Chapter 3Love Repositioned

“You and Vivian can stay the night,” he said, his gaze fixed on her mother. “I’ll have the staff prepare a guest room for you.” Then he turned to me. “You too, Nelly. It’s late. Stop bothering me. We’ll talk in the morning.”

The moment Vivian’s mother heard Caleb intended for me to stay, her eyes shot daggers at me before she turned a fawning smile back up at him. “Oh, Caleb, darling, just one room is fine! Why would Vivian need her own room? You two lovebirds must have so much to talk about!”

So this was the famed upbringing of the upper class. So eager to push her own daughter into a man’s bed.

I turned to go back to my room, but Luna grabbed my arm. “You might as well just crash in the basement for one night,” she said, dragging me towards the cellar door. “No point in going back to your old room on the second floor. Besides,” she added with a cruel smirk, “you don’t want to be in the room next door listening to my brother and Vivian, do you?”

“There’s no light down there,” I said, looking her straight in the eye.

“So? It’s not like you’re afraid of the dark.”

She shot me an impatient glare, having conveniently forgotten the time she’d gotten lost in the woods as a child. I was the one who went searching for her. A wolf found us. To save her, I drew it away, leading it on a desperate chase until I was cornered in a pitch-black cave. There was no way out. I could hear the wolf’s panting, feel its hot breath just behind me.

Later, Caleb asked me a hundred times how I survived that night.

I never told him. I survived on the sheer, desperate conviction that I had to see him again.

After Luna left, locking the door behind her, I curled into a ball against the cold, damp wall. The darkness was absolute, a suffocating blanket without a single crack of moonlight. My breath came in ragged gasps, my heart hammering against my ribs. I could almost feel the phantom slick of the wolf’s saliva on my leg, the terror as real as it was all those years ago.

I couldn’t take it. I scrambled back up the stairs, hammering on the door until my knuckles were raw. When it finally opened, I stumbled into the hallway and saw them. Caleb and Vivian, entwined on the sofa.

“Vivian, I’m sorry,” Caleb was saying, his voice low and strained. “I really can’t divorce Nelly.”

“Because of your debt to her grandmother?”

“Not just that,” he paused. “I swore an oath on her grave. If I leave Nelly, I’m cursed to a horrific death…”

“Her grandmother is dead, Caleb. You really think a corpse can curse you?”

“Vivian, can’t we just stay like this? You’re my confidante, my partner… isn’t that enough?” He didn’t answer her question. Instead, he leaned in and covered her mouth with his.

The cramped sofa became a stage for their passion, and a bitter poison filled my heart.

The truth was, my grandmother had wanted to place a real curse on him. I was the one who stopped her. I remember her stroking my face, her voice full of sorrow. “My sweet, simple girl,” she’d sighed. “What will you do when you get hurt? There will be no one left to protect you.”

She was right. The one who protected me was gone. And it was time for me to leave, too.

I turned and went back to the basement. So what if it was dark? So what if I was terrified? The bite of a lone wolf years ago was nothing compared to the pain of Caleb’s casual admission—that he was bound not by love, but by fear of an old ghost story.

The basement door creaked open again. The beam of a flashlight blinded me.

I squinted, making out Vivian’s silhouette, the angry red marks visible on her exposed shoulder.

“You heard all of that, didn’t you?” she said, her voice laced with venom. “You must be so proud. Caleb won’t divorce you.”