I did too. I wanted to wake up tomorrow and screw my head on straight because tonight I was losing my mind.
28
Morina
“We get married tomorrow.” He threw his suit jacket on a hook and loosened his tie as we walked into the penthouse. His voice made me jump, we’d been silent for so long.
He moved quickly, slipping his shoes off and not making eye contact with me at all.
“Bastian?” When he didn’t look my way and started down the hall to his room, I yelled, “Bastian, what the hell?”
“What the hell?” He whirled around, molten hot rage brewing in his gaze, singeing me as he approached. He got right up to my face and he grabbed my hair at the nape of my neck. “I said, we get married tomorrow. You and me. My fiancée. Tomorrow, you’ll be my wife. Do you understand?”
I searched his eyes. “You have the audacity to be like this? Mad and all pissy?”
His jaw ticked.
“You have the audacity when you had that woman on your arm whispering things to you all night. You laughed at her jokes. You nestled into her neck. I saw you. And you even said she knew what she was doing before you fucked me.” I poked his shoulder as the grip in my hair got tighter and tighter.
“None of that matters,ragazza. We marry tomorrow and that means you’re not spreading your legs for anyone after that.”
We both stood there breathing fast, stewing, our furious gazes locked on one another. If I’d lit a candle, it would have been blown out by our anger and jealousy flying through the room.
“All about what you own, huh? Am I your property now?” I didn’t give him time to answer. “Fuck you, Sebastian Armanelli.”
With that, I smacked his hand away from my hair and stormed past him into my bedroom. I slammed the door and screamed.
He didn’t come after me like I thought he might. I heard his door close not long after.
Good.
He could rot on his side of the penthouse for all I cared.
Except, all night, I felt like I was wasting away. My mind ran through every scenario and then stumbled upon the most pressing one.
I was getting married tomorrow to a man I didn’t love without friends, family, a dress, or even shoes.
Quick decisions would have to be made.
“Right about that, Grandma.”
I probably drifted to sleep, trying to conjure up a way for her to be haunting me in my bedroom so I could throw something at her but none of it happened. She didn't even come to me in a dream.
I woke and read my horoscope, the Sagittarius in me ready to be stubborn and vengeful toward Bastian for dropping our wedding date on me without even a night of planning. I knew we would be going to the courthouse but I pulled a white baggy t-shirt from a drawer and slipped it on over a bikini. I looked like I was going to the beach, not going to get married.
When I walked down the hallway, he had breakfast on the island for me. Those stupidly good crepes sat there folded perfectly covered in a delicate sprinkling of powdered sugar.
He washed dishes, suit on, completely ready for the madness we were about to go through with.
When he turned and scanned me, I was ready for the fight. Sebastian Armanelli was going to come out of his shell and tell me to go change.
I braced for it as I sat at the counter.
He grabbed a glass, filled it with water, and slowly poured it into my grandmother’s plants, circling the stems to make sure it was distributed evenly.
The control he had in the daylight was out of this world.
At night, though, we both knew he had none.