed. Touching my fiancée.”
My stomach twists violently.
“Noah—please—”
“Which,” he continues, ignoring me entirely, “would mean you let him.”
The accusation hits like a slap.
“I didn’t—Noah, I didn’t let anyone—”
He slams his hand into the nightstand so hard the lamp jumps and my whole body jerks backward.
“Then you’re lying,” he snarls.
Silence crashes between us.
My breath is a thin, trembling thing.
He steps closer again, towering over me, the early-morning light slicing across his face and casting half of it in bright, perfect gold and the other half in shadow.
“Do you know what I think?” he says quietly.
Too quietly.
Deadly quiet.
I can’t speak.
I can barely breathe.
“I think,” he murmurs, “you’re cracking under pressure and making up fantasies to justify your behaviour.”
I shake my head rapidly, terror clawing up my chest.
“No. Noah, no, I swear—”
“And I think,” he says, as if I hadn’t spoken at all, “you’re going to ruin this week if you don’t get your head straight.”
Tears blur my vision.
He tilts his head the same way he did the first night we met — that eerie, thoughtful angle, like he’s studying a painting he might set on fire.
“You’re going to marry me on Sunday,” he says, voice soft and poisonous. “And I won’t tolerate emotional theatrics until then.”
I choke on a sob.
“Noah…”
He turns away.
Just turns.
Smooth, controlled, dismissive.
Like I’m a nuisance.
An inconvenience.
A problem to shelve until he’s in the mood to fix it.
“Get dressed,” he says, already walking toward the bathroom. “We have a full day ahead.”
“Noah—!”
He stops in the doorway without turning around.
“You mention this ‘blindfold’ again…” His voice drops to a low, icy whisper. “…and I will drag you back home tonight. And you will marry me in the fucking courthouse on Monday.”
My blood goes cold.
He steps into the bathroom.
The door closes with a soft, final click.
The island outside the window sparkles with paradise sun.
But I’m frozen.
Shaking.
Staring at the spot where he stood.
Because the worst part isn’t that he said those things.
The worst part—is that he meant every single one.
And the second worst—is that someone did put that blindfold on me.
Someone who wasn’t Noah.
And he knows it.
Even if he’ll never, ever say it out loud.
The moment the bathroom door closes, I break.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Not the kind of break that makes sound.
It’s the silent kind.
The one that happens in the bones first — a deep, internal fracture that radiates outward until everything inside you feels hairline-cracked.
I sit there on the bed, knees pulled up, fingers tangled in the sheets like they’re the only thing keeping me tethered to the room, and the soft rush of the shower running on the other side of the door feels like it’s worlds away. Too normal. Too peaceful. Too wrong.
My pulse pounds hard enough that I feel it in my gums.
He didn’t put the blindfold on me.
He didn’t come into the room last night.
He didn’t touch me.
That means—
God.
That means someone else did.
And the only thing more terrifying than that truth is the way Noah reacted to it.
He knew.
He didn’t believe me.
But he knew.
He knew something happened.
And he didn’t ask,“Are you okay?”
He didn’t check if I was hurt.
He didn’t even look at me like someone who cared whether I slept, ate, or breathed.
He looked at me like a problem.
A liability.
A woman who needed correcting before she embarrassed him.
My stomach twists painfully.
I get off the bed and stand on unsteady legs, the floor cold beneath my feet. The villa is drenched in soft, expensive sunlight — cream stone walls glowing warm, sheer curtains fluttering in the ocean breeze, the infinity pool outside sparkling like polished glass.
Everything is beautiful.
Everything is perfect.
Everything feels like a trap.
I walk toward the balcony, each step slow, careful, as though the air itself might crack under me. The sliding glass door opens with a whisper, and the humid island air rushes over my skin, sticking to me instantly.
Palm trees sway in the distance.
The ocean churns against the white sand far below.
Bright parasols dot the resort like scattered jewels.
A paradise people save years to visit.
But all I feel is a hollow pit in my chest.