Page 50 of Accidental Groom
“No, no, you don’t understand,” I grin, the image already forming in my head of a smaller version of myself. “I was the really odd eight-year-old at school who’d plan birthday parties for my dolls and have a meltdown when no one turned up. I used to cry when I dropped them. Mom told me once that I could kill a real baby by dropping it like that if I wasn’t careful, and I was inconsolable for about a week. I used to shove pillows under my shirts and make Sarah play labor-and-delivery with me. I wasweird.”
He actually chuckles for once, his half-stoic demeanor breaking.
“But it was more than that,” I continue. “I think… I don’t know, I think I just wanted something that felt like it was mine. Growing up in my house, you learn real fast that love is conditional, that you earn affection by obeying. By doing what’s expected of you. By beinguseful.”
He doesn’t interrupt me to drop pity on me, and I’m genuinely thankful for that. Just watches me, waiting for whatever I’m going to say next.
“My mother once told me I should stop working so I could get liposuction before the wedding,” I add, sweeping my hair to one side and dropping my gaze to my knees. “Said it would be more useful to the merger than anything else would be.”
He stays quiet. When I glance at him, he’s looking away, a muscle in his jaw twitching.
“So, yeah,” I murmur, shrugging again. “I want to keep it. I don’t need a perfect situation to want that. I just want to be good to something small and new and mine, and do it differently than I was taught.”
A beat of silence passes us, nothing but the sound of our breathing and the slight sloshing of water filling the space.
“Does that bother you?”
“Hm?”
“That I want to keep it.”
He shakes his head, dragging his gaze back to me. “No,” he says carefully. “It doesn’t.”
I hesitate, watching him, counting the flecks of gold in the green of his eyes, memorizing the softness of his features for once, the way the crease in his forehead is mostly smooth, the way the crinkles by his eyes aren’t too deep this morning.
“Okay,” I murmur.
His eyes flick down to the bath again, watching the water ripple as I adjust my legs. “You seem less nauseous this morning.”
“The bath helps,” I say. Part of me half-expects him to get up and leave any minute now that I’ve answered the question he clearly came in for, but he lingers, settling in a little more and dropping his rear to the floor.
“Helped Geraldine too, funnily enough,” he says quietly.
My brows lift. I have vague memories of her from when my father first met Harry, back in my early teens, just before the contract was drawn up for me and George. I knew she’d passed, had heard my parents whispering about it, but never learned any of the details. Maybe it was my way of fighting the contract — keep myself at as much of a distance from the Highcourts as long as I could.
“She was your wife, right?” I ask carefully.
He nods, his gaze flicking around the bathroom, then out the open door. “This was her space, originally. Her art studio. She used to be in here half the time, before she…” His words trail off, not bothering to finish the sentence.
My lips part as I follow his gaze. The half-covered furniture downstairs, the faint scent of paint that still lingered, the way this place feltlived in— it made sense now. “You—you didn’t tell me that.”
“You didn’t ask.”
I watch him again, memorizing his profile, the way his throat bobs just once. “You didn’t have to let me live in here. If you’d told me, I wouldn’t have?—”
He shakes his head, meeting my gaze again. “It was her space,” he says, “but it hasn’t been used in years. You wanted to stay with me, and I figured you’d want your own space to do what you wanted with. It made the most sense. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think I’d be okay with it. And I didn’t think she’d mind.”
I hesitate, but nod, half to myself and half to him. “Thank you,” I murmur. “It’s… peaceful, in here.”
He doesn’t reply, but something in his expression shifts, like I’ve hit a bit of a nerve he wasn’t expecting me to touch on.
I know I should leave it alone. I do. But I can’t bring myself to stop talking to him, and a part of me doesn’t want him to inevitably leave, so I keep talking.
“What was she like? I don’t really remember.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, barely noticeable, but I see it. “Fierce. Crazy, in a good way. Could hold a grudge for years, and loved just as intensely if she hadn’t seen you in days or a decade. Quiet when she wanted to be, loud when she didn’t. She hated coffee. Loved flowers.”
I smile faintly. “Sounds like someone who didn’t do things halfway.”
