I ate in the kitchen, not meeting Sterling’s judgmental gaze. She sat across from me, her hands in her lap, staring at me as though I just mauled a baby. In a sense, that was exactly what I had done.
“Any more great ideas? Maybe I should send her back to her parents?” I snarled when it became apparent she was not going to stop looking at me.
“You should definitely not do that.” It was the first time Sterling spoke to me in that tone. Even when I was a child, she did not treat me like one. She did now.
“I’m not going to wait for her to come out any longer.”
“You shouldn’t have waited a minute,” she agreed, sipping my fine scotch. Things were dire between Francesca and me if Sterling resorted to drinking. She hadn’t drunk an alcoholic beverage in two decades.
“Then why did you tell me to wait?” I flipped over the plate with the prime rib, sending it flying across the kitchen. It crashed against the wall.
“I wanted you to suffer the way she did.” She shrugged, standing up and walking out of the kitchen, leaving me to stew in the fact that I did, in fact, suffer.
I fixed myself a glass of bourbon, heavy on the rocks, and made my way to the east wing. Nem’s bedroom door was closed, and I pushed it halfway open without knocking, out of habit, before thinking the better of it.
I brushed my knuckles over the oak wood of her door.
“May I come in?” My voice felt stiff and rigid.
I did not ask for permission to do anything.
And I was not fond of the idea of making it a habit.
No answer.
I pressed my head to the hard surface and closed my eyes, breathing in traces of her scent. The mandarin shampoo she used. The sweet, vanilla lotion that made her skin glow. The thought she was so sore she might have needed to go to the doctor’s today flashed through my mind, accompanied by an even more unsettling idea—Francesca wouldn’t tell me if she was too sore. She would cling to the remainder of her pride. The same pride I stripped off her viciously in my quest to avenge something that did not really happen.
I pushed the door open, finding my fiancée splayed on her four-poster bed, staring at nothing. I followed her line of vision. It was a blank spot on the wall that captured her attention. She did not so much as blink when I stepped in.
I made my way to her, sat on the edge of her bed, and took a sip of my bourbon, handing it over to her. She ignored both me and the drink.
“I’m sorry,” I rasped.
“Go away,” she groaned.
“I’m not sure that’s an option,” I admitted frankly. “The more you think about what happened, the more you’ll hate me.”
“I should hate you.”
I took another sip of my drink. I wasn’t going to argue my defense. It was inexcusable whether she told me she was a virgin or not. “That may be true, but we’d both suffer if you do. And although I deserve my fair share of suffering—” I said, and she cut through my words.
“Yes, yes, you do.”
“I do,” I agreed, my voice too soft for my ears to believe it was mine, “but you don’t. You’ve done nothing wrong. And while I’m not a good man, I am not a terrible one, either.”
She looked down at her hands, inspecting them as she tried not to cry. The fact that I knew how Francesca’s almost-crying face looked like proved that I’d been less than an ideal fiancé to her.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?”
She chuckled, shaking her head.
“You’d already made up your mind about me before I even opened my mouth at the masquerade. And frankly, I didn’t much care what you thought of me. But yesterday, I told you…no, I repeatedly told you I didn’t sleep with Angelo. Three times. So I think the better question is—why didn’t you believe me?”
I gave it some thought. “It made disliking you easier.”
“What a coincidence. Your actions made me dislike you, fiercely.” She crossed her arms over her chest, looking away.
“I do not dislike you any more, Nemesis.”
I didn’t hate her. I respected her. Even more so since she didn’t let her pride get in the way yesterday. She got down on her knees to prove a point. That I was a bastard, and that she was speaking the truth. I took her purity and knew that in order to fix this, I would need to give her some of my own pride.
A price beyond anything I’d ever agreed to pay. A security deposit to make sure I could keep my fiancée, not only physically but in the same mental state from prior to our engagement party. The same fiancée who rubbed her soft, little body all over mine in her vegetable garden every evening, gasping in awe every time I “accidentally” touched her clit through the fabric of her dress.