Chapter 12
Serenity
“WHY DID YOU CALL OUT of work today?”
“I wasn’t feeling well,” I answered honestly, clutching the phone as I leaned the side of my head against my chair.
I’d curled back up in my reading chair after Dante stormed out, and I still sat there, though I couldn’t pay much attention to the book I had been reading. I was still too shaken from my talk with Dante.
“Are you actually sick?”
The suspicious stretch at the end of his question told me what Dad was thinking. What he really wanted to ask was if I called out of work to be “lazy,” an accusation that had been made by Scarlett, his wife and my step-mother, many times since I’d started working for my dad.
“I’m not lazy, Dad,” I replied calmly. There was no point in pretending that I didn’t know what he was actually implying. The exchange with Dante had drained me of my ability to pretend. Now, I was empty, my insides carved out by the truth I wanted but failed to hide. “I didn’t feel good.”
“You know I love you, sweetie, but I don’t want you pawning off your responsibilities on other people,” Dad continued with unease.
“Don’t burden the others at the company,” Scarlett suddenly chimed in.
I wasn’t surprised to know she’d been listening in on the conversation, monitoring what was said between me and Dad.
“It’s embarrassing to have the daughter of the company not taking charge and doing more.
What kind of look do you think that paints for your father as the owner? ”
Scarlett’s irritation was crystal clear, and my dad’s silent approval of her reprimands was deafening. Despite the cold resolve that had settled in my body, that one word broke through my defenses to claw at my mind.
Burden.
I was a burden.
I closed my eyes and addressed the only person I cared about on the other end of the phone. “I’ll do better, Dad.” A knock sounded at my door. I opened my eyes and sat up. “I think Bradley’s here. I’ve gotta go.”
He sighed, and I could just picture him pinching the bridge of his nose in exhausted disappointment. “Okay. We’ll talk about this later, honey.”
The call ended, and I robotically walked to my door to open it for my boyfriend.
“Surprise!”
My eyes widened as I took the large bouquet of roses from Bradley. He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, careful to avoid my injured lip, which had a decent gash across the bottom.
My gaze bounced between the roses and Bradley. “These are beautiful. I can’t remember the last time you got me flowers.”
“Which is a shame,” he said, following me to my kitchen where I searched for a vase to put them in. He leaned his forearms on the counter and watched me with a smile. “I should be giving you flowers all the time, which is exactly what I plan on doing from now on.”
I waited for the warmth to unfurl within my chest. I waited to feel the spark that accompanied any kind gesture Bradley made me. I waited to feel the same brightness that came when a certain man remembered and brought me my coffee.
It never came.
The seconds alone with Bradley stretched. The numbness that I’d managed to suppress the previous evening in an act of denial returned.
“I brought something else, too,” Bradley revealed excitedly.
He held up a finger for me to wait and dipped back out into the hallway. I glanced at the flowers again when a metal click sounded, followed by Bradley’s confused call from the other side of the door. “Uh, Serenity? Why’d you lock the door?”
Frowning, I went to the door, and sure enough, it had relocked behind him. The lock wasn’t automatic. It had to be manually turned, so how had it locked behind him?
“That’s weird.” I opened it for him and studied the handle on the door. “I’m not sure what happened. I didn’t lock it.”
He shrugged, the oddity in the door’s lock forgotten. He held out a box of Mateo’s Pizza. “Ta-da!” he beamed. “I grabbed us a pizza from Mateo’s on my way over.”
I stared at the cardboard box. My faint grin was at odds with my lifeless voice. “Our first date.”
“Right,” he agreed. “We ate pizza at Mateo’s then went to the movies. I figured we’d recreate our first date, only from the comfort of your place. I know you prefer staying home than going out.”
Any other time, I would’ve been so overcome with joy that I would’ve wrapped myself around Bradley and given him my heart all over again. These days, a gesture as thoughtful as this from him was as rare as finding a shark walking around the forest.
But something inside of me was too broken to see the sweetness in his actions.
I’d been fine during the day—mostly. I’d spent it writing a little, reading, and watching my comfort Korean dramas. The tasks kept my mind busy for a time so that I couldn’t think about the betrayal of yesterday, but every so often, the memory would come crashing back in.
The back of his knuckles colliding with my jaw in a biting sting.
The coppery taste of blood filling my mouth and conjuring nausea.
