While My Husband Cheated I Married His Powerful Brother novel Chapter 3
Chapter 3 One Night Stand
She understood now that he had not been strong. He had been relieved.
She had never been the problem.
She thought about staying. She thought about what it would be like to be here when he woke up. To let him make her coffee. To let him ask her name.
“What brings you here?” he said. His voice was low. Rough at the edges.
“My room is upstairs,” he said.
His face did something. Guilt and fear and calculation all fighting for space.
The recording kept playing. Xiomara’s voice: He was furious. All that disruption for nothing. Veyra let it run. She let it play long enough for Caspian to hear every word. Long enough for Xiomara to hear herself. Long enough for the people around them to understand what kind of man Caspian Thorne really was.
*
Veyra held up her phone and pressed play.
Then she pocketed the phone.
What happened after that was nothing like what she had known.
He turned. His face went through something Veyra had never seen before. A full second of blankness. Like his brain had stopped working. Then the mask came down. The smile. The easy confidence. The man who could talk his way out of anything.
She nodded.
“Bad enough to drink alone in a hotel bar?”
*
She looked at him one more time. The shape of his shoulders in the dark. The line of his jaw. The way his hair fell across his forehead.
When he leaned in to hear her over the music, she could smell him. Cedar and warmth. Clean skin. She found herself watching his mouth when he spoke.
“Is this seat taken?”
She sat alone and turned Xiomara’s words over in her mind. The ones about the money. The mother. The ring. But there was something else. Something Xiomara had said on the plane, almost as an afterthought. That Caspian found her boring. That she did not try anymore. That she was not a real woman.
She had not been the problem.
Xiomara made a sound. A small, strangled thing. She grabbed Caspian’s arm. “Caspian, I didn’t know she was—”
Caspian finally found his voice. “Veyra, listen to me. Whatever you heard, it’s not what you think. She exaggerates. She makes things up. You know how women like that are.”
2
She leaned across the table and she kissed him. It was not tentative. She did not want to be tentative anymore. His hand came up and cupped her jaw, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. He kissed her back like he had been waiting for it. Like he had been hoping.
He shook her off.
She waited for him to ask her name. He did not.
*
“I’m Dorian,” he said.
She had not been the problem.
He blinked. “I didn’t mean—”
When she pulled back, his eyes were dark.
He turned her back to face him. He looked at her for a long moment. Not like he was appraising her. Like he was seeing her. He touched her face. Her jaw. Her throat. His hand moved slow.
She should have rolled her eyes. She should have said something clever. Instead, she felt something loosen in her chest. Something she had been holding tight for a very long time.
“How do women like that be, Caspian?”
*
She lay awake after. Dorian was beside her, his breathing slow and even. The room was dark. The sheets were cool against her skin. She listened to him breathe for a long time.
“I want to feel something,” she said. “Anything. Just make me feel something.”
She finished her drink and ordered another. She was not a woman who did impulsive things. She was the sprt of woman who calculated, who saved, who waited and she was done waiting.
“Don’t.” She held up her hand. “Don’t say my name like that. Don’t pretend.”
He laughed. It was a quiet sound.
He turned her around in the dim light and unzipped her dress. His fingers were steady. His hands were warm on her shoulders. He pressed his mouth to the back of her neck and she closed her eyes.
She sat down across from him. The booth was leather and warm. The table between them was small. Close enough that she could see the color of his eyes. Gray. Almost silver in the low light.
She found a bar. She did not remember choosing it. She just walked until she saw lights and went inside.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured against her skin.
She slipped out of bed. Her dress was on the floor. She found it in the dark and pulled it on. Her shoes. Her bag. She moved quietly, the way women learn to move when they need to leave without being noticed.
“Bad day,” she said.
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Story doesnt even make sense...