#Chapter 33: Spreading Stains

Ella The tears slipped out before I could stop them. I didn’t expect to be so upset over a stupid dress. But this was supposed to be my first date ever—even if it was fake. Dammit, I was twenty-two years old and had never experienced a normal date before. The fact that I’d finally worked up the courage to plan something only to have it ruined by Gabriel’s “accident”, which definitely wasn’t even an accident at all, made it a hundred times worse. What did I do in a past life that prevented me from even having this one thing? This one small, stupid, normal experience that most people had by the time they were sixteen? Goddess, how I yearned for a real relationship. A man who would hold my hand in a dark theater because he wanted to, not because people were watching. A man who would want to be alone with me instead of insisting on bringing his Beta along as a buffer. Not whatever this was. This mockery of a marriage where my own husband couldn’t stand