All Chapters of Married To Danger: Chapter 91 - Chapter 94

VALENTINA I didn’t remember turning on the water. I didn’t remember taking off my clothes, or stepping into the tub. All I remembered was red. Red on the steps. Red on my arm. Red painting the marble when her head hit the floor. It must’ve followed me here, because the bathwater was stained the same shade. I couldn’t tell where Serena stopped and where I began. I wrapped my arms around my legs and pulled my knees to my chest. My chin rested on top of them. I didn’t realize how cold the water had gotten until my teeth began tapping together, faintly, like two pieces of porcelain. I didn’t care. I didn’t bother to move, or to reach for the steaming tap, or to step out of the bath the way any sane, functioning adult would. I just sat there, staring blankly at the red swirl around me. It wasn’t even the bright, shocking red anymore. It had diluted into this murky watercolor— pinkish in some places, brownish in others— cloudy, like something spoiled. My skin was numb under it.

VALENTINA I stood at the entrance of the room I grew up in, and everything felt unfamiliar. The room didn’t feel like mine anymore. It looked the same with the soft lavender curtains, the framed ballet poster, and the little stack of books I never returned to the shelf after moving out, but somehow it felt like I was trespassing in a life I’d outgrown. My mother had moved half of her closet in here, and there was barely any space to move freely. I sat at the edge of the bed with my knees pulled up to my chest, wrapped in one of my old high-school sweatshirts. The sleeves still smelled faintly of detergent and my teenage years. It was nothing like the warm cedar scent of Adrian’s shirts that still lingered in my memory like a bruise I couldn’t stop pressing. I stared out the window and was met with sunlight, birds and a normal neighborhood. A normal life. But still, I felt nothing. Just emptiness. A hollow ringing in my chest that had settled there the moment I walked out of Adr