Page 45 of From Rome, With Hate

She raises a brow. “What?”

“Did you not believe me when I told you I never wanted a part in it? Before we were married?”

Her shoulders drop with a sigh. Looking down, she drags her foot along the grass. The storm clouds behind me are rolling closer. The sun is no longer shining. Even if there wasn’t a storm coming, the sun wouldn’t be as bright. Evening is setting in, covering the entire plot of land in dark gray. With the storm cloud creeping closer, every inch of Julianna is now covered in shadows.

“I don’t know when to believe you.” She turns and continues her walk.

Her words sting. I wish they didn’t, but they do.

Among the many problems we’ve faced in the past, one of them is knowing Julianna and I married young. We were too young to face the complications of living as husband and wife. We were naïve to believe we could have somehow made our families listen and give up their generations-long hatred of each other.

My feet are planted to the ground my family passed down to me. It became mine once I turned eighteen, along with the ink tattooed into my skin. While I wish I could erase the meaning behind the snake, I don’t regret the land. It now holds memories. Memories of pain. Of love.

Maybe that’s why I’ve refused to let it go even after I turned my father in.

I look up to find Julianna more than fifteen feet in front of me. She’s farther down the property, heading straight for the pond.

“Lark!” I shout, as a rumble of thunder vibrates across the ground. “Fifteen feet, remember?”

A drop of rain falls onto my cheek as I run to catch up with Julianna.

Her arms are stiff by her sides as she marches toward the pond. Once she reaches the edge, she finally stops.

Another drop of rain lands on my cheek, then my shoulder. “We should head back inside!” I shout, still catching up to her.

I’m only a few feet behind her when she says, “If you think the ones after us are linked to your family, do you really think it was a good idea to bring me here?”

“What do you mean?”

She spins around. “This land belonged to your parents before it was yours.”

“Ours.” I let the word spill out without hesitation. Technically, this land became Julianna’s the moment we said, ‘I do’. It was in the transfer of title my parents signed, that I was to split this land equally with my spouse. Little did they know I was already married.

She rolls her eyes, rain now coating her lashes and cheeks. “Nothing is ours.”

A familiar sensation grows inside me, the bitter resentment and anger from ten years ago boiling to the surface. It emerges from its cave, dusting off the dirt and cobwebs. Everything we once had, the promise of the future, all gone in one night.

“I’m not talking about our marriage,” Julianna dismisses. “I just meant that they might consider coming here to look for me. That it might be a place you would hide me out.”

“There isn’t anywhere safer for you than here with me to watch over you.”

“You never cared before.” She shakes her head. “We’ve lived separate lives, remember? It’s what you wanted.”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about our marriage,” I argue back.

She grinds her jaw, and, considering her silence, I continue.

“And what do you mean by what I wanted?” I press my hand to my chest. “You wanted a divorce. I offered the easier route.”

She laughs bitterly, gesturing toward the cabin. “This is easier?”

“Nothing about a divorce would have been easy. Doing it this way reduced the risk of the news leaking. We agreed we would be free to live separate lives.”

She presses her lips together, huffing a deep breath. “You keep telling yourself that, Rome.”

She leaves me again, sticking to the edge of the pond.

I run my hand down the side of my face. The rain is pelting us now, coming down in sheets, fast and furious. Thunder roarsangrily above us. It propels me to not let Julianna have the last word on this.