They Jilted the Broken Scholar, So I Married Him novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Fourteen

"You are my wife," Chengzhi repeated.

He was sitting up against the pillows with the quilt pulled to his chin, and he had said it four times.

"Yes," I said.

"I married a girl from the noodle stall."

"Yes."

"I did not even ask you."

"No," I said. "I asked you. You were busy with a horse."

He turned a deep, painful red and stared at the wall.

Madam Lu had cried herself out in the first hour.

She had held his face in both hands, and said his name over and over, and he had said, "Mother, people are looking," although the only people in the room were the maid and me.

That was how I knew for certain.

The boy who had slept against my collarbone would never have cared who was looking.

This one cared with his whole body.

He was about fourteen, I thought.

He knew the lane and the academy, and the year, and his own mother.

He did not know how he had come to be in bed with a stitched head, or where three months had gone.

He remembered that he had been riding somewhere.

He did not remember where.

"What is that?" he said, an hour later, pointing a stiff finger at the wooden horse on the chest.

"It's yours."

"It's a toy."

"You loved it."

"I did not," he said, scandalized, and then, quieter, "Did I?"

"You laughed so hard you fell over."

He put his hands over his face.

"Put it away," he said through his fingers. "Put it somewhere nobody will see it."

I put the horse in the clothes chest and closed the lid.

I was smiling so hard my face hurt, and under the smiling there was another thing I had not expected, a small hollow ache.

The boy who had needed me was gone.

This one needed to be left alone to feed himself, and walk by himself to the gate, and hold his own brush, with a hand that shook so badly the ink flew.

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