THE CONTROL: An Arranged Marriage Romance by Elena Monroe (ebook reader android .txt) 📕

Secrets.

Lies.

Things appearing one way but being another.

The small snake stopped at my bare feet in wonderment and the sudden urge to protect the snake from all the wild roaming animals felt overwhelming.

I felt like that snake: everyone knew them as venomous but compared to most wildlife, it doesn’t rank very high. That’s how I felt clashed against Bowen’s truth: suddenly not that venomous.

Bending down, I dumped out the contents of my large coffee mug and held it against the grass for him to crawl inside. It took a lot of coaxing before he slithered in, and I promised to keep him safe.

Laying my hand over the top lightly to hold him curled up inside my cup, I went back inside assuming Bowen had already left. He normally woke up at 6 AM and left the house by a prompt 6:25, wasting no time to leave me here by myself, stranded.

Not expecting him to be standing in the kitchen, I felt myself hit an invisible boundary in our silent treatments. It had been actual days since I spoke out loud in his presence and now I felt how mute that made me.

Just like Denmark—selectively mute if I couldn’t speak to Bowen. It drove my mother mad before it made things worse with Elias. Her silent contempt turned into punishments doled out by my new stepbrother so her hands could stay clean.

My mouth was still open while my brain and my heart argued over the words that should come out. “You’re still here. It’s after 7.”

“Didn’t know I had to leave by a certain time.” Poking a straw in the blender, he drank the smoothie right from the machine carelessly in a way that didn’t suit him. Bowen cared no matter how vile he seemed on the outside—he never stopped caring.

“You always leave by 6:25… It’s routine for you. Did something happen? Are you okay?” A rush of worry flooded me him with questions, but everything about him came up cold, just like his house, nothing felt like home again. My eyes even shifted to his arm looking for new wounds even though they tell you don’t open old wounds.

“Bad night. Not enough Henny,” his voice was flat and unwilling to meet me in the middle enough for this awkwardness to dissolve. We fed it instead.

“I saved a snake in the garden… He’s too small to be out there unprotected.” I left the cup on the island and Bowen flashed a look my direction that was clearly assessing if he broke me a little too much with his confession days ago.

“Snakes don’t need saving, Eve.” The flatness of his words landed heavily on me, and I had to stumble my way through deciding if we were speaking figuratively or about my new pet. “Just because something looks tough doesn’t mean it is...” My voice cracked realizing saving the snake was more about me.

“Things look tough as a defense mechanism, Eve, to keep predators away. You’ve been tough our whole life. Is that why this is so hard for you? It rattled your strength? Or because you weren’t supposed to ever be a victim?” Taking his smoothie, he walked away not waiting for the answer. Close to the invisible lines separating rooms I heard him shout, “Don’t worry, I’m leaving.”

My chest felt tight until I heard the front door click closed and I could finally take a deep inhale. Dropping down to my elbows, I watched my new friend coil up from the cup. “What should we name you?”

Thinking of our childhood together, seemingly where all things were born between us, I landed on the perfect name. A spin on our favorite series we would take turns reading until we finished all 6,095 pages of a world we soaked up. “Severus Snake. Do you like that?” His tongue flicked the air, and I took it as a yes because I wasn’t Harry, and I couldn’t speak Parseltongue.

Taking the cup with me, I felt the urge to snoop now that Bowen wasn’t here. I didn’t have the balls to snoop when we were so clearly at odds, but the key Khaos gave me was burning a hole in my proverbial pocket. This lingerie didn’t have enough material for pockets.

I tried all the obvious doors and all the ones I never walked through, until I found one particular door that wasn’t black like the rest but a navy blue. A navy-blue door when every other door in his house was painted a matte black.

I wondered to myself if I ever noticed before or if I simply was more interested in the black doors because those seem to match his insides better. Blue was my color, so whatever was behind that door wasn’t sinister like the rest. It was last on my list of places to snoop.

Trying the door handle, I saw Severus Snake coil up tighter like this was a bad idea when I twisted the handle enough to realize it was locked.

I found the one locked door in Bowen’s house. All his flaws properly displayed yet this blue door was sealed.

Setting Severus Snake down in the mug he was making his new home, I darted upstairs to my room that I had occupied during our silent treatment. Searching frantically for the key, I finally found it hiding under the candle lid where I taped it.

I hid things my whole life, taping them to the underneath for safe keeping. It wasn’t lost on me that all the mementos that made it to our wedding were ones I hid all around his room.

Photos taped under his bed frame.

Movie tickets tucked into books.

Other small trinkets taped to places I made special by letting it hold my favorite memories.

Maybe this is where he taped all his favorite memories.

Letting my brows furrow, I prayed the