Moonlight on Butternut Lake by McNear Mary

Author:McNear, Mary [McNear, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-03-18T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Everyone has a breaking point, and Mila reached hers less than a year into her marriage to Brandon. It was a bitterly cold, late December afternoon, and the two of them had just carried their first Christmas tree into their apartment. It should have been a festive occasion, but Brandon was full of a silent fury that had Mila rushing into the kitchen as soon as they’d leaned the tree up against the living room wall.

“I’m going to make something hot to drink, cocoa, maybe,” she said, pulling off her hat and gloves and coat and depositing them on a chair at the kitchen table. She went to fill the teakettle, but Brandon intercepted her at the sink.

“What was that?” he asked her quietly. So quietly it scared her.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play dumb, Mila. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Her hand shook slightly as she set the teakettle down. He was right. She knew exactly what he was talking about.

“What was that, between you and our neighbor?” he asked.

“Brandon, that was nothing,” she said, turning to him. “I’ve told you before. There is nothing going on between us. I mean, you were there. You saw it. All of it. He got on the elevator with us, and I didn’t even say hello to him. I didn’t even look at him. I ignored him. That was it. That was all.”

“You did not just ignore him, Mila,” he said, with barely suppressed rage. “You were flirting with him.”

“I was not flirting with him,” she insisted, anger rising in her. She tried to tamp it down now. If she’d learned anything over the last year it was that her anger only added fuel to Brandon’s fire, and his fire already burned white hot all on its own.

“Stop denying it,” he said, through clenched teeth. “Stop denying that even with your husband right there beside you, you sent him a message, loud and clear. You said ‘I’m interested.’ You said, ‘I’m available.’ You said, ‘Hey, my husband’s at work during the day, and I’m all alone. Why don’t we—’”

“That’s enough,” she broke in, too full of disgust to let him go any further. “This is ridiculous. There is nothing between us. My God, Brandon, even you should be able to see that.”

She didn’t see it coming. She never saw it coming. It was an explosion of heat and light and pain, and she screamed once and brought her hand reflexively to her left eye. “This is not over,” Brandon said, and he picked up the kettle and threw it against the wall above the stove with such force that Mila was afraid it would bounce back and hit her, too. But it clanged onto the floor instead, and Brandon stormed out of the kitchen and slammed the apartment door behind him. And Mila, who knew she needed to do something about her eye, and do it now, before it got too swollen, did nothing about it, and instead slid down, her back against the counter, until she was sitting on the kitchen floor.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.