The ache of realizing the guy I’d loved all these years had been replaced by a foreigner.
The last one was what haunted me the most. Physical pain and I had long been acquainted, and I often welcomed its companionship during dark times. But that deep splintering of my heart and the fracturing of the future I’d concocted in my head had been nearly intolerable.
Until Dante appeared.
The handsome man had cleared the fog of hurt from my head, and it wasn’t until he’d confronted me about Bradley that the hurt had closed back in. He’d insisted that what had happened wasn’t an accident, and his confidence in that idea had stuck with me. Now, even I wasn’t sure.
Now I sat next to the man I’d promised my life to, eating pizza and pretending that nothing was on my mind, wondering what to do and what I felt.
“So that was my day,” Bradley finished, and it was only then that I realized he’d been telling me about his day at work this entire time.
He took my untouched dinner plate with a mumble about me not eating what he bought, which I ignored.
After replacing my slices in the pizza box, he loaded the plates into the dishwasher—something he never did.
He glanced at me from where he tidied up the kitchen. “How was your day?”
“You never ask about my day,” I pointed out flatly.
He frowned, and genuine remorse seemed to flood his blue eyes. “I don’t? Well, that changes now, too. More flowers, more talking about your day. I’m going to become a better man for you, Dollface.”
Perhaps it was because I didn’t believe him. Maybe it was because I wanted to test this new version of Bradley to see if it was real. Or I might’ve wanted to poke the bear to see if he was truly gone or just in hibernation.
Regardless of the reason, I told him calmly, “I hung out with Dante.”
The two of us stared at each other, neither of us moving or breathing as my statement hung in the air between us.
Bradley smiled slowly. “Nice. Did you have a good time?”
“Yeah. He brought me coffee and a cinnamon roll.”
Bradley’s smile stayed in place, even as his jaw ticked. “He came here?”
I nodded.
Bradley turned his back on me as he put away the remaining pizza. “Cool. I’m glad you had fun with your friend, Doll.”
Bradley was feigning his acceptance of my day with Dante. The tightness in his shoulders and roughness in his voice made that obvious. But it seemed he was trying to be okay with it. His arguments remained bottled up, which was uncharacteristic of him.
Was he actually interested in changing for me?
I wanted to believe that was the case. I wanted to believe his acts of affection yesterday and today weren’t fleeting but real steps toward us growing. But the wound on my heart was as fresh as the one on my face. I didn’t know when or if my trust in him would return.
“I was thinking I might stay over again,” Bradley suggested as he rejoined me on the couch and gently trailed his fingertips along my upper back. He smiled sweetly and kissed my temple. “I really do love being with you.”
My eyes collided with his, and I searched them, finding small traces of my Bradley, the one I often missed and loved. His knuckles trailed up my neck until his palm cupped my jaw. He started to tilt his face closer to mine.
A sudden shattering of glass made both of us jump and gasp. Bradley whipped around while I looked over his shoulder to find what had happened.
“Shit,” Bradley hissed as he jumped up.
I stood, too, and that was when I saw the vase of roses shattered on the ground. Glass shards were everywhere, and the roses were scattered about the floor with water gathering beneath it all.
Bradley held a hand out to keep me away. “Stay back. I don’t want you getting cut on this glass.”
“What happened?” I asked in shock.
“I’m not sure,” he murmured as he bent down to clean up the mess.
He moved about the house to get a towel for the water and the broom and dustpan for the glass, but I barely noticed.
I looked between the counter where I’d set the flowers and the floor where they now laid in ruin.
I was sure I’d put them safely in the middle of the kitchen counter, and there was nothing around that area that could suddenly knock the vase over.
But clearly, something had.
I glanced at the front door and recalled the moment where it had locked behind Bradley. I wasn’t sure if the two abnormal occurrences were related, but the questions about their causes spiraled through my head, all the same. Still, I knew there had to be a logical explanation for both incidents.
Maybe my door is broken, and I accidentally sat the flowers on the edge by mistake, I told myself as Bradley finished cleaning.
He frowned at the sight of the broken and crushed roses.
“I’m sorry about the flowers,” I apologized.
Even if I was confused about the two of us and where we went from here, he’d been sweet enough to get those with me in mind, and now they were destroyed.
He looked at me and offered a reassuring smile. “It’s okay. It’s just flowers. I’ll get you more.”