Vows of Misfortune

33.

When I told Romir, I was fully expecting him to make an excuse so he wouldn't have to come.

"That's fine with me," he said instead, closing his laptop. He pulled up the sleeves of his brown cardigan to his elbows and gave me a side glance. "You don't have any classes?"

"No?" I said, still reeling from the fact that he was cool with it. "I'm on holidays. I was only doing a short course anyway so it won't take long for me to finish it." I didn't mention that I decided to do it because I had quit my dream job for Varun.

To be honest, at this point I didn't even care about the course.

"Alright." His voice broke into my thoughts and I watched as he headed back into our room to get changed, I assumed. I was so confused. He never cared about my classes before. Especially that first day we got married, he forced me to go to Susanne's house when I literally had a lecture.

Now he cared? To impress your parents, maybe. That made more sense. If we didn't show up he had no chance to get into my parents' good books. I mean, he was already there but still.

I knocked on the door. "Are you done?"

"Yeah."

I twisted the knob and pushed it open. He was in the middle of strapping his brace on and pulling the leg of his jeans down before standing up. He was dressed down in a white shirt and a black and blue plaid long-sleeved shirt that he rolled up over his veiny forearm. He brushed past me allowing me to get a sense of his sharp pine cologne.

Shaking my head, I waited until he was fully out of the room to lock it. I rifled through my half of the closet and brought out a lavender, floral midi dress that I hadn't worn in a long time. It was cinched at the waist and flared out until my knees. It was completely sleeveless but stopped right above my cleavage, also showing off my apparent wide collarbones.

I didn't bother with my hair, running some fingers through it before letting it sit over my shoulders naturally.

When I came out, I tried to find the appropriate shoes to wear near the front door where I'd left them carelessly lying around. There were the flats. I clicked my tongue. Nah. Heels? Too formal. Wedges!

My brown and white wedges were laying under one of the heels. I tried stepping into one but due to its height, as I bent down to strap the back belts, it wobbled and I stumbled to the side.

Instead of falling on the side of my butt, an arm slid around my waist and tugged me to them. A gasp left my lips involuntarily at the force of the motion. My palms spread on a solid chest and I tilted my head up, my nose brushing against Romir's.

That slight touch caused goosebumps to lift all the tiny hairs on my body. The heat of his hand burned through the fabric of my dress and to my skin; every exhalation of his chest moving against my hands made me shudder.

He made no move to let me go and I cleared my throat. His grip hadn't loosened. Is he okay? Was he thinking about his ex-girlfriend or something? Or maybe he was projecting his desires for her onto me?

Gross.

I struggled in his hold, making it obvious that I wanted to be let go. He slowly loosened his arm around my waist.

"Thanks," I muttered as I chucked the wedges off that one foot.

"Be careful," was all he said back.

No way was I going to go through that again. Might as well wear white sneakers. So that's what I did.

Even as I was tying up my shoelaces, my mind was drawn back to the way my body reacted to his touch. I shuddered, another ripple of goosebumps spreading on my skin and lighting myself on fire less so than his touch had done.