CHAPTER 5

And suddenly, her delicate body jumped as if it were an involuntary movement. Little by little, second by second, feeling herself waking up in the new day, feeling that this was not her place although it was indeed her new home, her little big eyes were opening second by second.

Moments from the night before began to come to her mind. Even she could not recognize the place at first glance because that ceiling, those decorations on the walls, those paintings and everything that made that room to be, had no room in her mind to be compared. The truth is that she felt like a guest, a woman who had slept in someone else's house just for one night.

Without feeling the time pass, after rubbing her eyes for a brief moment, Cameron sat up in bed as she leaned back against the headboard. It was then that she realized that her dress, the same one she had worn the night before, was on the floor. That way, she finally managed to remember everything from that night. She had slept so soundly that she couldn't even remember who she had been the night before.

Still yawning, she got out of bed wanting to find her slippers but sooner rather than later she would realize that this was not her place, this was not her home and it was time to see it that way.

Barefoot in that room she then headed to the bathroom. She needed to wash her face so she could fully wake up from the deepest sleep she had ever enjoyed.

The night before had been truly chaotic. She had danced with a strange man and never with her husband because even if she didn't want to, the man who was out there, surely far away from her, was her husband.

Cameron's life had changed in a single minute. She could not simply accept this new rhythm in her. To her mind came those few memories she shared with him, the conversation in the car and in the event. But more than all those moments, to her mind came one more special one. The one where dancing with a stranger left her with more questions than answers. He knew more than she could discover by being there, living with him, seeing him twenty-four hours a day.

"Did you see that picture in your room?"

Cameron's heart stopped as her steps became clumsy. That man knew more than she thought she did.

"What's wrong with that picture?" Cameron asked, wanting to know what she was fighting against.

As she finished brushing her teeth she noticed only one thing. The reflection in the mirror in front of her had changed. Now all she could see was that curious gesture, the same one that she had gone to bed with.

With an idea in her mind, Cameron came out of the bathroom drying his face with the white towel in the bathroom. She had no right to find out more but in the end, curiosity was going to end up killing her before she discovered anything so, staring at the door, wanting to make sure that no one was coming in and thinking that her husband must have gone to work like all men in his position, Cameron began to walk around the room.

First observing everything around her, then her fingers being the ones to rest on the different objects in the room. The room wasn't the prettiest one, it was like it needed a feminine touch but not as feminine as that painting over the headboard of the bed.

Who was that woman? She needed to find out, it was not her intention to do anything else. She just wanted to meet the person she was going to sleep with every night under the same roof but never in the same bed.

Then, as if in a hurry, as if she knew what she was looking for, from one moment to the next, she began to open the drawers of all the furniture around.

Until the fifth drawer being the one she opened, Cameron's eyes seemed to light up once again. A small smile broke out on her face at once.

And between her hands, a classic picture frame with a fancy crystal that kept the photo of that beautiful woman locked in her own world without anyone having the ability to harm her or even, touch her.

"Who are you for Diego?" said, looking at the picture.

And suddenly, footsteps from behind.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" called a male voice.

And in one move, with those words and that tone of voice being the cause of everything, Cameron dropped the picture frame causing it to shatter into a thousand pieces.

"You're a fool!" expressed Diego going to the disaster at the same time that he grabbed Cameron's arm in a rough way and made her back away.

"Diego, I'm, I'm... I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to," said Cameron.

"Look what you've done!"

The fury in Diego's eyes was evident. If Cameron thought that the Diego she had married to someday could change his temper when it come to be her, she was very wrong.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."

"I've told you before, Cameron Milan. You are nobody in this house, you are not even like a guest to me. That from one moment to the next you got my last name means nothing, that from one moment I hated seeing you sleeping in my bed means anything. I don't want you in my house. I have to put up with you. Don't make my life harder than it already is just by thinking that you are here," the fury with which Diego said those words made Cameron tremble as she felt tears welling up in her eyes. "Don't make me want to disappear from the world while you are in my house. Don't move, don't talk, stay where I can't see you, and if possible, don't even breath in my presence, in my house. Did you understand?"

Her strength had left her body. Diego was nothing more than an insensitive person who had suddenly forgotten his past due to whatever shit he had come through.

Now Cameron had understood everything. Everything in that house had a reason to be there, it wasn't his masculinity that had forced him to arrange the room that way, but the woman in that picture smiling next to Diego.

Feeling her eyes submerged in tears, Cameron looked at that woman. She was the one Diego was really loving. She could understand his discomfort. A damn contract marriage had taken him away from the woman he loved just as a damn contract had broken the dreams of a lifetime for a woman who only wanted to graduate and lead a quiet life.

"Did you get it or not!" insisted Diego.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to break the picture… I mean the...

“Shut up!”

“I can pay for this mistake, I'm sorry." Said Cameron feeling even worse than he had already made her feel.

Diego couldn't help but laugh at her. "Are you going to pay me? Did I hear right? But tell me, how do you intend to pay me when your family is supported by me?"

Cameron looked down at once. He was right, even in that aspect she could not show herself to be an independent woman.

"I'll be well paid the day you get the hell out of here."

And without further ado, Diego pushed Cameron making her fall into the glass at the same time he turned around and left without even turning back, without even making sure if she was okay.

Tears began to flow from Cameron's eyes instantly. It didn't hurt what the glass could hurt her as much as it hurt the humiliation, it hurt to have lost her life and the possibility of finding a man who would truly love her as she had always dreamed of being loved. That was what hurt.

Seeing the buried glass in her palms and looking ahead at the picture, she realized what Diego really wanted to tell her.

While the picture was what he loved most with that woman who could not be anyone else but the one in the photograph, Cameron was the broken glass on the ground. That glass that only counted as an emptiness, something that was useless.

That's how she was in that marriage. A person who had become empty, a person who was worthless and broken.