Chapter 2 The New Husband

Chapter Two – The New Husband

Bella – Age 17, two months later

---

The wedding is small. Rushed. My mother's third.

She wears ivory like it's still her first time, strutting down the short aisle barefoot in a garden she rented for the weekend, her smile stretched too wide. There's champagne in her step, mascara smudged just slightly under one eye. Daniel stands at the altar like a man about to enter a contract he already regrets.

He looks good in a suit. Too good. Like the kind of man who doesn't belong in real life-just in editorials or daydreams.

I sit two rows back, legs crossed, eyes locked on him. He doesn't look at me. Not once.

Smart man.

---

That night, I lie awake in my room while my mother laughs down the hall-the kind of high, drunk laugh that always makes me feel like a child again. The walls are thin. I hear her say his name, over and over. I hear the bed creak. I hear everything.

I press my pillow over my ears and close my eyes. Try to shut it out.

But it slips in anyway-through the cracks in the walls, through the cracks in me.

His voice. His hands. His mouth.

Not on her.

On me.

I curl under the sheets, eyes closed, breath held.

My skin hums with a need I don't understand and don't want to name. I move slowly, blindly-chasing the echo of something I've never touched but somehow already miss.

My body betrays me, aching in all the wrong places.

I imagine his eyes. His restraint. The way he looked at me when I walked past him.

The creaking gets louder. Her moans. His groan.

And in the dark, I pretend it's me.

When it's over, I walk to the bathtub.

Sink into the warmth.

And scrub myself clean.

---

A week passes. Then two.

The house shifts.

Daniel moves in quietly. His cologne lingers in the hallway. He stacks his books with precision on the living room shelves. His coffee cups appear beside mine in the sink. He exists in the spaces my mother doesn't care to fill.

And he tries not to look at me.

But he does.

He looks when he thinks I'm not paying attention-when I walk past him barefoot, towel-wrapped from a shower. When I lean over the kitchen counter, licking chocolate off my thumb. When I stretch on the back porch in shorts too short.

I'm not naïve.

I see it. The flicker in his eyes. The pause. The restraint.

It makes me feel dangerous. Alive.

---

He's reading on the couch one afternoon when I walk in wearing my mother's silk robe. It clings to me differently-shorter, looser, more suggestive.

I pretend I'm not aware of it.

"Is she home?" I ask, heading toward the fridge.

"No. She had a meeting." His voice is calm, almost clipped. He doesn't look up from his book.

I take out the orange juice and pour it slowly into a glass. The silence stretches.

"You don't talk much," I say, stepping closer. "Are you always this... quiet?"

He finally looks at me.

There's a beat. A second too long. His gaze drops to the edge of my robe-just for a moment.

Then back to my face.

"You don't talk like a seventeen-year-old," he says.

"I'll be eighteen in two weeks."

He closes his book.

"I know."

The air between us tightens.

He stands. Walks to the sink. Rinses his mug as if nothing is wrong-nothing trembling just beneath the surface.

"I'm making pasta tonight," he says, still not facing me. "Want some?"

"You cook?"

"Better than your mom."

I laugh. "Not hard."

He finally turns.

And for a moment, it's just us. His eyes are darker now. My lips parted. The moment threatens to tip.

Then his phone rings-sharp and sudden.

He picks it up. "Hey, babe."

My mother.

He walks out of the room.

And I'm left holding my glass of orange juice, heart pounding, skin hot.

Smiling.

---

That night, I heard them again through the wall. Her moans. His low voice. Her laughter.

I press a pillow over my face and imagine it's me.