Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 445

TASHA

After the wedding, the car carried us through the city with Sparrow at the wheel, and behind me Maya and Jasmine were losing a battle they had sworn they would win.

"If you cry, I will cry," Jasmine kept announcing, already blotting her eyes with the back of her hand, and Scarlett kept answering from somewhere in the middle of them, "Then cry, nobody is stopping you," until Maya sighed and told them both to hold hands and shut up.

Any other evening I would have been right there with them, tangled in that knot of tears, because Jasmine and Maya had been my lifeline for so long that the thought of waking up without them felt like losing a limb. But I sat in the passenger seat with my hands in my lap, watching Sparrow's profile change under every streetlight, and I could not find a single tear.

Something in me had come alive at that altar, something I had never met before, and it was too busy drinking in the sight of my husband to mourn anything. My husband. Even inside my own head the words felt strange and new, and I turned them over like coins.

My mind kept slipping backward without permission, to the boutique where he had barely looked at me while the assistants circled like birds, and then to the way he had taken my hand in his, gentler than I had expected from a man who made everyone flinch, and handed that ring to me.

He had not smiled. He had not needed to. Then the wedding itself, the way he had cradled my face at the altar when the vows were done, tilting it up like I was something precious, and kissed me while the whole world watched.

Granny had held my hand, squeezing it between her thin fingers, and her voice had been low and serious. "Be wary, child. So many people will be jealous of you now, and the worst kind will hide it behind a smile."

She had looked across the room at Scarlett and her eyes had gone hard. "I have eyes, Tasha. I see things other people do not, and I see that woman. She is interested in your husband. I was not happy you chose her as your maid of honor, but it is done now."

She had squeezed harder. "Keep that woman away from him. You are Mrs. Ford now, the youngest living Mrs. Ford in the family, and that title is worth more than you know. People will do anything to take it from you, so you guard your marriage. You guard your husband. Men like Sparrow, sometimes their eyes stray, but a woman with sense can put an end to that before it starts. You can make sure you are the only woman he wants. It is all in your power."