Nobela ni Gbemisola Matthew

Ethan’s POV The house was too quiet.I sat at the head of the dinner table, a plate of untasted food in front of me. I adored the quietness of this house; it was the sole place where I could think without interruption, without useless chatter. Yet now, quietness was too loud, too conspicuous.She'd been gone for four days.It should have been impossible to care, I wanted distance, didn't I? Her absence was supposed to be a relief. No gentle smiles that I could not reciprocate, no optimistic glances that caused my chest to feel sore. But now, the empty spaces were more oppressive with the air condensed by her absence.I pushed the plate away and stood; chair scraping against the floor. I needed to get to work. Work puts my head in order. Numbers made sense, logic. Unlike Lila.At the office, I delved into reports and meetings. But my mind betrayed me and wandered to her at the most inopportune times.I recalled the way she'd stood in the library the other day, her lips slightly apart

It was a silent ride to my parents' place except for the soft hum of the car. The countryside blazed by in green and gold streaks. It moved in motion blur in a way that was beautiful to look at but I was not focused on the view. Ethan was who I had in mind; his coldness, his reserve, the way in which his eyes sliced through me like a knife without even actually looking at me.The car finally pulled onto my parents' driveway and stopped, and with my little bag, I got down and thanked the driver. I turned and my mother was already at the door. She opened it before I'd even knocked, her warm smile trembling as she saw my face."Lila, darling," she said, her arms enveloping me tightly. "You look so tired. Come in, come in."The house, filled with the scent of freshly baked bread and home-made lavender, enveloped me like a cloak. My father was in the living room, reading the newspaper, and he laid it aside and stood up when he spotted me, his arms wide open."There's my girl," he hugged me

The following day of the dinner party felt bleak, too bleak. The mansion stood as an empty reminder of how it once had been; it was me and my thoughts, with hardly a wisp of lilies still wafting through the air from last evening. I sat at the kitchen counter, clutching a steaming cup of tea within my grasp as my thoughts replayed every second of last night and before.Ethan had been maddeningly vague, as usual. A brief flicker of something, warmth maybe? Yearning? But it vanished in effect the very moment it had existed, and I was left grasping at thin air. I recalled the way his hand lay across my back, fingers merely grazing my skin as we greeted the guests. For a second, it seemed like we were in a perfect world where he was mine. But then came his cold, clipped words after everyone left, slicing through whatever fragile connection we’d formed.Why couldn’t he just let me in?I breathed out and put the cup down, and then I stood up to clear my head. I went into the library, the sce

Golden light flooded in like a river through the big windows in the kitchen. Standing at the counter, whipping up batter in a bowl. Firm and sure were my hands; elsewhere was my mind.I had hardly slept a wink the previous night, at the back of my mind was the mystery of Ethan's face, cold and yet fragile, so much lacking, my mind kept turning round it asking myself what the missing pieces could be.This afternoon, I did something different, something small but special. One of the times that I spoke to Ethan's mom, she talked about how much, as a young boy, Ethan enjoyed chocolate chip muffins. A small thing, perhaps, but maybe it would serve as a reminder that I paid attention, that I cared.I took the muffins out of the oven and placed them on a plate, releasing bouquets of the richest chocolate-stuffed aroma into the air. My heart seemed to pound at the notion that somehow, such a simple act could span the gulf so rapidly developing between us.I turned around and considered the pl

ETHAN'S POV The sound of my pen scratching across the paper was the only thing tethering me to reality as chaos swirled around the office. Numbers, reports, projections, they were safe, predictable. They didn’t ask questions or pry into the disaster that was my personal life. They didn’t care about the sham of a marriage I’d been forced into.Business didn't need my heart.The phone on my desk jingled, and I glanced over at the name scrolling on the face of the phone. My jaw was clenched. Of course it would be her.I let it ring.A minute later, my assistant's voice crackled over the intercom. "Mr. Blackwell, your mother is on line one. Shall I connect her?""No," I said curtly. "Tell her I'm in a meeting."I leaned back in my chair and exhaled deeply. I didn't hate my mother, deep down, I really love her, but her meddling finally went too far. Her arrangement for me to marry Lila was the ultimate betrayal.Lila.She roused in me a confused tempest.I did not want a wife. I did not w

Islands of golden light in the morning streamed in through floor-to-ceiling windows, spilling out onto plush carpeting in the master bedroom. It was one of those odd, teasing moments when I could have been anywhere. There were hazy memories hovering just beyond recall, marriage vows, champagne toasts, and whispers about our "unlikely match" that seemed like fragments of a dream.And I rolled over to the other side of the bed, and the cold, intact sheets spoke in gory words. This wasn't a dream.I was Mrs. Ethan Blackwell.There was something in the heaviness of that realization. The husband to whom I had married, a stranger in so many ways had walked out after our strained showdown in the honeymoon suite last night and hadn't been back until very late last night. I'd heard the muffled sound of his footsteps down the hall, the firm click of his study door, and then nothing. He hadn't gone to bed.I looked out over the sea of empty space on either side of me and sighed in exasperation.