บททั้งหมดของ AN AFFAIR WITH MY FIANCE'S FATHER: บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

The thing about Wednesdays was that they always started with the kind of energy that made you feel like the week was already losing.Double lectures back to back, a hallway that smelled like someone had spilled an entire coffee cart somewhere near the science block, and approximately three hundred students all moving in different directions with the collective urgency of people who were already late for something. I navigated through it the way I always did. My earphones in one ear, iced coffee in hand, letting the crowd part around me rather than pushing through it.Zara was beside me matching my pace, talking about something her cousin who visited had done two nights before that had apparently involved a borrowed straightener and a near disaster, and I was listening with about sixty percent of my attention because the other forty was occupied with the fact that I had spent my morning thinking about Reid Callum. He was just there, in my head which was already more than I was comforta

The plan was simple.get to zara's by noon, cook the meal we had been talking about since thursday, eat too much, watch something neither of us would finish, and call it a sunday well spent.I had my bag on my shoulder and the car keys in my hand and I was approximately four minutes from being out the front door when aunt Carol looked up from the kitchen counter where she was sorting through mail and said, "you're going to zara's again?"“Yes, I am," I said.she made a sound that wasn't quite agreement and wasn't quite disagreement and went back to her mail. I should have just left. four more steps and I would have been at the door and the rest of the day would have gone exactly as planned.but I waited. "you were out late last night," she said."I stayed at Zara's.""and the night before?""Also Zara's."she set down the mail and looked at me properly now with that expression she had been wearing more and more lately. "brielle.""Yeah, aunt Carol?"she folded her hands on the count

Who let this man into this house?"The voice came from the front door and landed in the living room like something thrown hard.Everything stopped.Zara, who had just taken her first cautious step toward her father, froze on the bottom stair. Dominic, who had stood up when he heard the door, went completely still. And I stood in the middle of the living room holding my glass of water feeling suddenly and very acutely like a person standing in the middle of a road watching two cars come from opposite directions.Reid was in the doorway.He was just standing there with his keys still in his hand, his jaw set and his eyes fixed on his father with the particular stillness of someone who had been holding something for a very long time and had just walked into the room where he was finally allowed to put it down.Dominic opened his mouth."Don't even say a thing." Reid walked in and dropped his keys on the side table and the sound of them hitting the surface was somehow louder than it shoul

I stood in that corridor for a full ten seconds just staring at the closed door.Then I started walking.Just the steady purposeful walk of a person who had just seen something that was going to be very useful to her and needed a moment to figure out exactly how useful.Professor Marcus Cole?I turned the corner and almost laughed out loud.This man. This same man who had grabbed my wrist and looked at me like I was something he had already categorized and dismissed. This same man who had sat behind that desk with his controlled voice and his empty threats and his carefully maintained professional distance and told me in no uncertain terms that nothing I could offer would ever be enough to change his mind.And Ophelia?I stopped at the water fountain at the end of the corridor, leaned against the wall beside it and let myself process that specific detail for a moment.I tried to think of one genuinely compelling reason why Ophelia specifically. I was not being vain about it, I was bei

Two days.I had not gone home properly, I had not gone to class. I had eaten whatever the hospital vending machine offered at odd hours and slept in the chair beside Carol's bed in increments that didn't qualify as real sleep and I had watched nurses come and go and monitors beep and the light outside the window change from day to night to day again and Carol had not opened her eyes once.I texted Zara again yesterday morning.This time the ticks had stayed grey. Like her phone was off or dead or somewhere it couldn't receive anything and that was a different kind of worry from the read and ignored situation two days ago. I had called twice and both times it went straight to voicemail and I had sat with that in the back of my mind alongside everything else and told myself there was a reasonable explanation and I would find out what it was when Carol woke up and things settled.The morning nurse came in at eight. A different one from the night shift, older and efficient. She moved aro