A Love Built On Scorn Chapter 01
Caitlin’s POV
Everyone assumed that after the divorce, Sebastian Wofford would marry the assistant he’d once loved so desperately.
But when he married again, his bride was still me.
Three months after we got back together, I noticed a dark reddish smear of dried blood on the seat cushion in his car.
Sebastian lifted a brow and said lazily, “It was her first time.”
For once, I didn’t fly into one of my usual hysterics. I only asked gently, “Do you want me to have it cleaned?”
At a party, Sebastian’s friends were loudly discussing the young woman he’d been keeping on the side lately.
“Seb, when are you bringing the new favorite around for us to meet? She’s still in college, right? A CEO running to a little café every day just to wait for some girl to get off her shift—heard you couldn’t even hold back in the car. You weren’t this fired up even when you were chasing Caitlin back in the day!”
Someone nearby muttered a reminder, “Keep it down. Cait’s still here.”
But the man deliberately raised his voice instead. “So what if she is? After the divorce, she came crawling back and begged Seb to remarry her because she couldn’t handle living poor. All that pride, all that high-and-mighty attitude—shattered the day her family went bankrupt!”
Humiliation crashed down on me from every direction.
I kept a pleasant smile on my face and sipped my champagne. I didn’t do what I usually did—lose all dignity and start screaming.
But this time, Sebastian was the one who was displeased.
***
On the drive home, Sebastian’s expression was complicated.
“Caitlin, why didn’t you push back tonight when they said all that nasty stuff?
“They went too far with those jokes today. No matter what, you’re still my wife. You should still be shown the respect that comes with that.”
He paused, then went on.
“That college girl comes from a humble family. Her mother’s sick and needs money to pay the bills. We’re just giving each other what the other needs. There are no feelings involved, and even if there were, she could never threaten your place.”
It was a rare explanation from him, but at that moment, I had no energy to care.
When I gave almost no reaction, he raised his voice. “Cait, are you even listening to me?”
“I’m listening.”
My tone was tired, though I still caught the searching look he turned on me.
When I opened my eyes and looked at him, I had already put back on the softness I’d worn so often lately. “Wasn’t it you who said they didn’t mean anything by those comments, and that I shouldn’t be petty enough to take offense?
“That girl’s had a hard life, and she doesn’t know much about the world. Be gentler with her.”
I thought if I followed Sebastian’s logic and said exactly what he wanted to hear, he would nod in satisfaction and say that I was obedient.
What I never expected was for the last trace of a smile at the corner of his mouth to disappear.
The car jerked to a stop at the curb, and Sebastian’s voice grew colder.
“Caitlin, I don’t understand what kind of scene you’re trying to make this time.”
I froze for a second, then slowly took off my earbuds. “Sebastian, I haven’t made a scene at any point tonight.
“Couldn’t you tell I was offering you my blessing?”
I thought it was the perfect answer, the kind that should have smoothed over his sudden anger.
Instead, it only poured gasoline on the fire.
He ground out my name through clenched teeth. “Caitlin!”
I looked at Sebastian and waited quietly for whatever he would do next.
Then, out of nowhere, rain came crashing down over New York.
Drops pounded hard against the windows.
Inside the car, the atmosphere grew even heavier, even more suffocating, with every second of rain.
Just before Sebastian’s temper finally snapped, a thin, bedraggled figure on the sidewalk, trying helplessly to shelter from the storm, abruptly entered his line of sight.
It took only a second for his anger to be forcibly smothered by sharp, overwhelming concern.
His face dark, he ordered me out of the car.
I didn’t do what I would have done before—didn’t stand there with red-rimmed eyes demanding to know why. I simply got out, exactly as he told me to.
The rain hit my body without mercy. It stung.
Not long after, Sebastian got out, too.
His jaw tight, he held an umbrella and walked toward the slender figure he had noticed a moment earlier.
He said nothing. He simply seized the girl by the arm and pulled her back toward the car with the kind of force that made refusal impossible.
I’d heard people say her name was Kayla Ludlow.
Behind me, a young couple suddenly started talking.
The girl frowned, her face full of indecision. “Do tattoos hurt a lot?”
The boy pulled her into his arms, already pained for her. “Then don’t get one if you’re scared it’ll hurt.”
The tattoo on the side of my waist, the one I’d gotten at 18, suddenly burned hot.
It was the romance Sebastian and I had once shared in our first awakening to love, when we were young and foolish, and certain that feeling alone could last forever.
A pity that romance survived only until the third year of our marriage.
The moment I discovered he had cheated on me for the first time, my whole world collapsed.
