I gave up the life my wealthy parents had planned for me to marry the man I’d loved since high school. But on our wedding night, Leo looked at me with an expression that made my stomach drop.
The bathroom door clicked shut behind me, and the smell of cheap disinfectant followed me into the room. Leo sat on the edge of the sagging mattress in his undershirt, shoulders bent, staring down at his hands as if they belonged to someone else.
Leo sat on the edge of the sagging mattress.
Our takeout containers, which we’d grabbed after the wedding, were cooling on the nightstand, forgotten.
“Hey,” I said, tugging the hem of my t-shirt down over my thighs. “You’re not eating.”
My new husband didn’t look up.
“Leo?”
I crossed the thin carpet and sat beside him. The mattress dipped so hard that our knees knocked together, and still he didn’t smile the way he always did when we touched.
My new husband didn’t look up.
“You okay?”
When my husband finally lifted his face, his expression was so serious that my throat went dry.
“There’s something I should have told you before we got married,” he said quietly.
I stared at him. Then my hand found his, and I held on. My mind rushed backward the way minds do when they can’t handle the present.
“You okay?”
***
I thought about the first time I saw Leo, seven years ago, in Mr. Peterson’s high school chemistry class. He’d been assigned the lab station next to mine. I’d worn a cashmere sweater my mother had recently bought. He’d worn a hoodie with a hole in the sleeve.
“Your goggles are on upside down,” he whispered, grinning.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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