Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller

appliances.
A formal dining room sits through a doorway on the left, and a sunken
family room with a huge stone fireplace and a white sectional with gold sides
brackets the other exit from the kitchen.
There are no paintings or photos adorning the cream-colored walls. No
dust dirtying the baby grand in the oval sitting room off the foyer, or the
bookshelves in the library down the hall. No real evidence that anyone other
than Marcelline existed here before I moved in, and I can’t help wondering
why Kal owns such a large place if he doesn’t live in it.
When he is here, he locks himself in his office, not even coming out to
join me for dinner. I’ve eaten every meal at the dining table in complete
silence, staring at the window overlooking the luscious side yard, dreaming
of all the ways I might one day escape.
“Yikes, it’s even creepier than I expected.” I switch the camera back, and
Ariana raises her perfectly arched brows. “Where’s all his stuff? I didn’t even
see a TV!”
Taking a seat at the rectangular island, I prop the phone against a fruit
bowl and twist the diamond ring on my finger, shrugging. “I know. There’s
one mounted in the bedroom, but it isn’t hooked up to a cable box or even the
internet.”
“So weird. Does he not have hobbies?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” She pauses, furrowing her brows. The orange flecks
in her brown eyes shimmer as she shifts the phone, moving out of the direct
sunlight on her balcony and heading back into her room. “That feels like an
important piece of information to know about your husband.”
Chewing on my lip, I reach up and run the pad of my thumb over the bite
mark Kal left on me the other day, concealer catching in the ridges of my
fingerprint.
“He likes poetry,” I offer, knowing where the conversation is headed.
She clicks her tongue. “So do you. Pick something less boring.
Something we don’t already know.”
“Hobbies aren’t something that have really come up, is all.”
Her eyes narrow into slits. “Elena. Tell me you knew more about Kal than
just the size of his dick before you married him.”
I sputter, dropping my hand from my neck. “What?”
“Come on, we all know about what happened at Christmas. Papá told us