Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 86741 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86741 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
These weren’t the people I knew, but it was a great night. We kissed hard after our I do’s and drank champagne under the pergola with a hot fire going. We filled up on rotisserie chicken wings, baked macaroni, and hors d’oeuvres, and it was a romantic evening, all things considered.
Roland allowed me to hire a local wedding photographer to capture our special moments, and once it was all said and done and the night had stretched to day, we went up to the bedroom I could officially call ours and made the sweetest love as husband and wife.
But, despite having such a great night, my mind constantly reverted back to one little thing.
Melanie’s old shed. What all was in there? And why did I care so much to find out?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
For our honeymoon, we didn’t go far. It was a good thing we’d had a winter wedding because we were able to stay local and visit a ski resort close by. The resort was nice and cozy and though I didn’t know how to ski, Roland assisted me. We had an amazing time and shared some incredible meals, but the trip was almost ruined when a group of people recognized him and started taking pictures of us. We decided to spend the rest of our honeymoon in a cabin, far away from anyone else.
Before I knew it, we were riding back home in his SUV, the heat cranked up and blasting on us as snow flurries fell down from the gray sky.
“I could really get used to this,” I sighed.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean, at first I didn’t think I’d like the snow but I actually really love it. It makes this part of the world seem pristine—majestic.”
“That, I can agree with. I’m glad you like it here. Melanie didn’t really care for snow.”
I looked at him, the sharp angle of his nose and the stubble along his jawline and chin. “She didn’t?”
“No. She didn’t want to move here at all, at first. I met her in North Carolina.”
“Oh. That’s a long way.”
“Yeah. She lived in Raleigh, so it didn’t really snow much there.”
“Well, how did you rope her into moving to Colorado with you?”
“It took a while, but she eventually decided that there wasn’t much left for her there, so she moved with me right after we got married.”
Wow. That sounded awfully familiar. So Melanie and I had something in common—well, other than marrying the same man. She left her hometown and everything else behind to be with him.
“But what about her sister?”
“What about her?” he asked quickly.
“Did her sister visit often?”
“Yeah. Sometimes.”
I waited for him to say more but nothing came of it.
“Oh.”
The car fell silent and I noticed his grip tighten around the steering wheel. My brows stitched together as I looked from his tight knuckles to his face. His eyes were ahead, focused, but there was a crease between his eyebrows. He was agitated.
* * *
When we got home, I took a hot shower, walked across the heated marble floors, and stared at my reflection in the mirror. I couldn’t end up like Melanie—working in a shed, doing drugs, driving over cliffs. I wasn’t sure what had possessed her to do any of that, but I knew for a fact that I needed a purpose. It was nice that Roland was taking care of me, and that we were in love, but I couldn’t center all of myself around him. I needed to find something worth doing. Leave a mark of my own in this world. Now that I had his resources, I would take some of the opportunities.
I’d always wanted to get into graphic designing and drawing again. I had started school for it but never finished, just like I did everything else in my life. Sometimes I hated that about myself. This time, I wanted to fulfill one of my own dreams. Perhaps with a little assistance from Roland I could purchase an iPad and stylus pen, kickstart my passion again, and sell some prints. I wanted to create an Instagram account specifically for my designs and figured Kell could help me market it. He was very good at social media marketing—he had over twenty thousand followers on his personal account.
The thought of my brother made me pause during the middle of my skincare routine. I hadn’t told him anything about my marriage. We’d kept in touch while I was secretly dating Roland, but I never spoke about my love life with him. If I had, he would have known I was talking to someone. He always sensed those things, and I would have found it extremely hard not to confess. When he asked me about work, I told him I’d found a simple retail job. He was proud of me . . . and I couldn’t stand myself for betraying his trust.