Before Wedding, Fiancee Must Bathe Seven Days With Friend

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With the wedding almost here, my fiance took a knife to her own wrist.

I was shaking all over. I lunged to stop her.

She pushed me away, her face pale and weak. Nat Dickerson, don't stop me. Let me do it.

Why?

I wouldn't let go, not for anything. Then her best friend told me, her eyes red.

Our village has a marriage custom. In the seven days before a girl gets married, she has to shower with a man for seven days, to wash off her bad luck so she can bring good luck to her husband's family!

"If she doesn't follow it, then she has to cut seven pieces of flesh from herself as punishment."

"Aria Harding loves you so much, and she's so loyal to you. How could she ever do anything to wrong you?"

Hearing that cut me to the bone. To keep her from hurting herself, I took the knife out of her hand and told her to follow the custom.

I trusted her loyalty to me. She wouldn't do anything wrong.

But on the third day, I couldn't help myself. I went to find her, and instead I heard the room burst into laughter.

"Aria, that trick of yours was ruthless!"

"Playing the wounded victim to fool soft-hearted Nat. There's no marriage custom, no wrist-cutting. It's all fake."

"If I hadn't made it up, he'd never have believed it."

Then Aria sat down on her lover's lap, and the two of them kissed with everything they had.

"I'm going to make the most of the days I've got left. I'm going all in!"

...

"Aria, aren't you afraid Nat will find out you're lying?"

"There's no such custom in Camelback Village. If he goes and asks around, how are you going to cover for that?"

Aria didn't want to leave Ezra Delgado's mouth, but her hands still locked tight around his neck.

As if, once they'd said what needed saying, the two of them would just keep going.

The men watching them tangled up like that swallowed hard, envious.

"He trusts me so much, he'll never check up on me."

"Besides, he's a city man. He can't understand a word of our Camelback Village dialect, so he doesn't know any of the rules here."

When she finished, her cheeks were flushed, like a girl just out into the world who'd never known a man.

She let out a coy little sound, and only then did the others notice one of Ezra's hands, brushing along her leg, careless and deliberate at once.

"Damn! You two watch it, you'll screw yourselves to death!"

"Yeah, you only came out of the room this morning, and now you're already..."

"What? Jealous?"

Ezra looked around the room, pleased with himself. The next second Aria took a mouthful of red wine and, right in front of everyone, poured it into Ezra's mouth from her own.

"Damn! Nobody plays like Aria!"

"I bet Nat doesn't get any of this fun stuff, and that's why Aria went looking for Ezra before the wedding."

"I'm telling you, Aria, why not just break up with Nat and be done with it? Why put yourself through all this?"

Aria's face went cold in an instant, and she glared back at whoever had said it.

"In this life, no, in every life after this one, I will never break up with my Nat."

"Because he's the only one who truly loves me. For me, he gave up a bright future abroad and stayed in the country."

"If I so much as nick my finger cutting vegetables, he'll worry about it all day."

"I play around, sure, but I still know exactly how much Nat means to me."

Hearing that, Ezra wasn't happy anymore.

His arm snapped tight around Aria's waist, pulling her harder against him.

"So I don't love you, little minx?"

"Ha! Your love is cheap. Good enough for a hookup, not good enough to be my husband."

The others still didn't understand what Aria meant by that.

But they'd been friends for years, so they just let her be.

"Still, you'd better be careful!"

Aria brushed it off. "Relax! I'm more careful than you are."

"Every time Nat comes to see me at the set time, he's really just checking whether I've stepped out of line. So Ezra and I always look at each other like we can't stand the sight of each other, each keeping to himself, not saying a word."

Outside the door, every drop of blood in me froze in an instant.

I gripped the door handle, but I never found the courage to push it open.

The pain rising up from somewhere deep in me was almost enough to crush me and swallow me whole.

"All right, it's time for us to go bathe."

"Time's up."

I forced down the panic clawing at me, let go of the handle, and slipped out of sight.

The whole group came out of the karaoke room in high spirits.

I hesitated, then followed close behind anyway.

They got back to Aria's place, horsed around for a while, and then the friends left.

Once they were gone, Aria led Ezra into the bathroom.

The huge tub had been filled with water long ago.

Rose petals were scattered across the surface, along with some kind of perfume meant for setting the mood.

It was the kind of scent that went to work the moment you breathed it in.

"Aria, you sure know how to have fun!"

Aria laughed and darted away across the wide bathroom. "Come catch me! Every time you catch me, I take something off."

The door wasn't latched. My hand shook as I gripped the handle, and my whole chest felt like a fist had closed around my throat, my breath coming ragged.

Through the crack, I froze cold.

