“I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“You wanted.”

He just stares, not getting it. “This isn’t the sort of surprise you spring on your fiancée! Couples do this shit together, Nicholas! One of them doesn’t go behind the other one’s back to do something of this magnitude. First you get rid of your car and bring home that—that behemoth over there—” He’s laughing, which exasperates me even more, but I forge on: “I’ve asked you where you’ve been. You’ve refused to tell me. Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

“Yeah!” he cries. “I do. I don’t know where you’ve been all year, Naomi. Your body’s here, but your head’s somewhere else. You’ve gone and left me all alone.”

If anyone’s been left alone, it’s me, fighting the War of the Roses all by myself. No way am I vaulting into that pool of lava, so I pick a milder topic to complain about instead. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

He shrugs. “So?”

I cast around for another complaint. What comes out of my mouth boggles even me. “I’ve always wanted a front door that’s painted purple. The color of magic.”

“That’s a terrible reason to reject a house. Naomi, I bought us a house! Take a beat here and let that sink in. How many of your friends can say their boyfriend bought them a house?”

1. He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my fiancé. (Sort of.)

2. He didn’t buy this house for me. He bought it for himself, without asking or wanting me to be a part of that process. Am I supposed to be grateful that he’s letting me tag along after he made all the decisions? If we’re supposed to spend our life together as equal partners, this doesn’t bode well.

3. My only real friend is Brandy, and at this moment in time she thinks I’m bleeding out in a ditch.

This is madness. I should go back to the white rental house now that he’s apparently living here, but I can’t give in yet. The war’s still on. He’s trying to pull the wool over my eyes, but I know we’ve simply relocated to a different battlefield. I’m not going to tell myself what I’ve been inwardly repeating for months now: It could be worse.

That’s what I’ve been doing. Justifying staying with him by reminding myself it could be worse. Look at her. Look at him. Look at those people. They’re alone and have nobody. They’re in terrible relationships. They’re so unhappy. It could be worse. That could be me.

Except, it is me. I’ve been unhappy. “Okay,” he huffs. “Except for the front door, which isn’t purple, what do you think?”

Truthfully? There are a lot of dead, dirty leaves and it’s out in the middle of nowhere and I so badly want it to be mine. I barely registered there was a house here when we pulled up, but after hearing him say the word ours, it was like the lights of a stage washed over the scene and made it all so beautiful I could cry.

It’s the sort of place I’d like to settle down with my one true love—that is, somebody who isn’t Nicholas. I want Leon to take back the house and save it for me to buy myself someday when I’m in a relationship that’s loving and healthy. With a man I love at least eighty percent. Sharing it with Nicholas now will spoil it, the same way that some of my favorite movies we’ve watched together are now tainted, and so is the band we used to listen to together, Generationals. One of their songs was playing on the radio during our first kiss and after that, it became “our band.” We’ve even seen them in concert. Now I can barely stand to listen to their music without resurrecting a thousand unwelcome feelings.

This property will forever be known as the house my ex-fiancé bought without my participation. It’s the future Mrs. Rose’s house, not mine. Which chafes a little.

“I don’t want to live here.”

He’s losing patience. “I don’t really care what you want, to be honest. I don’t like you again yet. But I’m going to. And you’re going to like me again, too. This house is going to save us.”

“Save us?” I don’t bother downplaying the ghastliness of his assertion. “I thought we were trying to kill this thing?”

His expression is so scornful, I flinch. “Naomi, if the point were a meteor hurtling straight toward the earth with the power to destroy us all, you’d still miss it somehow.” He turns his back on me and marches determinedly inside the house. He’s going to be a mountain man, come whatever, and I’m just along for the ride.

I think I see his new angle. It’s even more disturbing than trying to get me to leave him.

It’s cheaper and easier to mold me into the kind of woman he can stomach marrying rather than break up with me. If he does, he’ll have to field a hundred surprise dates his mother sends him on to find the next broodmare contender.

My baby oven and I have been primed and vetted. I’m already familiar with his odious parents, who haven’t managed to run me off yet. A compartment of my brain reluctantly hosts a glossary of dental terminology. I tolerate his satanic ritual of removing a banana wholly from its peel and laying the banana on the bare table without a plate, touching everything with his fingers and setting it down between bites.

I’m an investment. If he pulls his stock now, he’ll bleed money and lost time all over the place. He’ll be starting over, two years of his youth down the drain. But I’ve got news for Nicholas Benjamin Rose: if he thinks I’m not the biggest waste of time that’s ever happened to him, he’s got another think coming.

For long moments, I merely stare at the part of the house that ate him up. Details I still haven’t noticed properly are swimming to the forefront for attention—the wooden roof shingles all bowing at their centers; the dingy welcome mat with a Scottie dog on it; the silhouette pacing behind the wide leaded window. He wanted nature? He’s got it. English ivy swarms the chimney, trying to work its way down inside the house. The air is fresh and crisp. I don’t hear any traffic, any sound of human civilization.

The house he’s bought on his own, guaranteeing it will never feel like ours, sits up on a crest between two gently sloping valleys, and I think he’s picked a hell of a hill to die on. We’ll both be buried here. Our ghosts will haunt it, torturing each other and any misguided home buyers hoping for a country experience.