Lahat ng Kabanata ng Marrying The Wrong Brother: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

I pulled away before my mind realised what was happening. One second I was falling, then I wasn't. his arm across my back, his hand gripping my butt which sent shockwaves through my entire body and made my entire nervous system short-circuit. “How dare you!” I gasped before I could process anything else. He wasn't allowed to touch me like that. “You were falling!” He retorted quickly but then I was upright, stepping away from him fast enough that the wet stone nearly took me a second time. He motioned to catch me the second time. "I'm fine," I uttered clippedly, before he could speak. He said nothing and watched me with a perfectly blank expression that somehow communicated how irritated he felt. I don’t know how to handle this man. I walked back inside without looking at him again. ~ I didn't sleep well. The PR team called at eight but as usual, I was already awake. I answered with a coffee I hadn't finished and a vague hope that the call would be brief.

I couldn't believe she was doing this. My stepmother was on television. She must have been very desperate to discredit me with the fact that she was not making her usual statement or making a chide quote buried in a shareholder thread. She was putting her actual face out there, in a studio interview that someone had arranged quickly enough to tell me it had been planned before we boarded a plane. She was dressed in something careful and understated and she spoke like someone who had practiced every word she was saying. “Sloane had always been a troubled child.” She said with teary eyes and a shaky voice. “And to be fair, it’s not easy to grow up without a mother figure. She acted up often and now, this. To stage a whole marriage, I am quite worried for her, having taken the huge responsibility of being her mother, I have to do this.” She continued, this time bursting into tears. What was she even saying?! And to think people were actually believing this nonsense. She de

Was his heart beating that hard for me?That was what my mind kept coming back to.I was in the shower the next morning and his heartbeat was there, the thought in my mind. The way his chest had felt under my palm, warm and solid, beating with urgency that told me everything I suspected but was not ready to know.I had done that to him and made his heart race for me.I smiled at the thought and caught myself.Sloane, do not catch feelings. This isn’t real. He is just really good at playing groom and husband at the end of the day.My train of thought was dangerous enough that I spent the next moments standing by the window trying to remember what it felt like to want nothing from anyone.I had managed it for years and this certainly wasn't' the time I would start depending on people, especially men.The new resort was in Portugal.Sintra, where the country turned green, dramatic and every building was made of stone and old garden walls with lights than shined so beautifully, it was lik

Did he want to belittle me or make me feel small?As he opened the door, I stood in the hallway with my phone held up, screen facing him. On it was the Instagram post, with specifically, the comment section, which had apparently grown considerably since I'd last looked at it.I was furious with how the picture painted me."Forty-seven thousand likes," I said to him. For some reason, he smiled while I continued."In four hours. Do you want to know what they're saying in the comments?""I have a general idea.""People think this is real." I said with an edge in my tone that took him by surprise. "They think I am so deathly in love with you, starstruck even! They think I am the one -," I stopped myself.They think I am the one chasing you. I could only complete the statement in my thoughts. "This wasn't part of the arrangement. This isn't staged content, this is someone's candid photograph of me looking at you like-" I stopped myself from speaking again.Like I am in love of somethi

What the hell are you hiding from me? I had opened my mouth to ask him that when he received a phone call and his countenance changed. The rooftop was empty and the last few guests had left. I had turned to him with the question that had been sitting on my mind since midnight in the villa but at that moment, when I watched his face change, I couldn't approach him anymore. It told me that whatever he'd said through that wall last night wasn't nothing and that I needed to know what it was because it was the only thing that explained this hot and cold I was experiencing. His expression shifted like a door closing. And everything that had been open at dinner, where our elbows had touched and neither of us moved, was completely gone, reminding me that in the truth of it, this man was a stranger. He held up a finger, a gesture to ask to be excused and walked to the far edge of the rooftop where he knew I couldn’t hear him with the phone in his ear. I stood where I was and watched hi