Ezra pinned Aria down, and one piece of clothing after another went flying.

Then they started doing the things I couldn't put into words.

The tears spilled out of me on the spot, and that mood-setting scent drifted out through the crack too.

It nearly made me throw up right there, and I could only stumble away as fast as I could.

I walked out the door into deep night.

I didn't know which way to go, and I didn't even know where I'd ended up.

Then the roar of a motorcycle cut through the dark.

It came at me at full speed, and one look told me these weren't friendly people, so I picked up my pace and hurried away.

"Ha! Stop that out-of-towner!"

"Boss said to teach him a lesson if we see him, so he never dares come back to Camelback Village again."

I couldn't outrun a motorcycle. In the end it slammed into me.

I hit the grass, and a searing pain shot through my thigh.

They didn't leave. They kept talking in the local dialect, taunting me.

The second they weren't watching, I bolted.

They were in no rush to chase. It was like they wanted me to get a little farther first, so they could hunt me down like prey.

My face went white with fear, and I fumbled out my phone and called Aria, since she was from Camelback Village after all.

But the call rang for a long time and never connected.

The second time the motorcycle hit me, I heard the sound of my ribs breaking.

Right at the depth of despair, the call went through.

"Nat? Why are you calling at a time like this?"

"Aria, someone hit me with a motorcycle on purpose"

"Aria, ten more minutes and the bath's done. Don't tell me you want to break the rules and start all over!"

My cry for help was cut off by Ezra's voice pitching up several notches, and Aria wavered.

"Aria, come find me first. Those people are from your Camelback Village. I didn't provoke them. Unless it was locals coming after"

"Nat, people in our village are very friendly to outsiders. You mustn't go dragging Camelback Village's name through the mud."

"Relax! They're just having a bit of fun with you."

"Here's what we'll do. Put me on speaker and let me talk to them."

I quickly hit speaker, and Aria switched into the local dialect to talk to the man.

"Rod Clayton, it's got to be you, right!"

"Heh, yeah, it's me!"

"Here's the thing. Right now I'm bathing with your Ezra!"

"Get it?"

Rod caught on at once and spoke up, grinning. "Aria, so you're rolling around in bed with my brother right now?"

"Yes!"

"So stall him for me. We've got about ten minutes left before we're done."

"Heh, you got it!"

"Have fun with my brother!"

I froze as if I'd been struck by lightning.

They thought I couldn't understand the dialect. What they didn't know was that until I was ten, I lived in Camelback Village, so of course I understood every word.

"Aria, you"

She hung up before I could finish, in a rush.

Looked like my call had interrupted her fun.

The man smirked, and just like that his face turned vicious.

"Come on. Ezra said we've got to make sure this guy can't walk."

I was cornered in an instant. My leg and ribs were both hurt. There was no way I could get away.

What chilled me most was how she'd used the dialect to trick me, ordering this group to hold me back and keep me from coming to find her.

But what she didn't know was that I'd already seen her and Ezra together, and that I could understand the dialect.

The men in front of me were full of swagger, and just as they moved to lay their hands on me a second time, my friend showed up.

The moment they saw someone coming, they scrambled onto their motorcycle and took off.

Lowell Fox saw I was badly hurt and helped me up, worry all over his face. "Nat, are you okay?"

"Weren't you off to find Aria?"

"Good thing I came looking for you, or you'd have been done for."

He got me into the car and called the police right there.

Then he took me to the hospital to have the injuries checked. They were serious enough that I had to be admitted.

When Aria came to see me, she had a group of friends trailing behind her, Ezra among them.

"Nat, how are you doing?"

I lifted my head and looked at her, perfectly calm.

None of my old warmth. None of my old longing.

Maybe my heart had finally died on her. "I'm fine."

My sudden coldness threw her, and left Aria with something knotted up inside that she couldn't name.

"I'm sorry. I had no idea those men last night would go so far, that they'd dare hurt you that badly."

The second she finished, she whipped her head toward Ezra, seething.

"Call the police!"

"I want those men to pay."

Ezra curled his lips into a faint smile. "We don't even know who they were, and there aren't any cameras at that spot. How exactly do you expect the officers to catch them?"

The whole thing had been arranged by Ezra himself, so of course he knew how to set up an attack.

Aria had actually taken a lowlife like this for her affair. She really was blind.

To make it up to me, she decided she'd stay with me all day and go nowhere.

"Nat, I'm not going anywhere today. I'm staying right here with you."

"I'm sorry. I should have come to find you first thing last night."

"Then where were you last night? What were you doing that kept you from coming to find me?"

I cut her off, and asked her straight why she hadn't come to me the night before.

See, my question left her stunned.

What she didn't realize was that the kiss marks under her neck, even hidden under foundation, could still be seen.

