“I know how this looks,” he said, sitting on the edge of my bed. He ran a hand through his hair – a gesture I’d learned to read as his version of distress. “Believe me, I know. But Caelum isn’t… he’s not some random guy. He’s respected. Successful. And he’s genuinely interested in you.”
“Rowan, you’re describing a LinkedIn profile, not a reason to get married.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “Just… think about it, okay? Opportunities like this don’t come around twice.”
“Opportunities.” I let the word sit between us. “You make it sound like a job offer.”
“Marlowe.” He looked at me with those eyes – our mother’s eyes, dark and warm and impossible to stay angry at. “I’m not trying to decide your life for you. I’m asking you to consider it. That’s all.”
I held his gaze for a long moment. The anger was still there, coiled in my chest like a spring, but so was something else – the awareness that Rowan had carried me through every hard thing since I was sixteen. He’d dropped out of school. Worked two jobs. Kept the lights on and the fridge stocked and never, not once, complained about any of it. He’d earned the right to ask me for something, even something as insane as this.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, and I meant it the way you mean “I’ll think about skydiving” – technically truthful, practically unlikely.
“Thank you,” he said, and the relief in his voice was so genuine it almost made me feel guilty. He stood, gave my shoulder a squeeze, and left.
Alone again, I sank onto my bed and stared at the wall. Mr. Caelum’s face floated in my mind – those dark, assessing eyes, the quiet confidence, the way he’d sat at our scarred kitchen table in his expensive suit as though it were a boardroom and he’d already closed the deal.
What had he seen in me? At a party full of women who wore their wealth like perfume, what had caught his eye about a girl in a seven-dollar dress who didn’t know which fork to use?
The questions circled like vultures, and I had no carcass of an answer to offer them.
I needed a familiar voice. I needed someone who knew me, who wanted me, who chose me – not because he’d spotted me across a crowded room, but because we’d built something together. Brick by brick. Day by day.
I picked up my phone and called Sterling.
He answered on the fourth ring, and the temperature dropped ten degrees.
“What is it?”
Two words, delivered with the warmth of a foreclosure notice. I pressed the phone tighter against my ear as though proximity might soften them.
“Sterling.” My voice cracked on the second syllable. I hated that. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I wanted to call because… because last night, I-“
“You what?” He cut through my fumbling like scissors through tissue paper. “You know what? Save it. I already know what you are, Marlowe. I’ve known for a while.”
My stomach clenched. “What I am?”
“A user.” The word came through clean and sharp. “You never loved me. You were with me because of my money, and the second I asked you to prove otherwise, you ran. Made up some excuse about your brother and disappeared like I was nothing.”
“That’s not true.” My voice was cracking now and I couldn’t stop it. The tears were already building behind my eyes, hot and urgent and completely unwelcome. “I love you, Sterling. My brother called and he sounded-“
“Actions speak louder than words.” He said it with the practiced cadence of someone who’d rehearsed the line, someone who’d stood in front of his own mirror and decided this was the version of the conversation he was going to have, regardless of what I said. “You talk about love, but your actions tell a different story. If you loved me, you would have stayed last night. Simple as that.”
The logic was so twisted and so confident that for a moment – one horrible, vertiginous moment – I almost believed him. Almost thought: maybe he’s right. Maybe love is measured in obedience. Maybe I failed a test I didn’t know I was taking.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no. Sterling, please. I love you. Believe me.”
The tears were falling now. I could feel them tracking down my cheeks, dripping onto my collarbone, and I wiped them away with the back of my hand like a child.
“You want to prove it?” His voice shifted. Not softer – harder, but with a different shape. Transactional. “Come to my house. Tonight. You know what I want.”
The demand sat between us like a loaded gun. I closed my eyes. The room felt like it was tilting.
“I can’t,” I said, barely above a breath. “My brother won’t-“
“Your brother.” He laughed, and the sound had no humor in it. “Always your brother. What a convenient shield.”
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.