: Chapter 7

I blink and blink again, both of us still sitting on the hard floor.

I had to have heard her wrong, right? There’s no way she said what I think she said.

It takes her a few moments to realize I have zero intention of shaking her hand and she lowers it.

“Want to smoke?” she asks, reaching out and lifting a cigar off the end of my bed as if she didn’t just blow my fucking mind. “That’s why I snuck over. I was bored and figured you probably were too, so I came, but then you weren’t here. But now you are…unless you aren’t bored, and if you’re not I can totally go back to my room. I’m definitely going to get caught on my way back, though, or sooner, so maybe I could just smoke a little in here first?”

I can hardly keep up with her rambling; I’m too busy taking her in from head to perfect toes. Literally, she’s wearing no socks or shoes, and her toes are painted a bright shade of pink. Perfectly proportioned without flaws. Callous free. No scars.

From this angle, we look to be around the same in height, but visibly speaking, that would be where the similarities between us end.

While I’m a golden blonde, her hair is as black as night, shining with a deep burgundy hue when she turns, the light hitting it just right. Where mine reaches the middle of my back, hers is cropped short. It’s sleek and silky, lying just beneath her chin, millimeters away from meeting the skin of her elegant shoulders.

While my eyes are a softer shade of green, hers are full-on emerald, shiny and deep and framed by long lashes. She wears zero makeup on her face, yet her cheeks are bright with life and her lips a deep mauve in color. But it’s her body that stirs up that familiar, stomach-wrenching awareness of inadequacy I know all too well. The more I look her over, the deeper that feeling grows.

For as long as I can remember, all I wanted to do was dance, but once I hit puberty and my body didn’t change the way everyone else’s did, I wanted nothing more than to have the opposite of a ballerina’s stereotypical stamp.

Unfortunately, I fit that particular mold, and in the event I suddenly wouldn’t, I would do whatever it took to get it back – it was a twisted game I was the only player in. It didn’t matter that, logically speaking, my fifteen, seventeen, and nineteen-year-old body shouldn’t fit into the same size leotard I was fitted for at thirteen; I did what was necessary to make it happen anyway.

My shoulders and hips are too square, and despite Dr. Brennon’s best efforts, uneven in my plié. I was devastated when a routine physical, required for entry in the prestigious dance academy I worked to get into, came back with a dancer’s nightmare, deeming me physically unfit and forcing me to abandon the spot I’d earned.

Scoliosis.

One hip higher than the other, creating the same in my shoulders. Marginally, yes, but every fraction counts. To be the perfect dancer, your hips and shoulders must be square, something that is impossible when neither side aligns. Corrective surgery, and an ungodly number of back braces, worked magic, but by the time I was considered healed, if not just stabilized, it was too late.

My breasts pushed past the threshold of my ribs they were as flat as, but not to a size a man could truly consider desirable. Maybe not even womanly.

My thighs are too large for my body, my ass too round to be considered acceptable in a standard bodice, and don’t get me started on the rest.

But this girl? She’s elegant and sensual without trying to be. Her curves are full and thick, and an envy I’ve never known settles low in my gut.

I’m his other wife.

Her words and the blasé tone in which she spoke them loop in my head.

Of course, she is the type of woman a man as devastatingly handsome as Enzo would want when the choice was his to make.

Not that he didn’t choose me, because at the end of the day, he did. I didn’t force his hand. I asked and he said yes.

But he had already said yes to someone else…

The girl pulls a golden Zippo from who knows where and flicks it open, puffing at the cigar and spinning it between her fingers to get it going.

It takes a whole three seconds for me to realize it’s not a cigar at all. It’s a blunt.

A giant fucking blunt.

I watch as she pulls a long hit and holds it deep in her lungs, and when she looks my way, she releases it. Her face is hidden behind a wall of white smoke a moment before slowly, the fog clears, revealing her blinding white smile behind it.

She leans forward, offering the thing to me and even though I don’t smoke, I take it.

I take it and hit it twice before passing it back because, what in the actual fuck?

After I beat on my chest with a deep cough, I swing my eyes back to hers. “Are there any more of you locked in these walls I should know about?”

“More of what?” She looks at me curiously.

“Wives,” I deadpan. “How many other wives does Mr. Fikile have?”

Her perfectly-shaped brows jump, her mouth opening…and then she laughs.

It’s loud, long, and I kind of want to slap her now.

She must sense it as her head snaps my way and she settles, wincing the slightest bit. “Sorry, I didn’t mean I was his wife, wife.”

“So are you, like, his best friend or something?” Maybe she meant his work wife? I guess some men have those, though the only ones I know of are really just mistresses in disguise.

“No, I meant I was his wife, but I’m not anymore,” she shares with a smile as if that’s that and it’s all good.

It is not all good.

She was his wife?

He was married?

“Let me just—” I pause, trying to dig into her mind with my damn eyes. “You two were married. As in you and Enzo.”

“Yes.”

“But now you’re…not.”

“Exactly.” She grins.

I do not smile back and after a moment, she realizes we’re not having a fun, friendly conversation.

That I’m annoyed.

Angry.

And some other things I refuse to mention.

Slowly, she rises. “Maybe I should⁠—”

“Since when?”

“Go,” she finishes, leaving the blunt smoking on the edge of my desk. She reaches for the door handle that has apparently yet to be locked and goes to yank it open.

I smash, lift, and throw a sharp piece of porcelain, stabbing and bouncing off her wrist.

She jolts, spinning to glare at me, a small drop of red rolling down her knuckle. “What the hell?!”

What the hell is fucking right.

I push to my feet. “You two were legally married?”

“Yes.”

“And now you’re divorced?”

“Yes.”

My eyes narrow and I pick up a second piece of porcelain. “Yet you still live in his house.”

Her expression grows cagey, her knuckles whitening over the knob.

My stomach rises, threatening to spill what little contents it holds as my limbs begin to shake. A thought crosses my mind, but I don’t want to voice it.

I don’t want the answer to it because if it’s what I think it is…

She goes to leave, and my knees bend with the need to stop her, but I don’t. I hold strong…until she’s crossing the threshold of my door and breaks my cool.

I dart forward and shout. “When?”

I expect her to take off in a rush, something about her giving away how truly different she is than me. She might be gorgeous and built the way a woman should be, similar in my age or not, but she’s weak in ways I’m not, and that was clear in the expression she gave me, one that told me she has just realized maybe she made a mistake coming to my room.

I could kill her if I wanted and there’s nothing she could do to stop it.

“When?” she asks quietly, her eyes quickly darting around the halls outside my door and I’m not sure if she’s looking for help or making sure she hasn’t been caught in here. “When what?”

“When did you end your marriage?”

A look of sorrow, dare I say sympathy, crosses her expression, and she offers me a small smile. I know what she’s going to say before she says it.

“The day he met you.”