Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 449

Then Scarlett came down the stairs, dressed in black jeans and a tight blue shirt with her hair packed up, and my smile faltered.

"Are you going somewhere?" I asked.

She hesitated, glancing toward the door. "I would have liked to have breakfast with you, but Sparrow seems to be in a hurry."

"You are going with Sparrow?" My heart dropped into my stomach. "Why? Where is he taking you? I want to come along."

"You cannot, Tasha."

"Why?" The word came out sharper than I meant it to. "You want to leave me here alone?"

"It is not up to me." She spread her hands. "Sparrow asked me to come with him. He has something important to do today and he wants me there. He will not agree to take you. I am sorry."

"Then why did you not say no?" I heard my voice rising and could not stop it. "You know I am not in a good state. You said it yourself. And now you are leaving me alone on my second day as a bride while you go off?"

I stood in the empty doorway for a long time, staring where the car had been, and I let the cold settle into something useful. Let her think she was ahead. Let her spend the day playing whore for him. She had shown me exactly how the game was played, and I was a better student than she had ever realized. I was his wife, and I had a whole year to make him forget her name entirely.

When he came home tonight, I would be here, waiting, soft and sweet and perfect, and little by little I would become the only thing he saw.

I was still seething when my phone began to ring. Sparrow's grandmother. Her name on the screen made me smile, which surprised me, because when I had first met the woman I had written her off as a nosy old busybody with too many opinions and too little to do with them.

I had played along with her, called her Grandmother, smiled and nodded, because that was the role I had been given. But somewhere between her piling food onto my plate and squeezing my hand and telling me I was family now, something had shifted. She genuinely wanted me in her family, and I could not remember the last time anyone had wanted me for myself instead of for what I could do for them.