I got dressed. Jeans, white t-shirt, the denim jacket I’d had since sophomore year of high school. College clothes. Normal-person clothes. The blue dress was still hanging on the back of my door like a question I hadn’t answered, and I looked away from it and headed out.
I was halfway through my eyebrow routine – left brow done, right brow in progress, one hand holding the tweezers and the other holding a magnifying mirror that made my pores look like lunar craters – when Rowan’s voice boomed up the stairwell.
“Marlowe! Come down.”
Not “good morning.” Not “breakfast is ready.” Just my name and a command. Rowan had the kind of voice that could carry through walls without effort, the deep baritone of a man who’d spent years compensating for the fact that he was only twenty-four and raising a younger sister who questioned everything.
“Coming!” I shouted back, abandoning the right eyebrow to its natural state. I’d fix it later. Or I wouldn’t. Eyebrow symmetry felt increasingly irrelevant to my life.
I trotted downstairs and turned the corner into the dining room, and that’s when the morning took a sharp left into surreal.
Rowan was seated at the table. Normal. Expected. Beside him – in the chair where nobody ever sat, the chair that functioned primarily as a repository for junk mail and forgotten textbooks – was the man from last night. The stranger. Except he didn’t look like a stranger anymore. In the daylight, without the shock of finding him in my kitchen at the crack of dawn, I could study him properly. He was younger than I’d initially thought – early thirties, maybe. Handsome in a severe, architectural way, like a building designed by someone who valued clean lines and sharp angles. His suit was immaculate, dark navy, the kind of fabric that catches light in a way cheap suits never do. And his eyes – dark, watchful, trained on me with an intensity that made me feel like I was the only item on an auction block.
“Marlowe,” Rowan said, gesturing to the empty chair across from them. “Sit down.”
I sat. Not because I felt cooperative, but because my brother’s tone had that rare quality that left no room for negotiation. On the table, steam rose from a bowl of rice, and a glass of water stood beside it like a silent suggestion. Both men watched me. Neither spoke. Neither ate. They just… watched, as though my breakfast was the opening act of a show they’d paid good money to see.
I picked up my spoon and started eating. What else was I supposed to do? Two men staring at me in loaded silence at seven in the morning wasn’t a situation Emily Post had prepared me for. So I ate. I chewed slowly, deliberately, because something about their silence told me I’d need whatever strength this rice could give me. I finished the bowl. I drank the water. I set the glass down with a small, decisive clink.
“Okay,” I said. “Someone want to tell me what’s going on?”
Rowan cleared his throat. He had the look of a man about to pull the pin on a grenade and hoping the blast radius wouldn’t be as bad as calculated.
“Marlowe, this is Mr. Caelum.” He gestured to the stranger the way a car salesman gestures to a vehicle he’s desperate to move. “He’s one of the wealthiest men in the world. He saw you at Sterling’s party last night, and… he’s taken with you.”
A beat of silence. Then two. I blinked.
“What?”
“Please,” Rowan said, raising a hand as though calming a startled horse. “Stay calm.”
Stay calm. My brother had just informed me that a total stranger had seen me at a party, developed instant romantic feelings, tracked down my home address, shown up in our kitchen before breakfast, and was now sitting across from me with the composed expression of a man ordering coffee. And Rowan’s contribution to this scenario was stay calm.
I stayed calm. Not because he asked, but because the alternative – screaming, flipping the table, throwing the water glass – seemed like it would only prove his point about me being emotional.
“Marlowe,” Rowan continued, and now his voice had that careful, measured quality I recognized from every serious conversation we’d had since Mom and Dad died. The voice that said: I’m the adult here, even though I barely know how to be one. “Mr. Caelum wants to marry you. And I’ve given my consent.”
The words landed on me like ice water.
“Well, I haven’t.” My voice came out sharper than a knife drawer. “This is my life, Rowan. A man I’ve never met can’t walk into our home, declare he’s in love with me over a bowl of rice, and expect me to say ‘sure, when’s the wedding.’”
“Marlowe, listen-“
“No.” I pushed back my chair and stood. “I won’t listen. In fact, I’m going to my room, and when I come back down, I’d appreciate it if there were fewer strangers at our breakfast table.”
I turned and walked away before either of them could respond, taking the stairs two at a time, my heart hammering with a cocktail of fury and disbelief. Behind me, I heard Rowan’s chair scrape against the floor as he stood to follow.
I made it to my room, shut the door, and pressed my back against it. My hands were shaking. Mr. Caelum’s proposal. Marriage. To a man whose first name I didn’t even know, whose presence in my kitchen felt like a home invasion dressed in designer fabric.
The knock came sooner than expected.
“Marlowe? Can we talk?”
I closed my eyes. Counted to five. Opened the door.
Rowan stood there, and for the first time in a long time, he didn’t look like my authoritative older brother. He looked tired. He looked like a man carrying a weight I couldn’t see, and the realization softened my anger just enough to let him in.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.