My eyes went dark in an instant.

Seeing that I was truly angry, Aria hurried to speak in an injured tone.

"The reason I didn't come to you last night is that my grandmother was sick."

"I had to stay home and take care of her, so I couldn't come to you right away."

The words had barely left her when Ezra stepped up to blame me too.

"Come on, Nat. We're not the ones who hurt you. What gives you the right to talk to her like you're interrogating a criminal?"

"Exactly! You think you're so important? What, her grandmother doesn't matter?"

I watched this crowd coldly, but I didn't get tangled up with them.

I just looked at Aria, so disappointed. She'd done nothing but spin lies to deceive me.

Seeing me fall silent, Aria finally spoke up to stop her friends.

"That's enough. My Nat didn't know my grandmother was sick."

"Ease off, all of you."

"Tch. You're not even married to her yet and you're already playing favorites."

Aria lifted her chin with a smug little smile. "Only I get to pick on my Nat. Nobody else can even think about it."

There was a time these words would have gone straight to my heart and moved me.

Hearing them now, all I felt was sick.

I didn't want to look at any of them anymore, so I lay down to rest, saying I was tired.

To my surprise they not only refused to leave, they started teasing Aria in the dialect.

"Heh heh, come on, tell us what the two of you got up to last night."

Aria shot a glance at my back, but Ezra just laughed and waved off her worry.

"What are you scared of? He's not from Camelback Village. He can't understand a word of the dialect we speak here."

Only then did Aria relax, turning to meet one curious pair of eyes after another.

"Don't play dumb!"

"No, come on, we want to hear it from your own mouth. Wouldn't that make the story of your little affair so much juicier?"

Ezra was the first to speak. "So do you all know who hired those guys?"

"Wait, was it... you?"

"Smart."

"He kept getting in the way. We were right in the middle of the best part, and I didn't want anyone interrupting us."

The whole room burst into laughter.

Some laughed at how pathetic I was, others said Ezra had come down too hard on me.

And Aria, who'd sworn up and down that she'd never let outsiders bully me, forgot every one of those promises now, laughing right along with them, thoroughly pleased with herself.

I clenched my fists as tight as I could, but I didn't have the courage to get up and face them.

Because I knew I couldn't win against all of them. Even if I made a scene, there'd be no way to make them pay.

"That must've felt amazing for the two of you, teaming up to hurt poor Nat."

"His head's green as grass and he's lying there sleeping, not knowing a thing."

The worst part was Aria sitting right beside me, her hand stroking my back to lull me to sleep while she went on trading jokes with them in that airy, unbothered voice.

"What I'm most worried about right now is the baby in my belly."

The room went quiet for a few seconds, and I froze.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm pregnant. But it's not Nat's."

Ezra laughed, full of pride. "It's mine. We started two months ago, right in Nat's own place... heh heh!"

"You dog, look at you go!"

"That thing's got real stamina."

"Aria, don't worry about it."

"If you can't bear to get rid of it, just say it's Nat's, easy as that!"

"Guess that's the only way. Make Nat a proud daddy!"

When I heard that, the last shred of what Aria had once been to me was gone.

From the pure, lovely girl she used to be to the ruin of her now, it took only a few sentences from her mouth.

I thought my chest would ache again, but it stayed as quiet as ever.

I didn't choose to tear off the mask. Instead I accepted a friend's offer of a job abroad.

The flight I booked was for the day of the wedding. That wedding would have a bride but no groom.

Seven days later, the wedding day came.

In the dressing room, Aria let Ezra's hands roam over her.

"Aria, won't you really reconsider me?"

"I love you no less than he does. Not by a bit!"

Aria liked Ezra's touch, and her body responded.

She couldn't hold back, and the two of them slept together again.

After all that, she fixed her makeup and her gown.

"From now on, this thing between us is over. You're not to come near me again, or interfere with our life."

Ezra breathed in the scent of her hair, calm and unbothered, not taking a single word of it to heart.

Once she'd finished, the bridesmaids came in to lead her out.

Inside the hotel, the hall was full of seated guests, but the groom still hadn't appeared.

Aria picked up her phone and called me, but the line wouldn't connect.

"What is he doing? Turning his phone off at a time like this."

The words had barely left her mouth when my friend came in carrying a box.

"Aria, Nat has a gift for you."

"He told me he wanted you to open it the moment you got it."

The Harding family smiled, well satisfied, sure their son-in-law knew how to keep their girl happy.

But when Aria tore open the wrapping and saw what was in her hands, she was so terrified she flung it away, half out of her wits.

"Hey! What's wrong with you? Didn't Nat ever tell you he used to be from Camelback Village too?"