“Jack Sanchez, have you lost your damn mind? Everything I told you, did you feed it all to the dogs?”
I let out a cold laugh. Back when Rebecca and I first got together, she was always mentioning this stable hand her family kept.
Said he'd grown up alongside her. That he'd saved her life once, and she owed him for it.
The very first time we met, he came at me with a show of force, saying I hadn't greeted him properly.
I figured he was young, so I apologized, polite as could be.
All I got in return was a sneer：
“Some ill-bred nobody thinks he can walk into the Henson house!”
After that, it only got worse.
If I was even a beat late raising a toast to him at dinner, I was treating him like he didn't exist.
He didn't just look down his nose at me. He carried himself like he was the man of the house.
There were even times I wanted to spend a little longer alone with Rebecca.
He'd barge straight in, claiming he was doing some kind of mind-and-body cleansing today. No intimacy allowed in the Henson home.
His acting was so pathetic it actually made me laugh.
“Val, if you want to ruin our moment, just say so. Why bother with the performance?”
In the beginning, Rebecca would at least step in to smooth things over：
“Come on, Val, stop giving Jack a hard time. This is between the two of us. Go on out.”
But later, when she saw me getting pushed around, she wouldn't even glance my way. She'd side with him, tell me I was being dramatic.
“It's not like Val took a piece out of you. Do you really have to go after him like this?”
I stared at the absurdity playing out in front of me.
My own fiancée, taking a stable hand's side at every turn.
A stable hand, with the nerve to ride roughshod over me.
I'd spoiled Rebecca too much. That was what gave them the courage to treat me this way.
I brushed the mud off my clothes.
The stench still clung to me, thick and ripe.
I had never been humiliated like this in my life. I wasn't about to swallow it now.
“Have you thought about me even once? You can't even tell right from wrong, and you're already pointing the finger at me?”
I pointed straight at Val's hideous face, my voice ice-cold：
“Rebecca, do me a favor and figure out who your husband is supposed to be.”
“What kind of future man of the house takes orders from a stable hand?”
Before I even finished, Rebecca's eyes went red, and she screamed at me：
“Watch your mouth! What do you mean, stable hand?!”
“Did you forget the three house rules I told you? You show Val respect at all times!”
“That's a major offense. Don't even think about touching me for a month!”
Her dead-serious little decree was so absurd it made me laugh. Even now, at a time like this.
She still thought she could keep me in line with sex.
When I'd loved her to the point of stupidity, I'd agreed, in the heat of it, to her three so-called “house rules.”
First, never call Val Dickerson a “stable hand.”
Second, treat Val like family every time I saw him, without exception.
Third, the pecking order in the Henson house went Rebecca first, Val second, and me below them both.
Even her own parents didn't rank as high as Val.
Looking back now, it was nothing but a joke. I couldn't believe I'd ever been that pathetically blind.
It never crossed my mind that the two of them might have something shady going on behind my back.
Now that the feeling was gone, everything was a hell of a lot clearer.
I scoffed, turned, and started walking away.
“Punish me however you want. I don't care anymore. I'm done with this house!”
I'd barely taken two steps when Rebecca's voice rang out behind me, shaking with laughter.
“Oh, a big man talking tough, is that it?”
“You might be able to walk away from this house, but walk away from me? I'll believe it when pigs fly!”
The servants standing around exchanged uneasy glances, their faces flushing red from trying not to react.
Rebecca wasn't wrong, honestly.
Not a single person here believed I'd actually give up my position as the man of the house and leave her.
After all, back then I'd given up everything just to be with her.
