My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 20

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 20
Chapter 2. Upheaval (10)
Whether she’d truly sent word ahead, Celia found herself shown to a room the moment they entered the Inn.
Lucius, soaked through from the rain, departed first to wash. Celia too lingered at her leisure in the bath, letting the warm water soothe her.
Unaccustomed to bathing without attendants, she rose earlier than expected and wrapped herself in the provided robe—its rough texture making her wince—when the door creaked open.
“Lucius?”
Celia confirmed it was him and narrowed her eyes.
While checking her appearance in the cracked window, she lashed out reflexively.
“What nobleman enters a lady’s chamber without knocking? At Windmere—”
Is that how they teach manners in Windmere? The sharp words lodged themselves back in her throat.
She hadn’t wanted to learn this way—that shedding old habits was like carving away part of oneself.
“I was careless. I’ll be more mindful next time.”
Celia, who’d gripped the robe’s edge, felt the tension drain from her fingertips at his gentle tone.
She’d been honed to such sharpness that words flew from her like blades—yet found herself repeatedly facing the strange sight of her own weapons falling harmlessly to the ground, their edge spent.
Unused to this, she shuffled backward a few steps in worn slippers, their soles nearly paper-thin.
Lucius didn’t press closer. Instead, his gaze drifted toward the bed, and he tilted his head with evident discomfort.
“This is awkward. It’s too small for two.”
Celia’s eyes widened noticeably.
“Two? Sleep together, you mean?”
“There’s only one room available, so it can’t be helped.”
“If the rooms are full, you simply turn someone out!”
She cared nothing for Windmere’s finances—but with enough coin, people would queue to leave. Why hadn’t he simply—?
“I couldn’t turn someone out into a cold, rainy night for money.”
What did anyone else’s circumstances matter? For Celia, only one fact mattered: she’d have to share a bed with him, sleep in the same room.
A narrow, shabby, foul-smelling room. And now, Lucius.
“It’s embarrassing, and I won’t have it!”
She clenched her fists so hard her nails threatened to pierce her palms.
She regretted it the moment the words left her mouth—but what was spoken could not be taken back.
‘Why would I give such a stupid excuse?’
She looked away. Wrinkles in the bed sheet, the edge of the curtain, anywhere but his face.
“We’re married.”
His low voice caught her at once.
It was warm, yet somehow gently deflecting.
“There’s no reason to be embarrassed, Celia.”
Though there was distance enough between them, he leaned forward and extended his arm—and with that motion alone, he reached her.
“Let me dry your hair.”
Her damp hair, heavy and clinging, caught around his index finger as it moved. She glared at the strands of hair that clung so thoughtlessly to him.
“I can… do it myself.”
Finally, Celia turned away.
Narrow and confined as the room was, she spoke with deliberate firmness.
Then, the air against her cheek suddenly shifted.
He’d drawn close behind her without a sound.
“If you catch a cold, I’ll be troubled.”
He drew her into an embrace—neither light nor forceful—as though imprinting whose arms held her.
Her breath faltered.
Celia looked up at the man bending over her. Was his face truly growing closer, or was she imagining it?
His warm breath traced the ridge of her nose. When his breath drew so near she could feel it at her nostrils, Celia tried to speak.
To say something she should have said, or rather—
Something she must say.
“But I—”
“Shall we not?”
……
The unfinished thought tumbled out low and hollow from her lips before Lucius completed it.
Damn it. Celia’s eyes flew upward.
“I won’t, so don’t bite your lip like that. Is it a habit?”
She’d meant to say it didn’t matter.
But the words only circled her lips, and every sentence catching on her tongue came apart.
“That’s my right, isn’t it—to bite it myself.”
Why must she fall in such a twisted way? What madness made her speak such nonsense?
She pressed harder on his arm to push him back, her eyes darting about the room without finding purchase anywhere.
‘This is infuriating.’
He showed no anger, no coldness toward her, harbored no hatred—and yet, admitting it was unbearable, she didn’t know how to respond to that.
Because he didn’t treat her harshly.
All that remained was her own anger and revulsion—emotions he knew nothing of, which leaked and scattered uselessly, over and over.
‘I don’t like this.’
Her knuckles whitened, creaking audibly.
“Let go of me.”
It was an unendurable succession of moments.
She shoved him away and moved, but her heel caught on something solid.
“Oh—!”
The flimsy old table wobbled at barely a brush from her foot.
A long bottle tipped beyond the edge in an instant, its slender neck twisting toward empty air. In that split second before the sound of breaking—
Snap!
“Ah.”
A hand shot out, swept past her with impossible speed, and caught the falling wine bottle’s neck with a precision that seemed almost false.
“Good thing I caught it.”
Celia, meanwhile, didn’t move.
His chest, brought close as he caught the bottle, filled her entire field of vision.
His hand still lingered near enough to brush her ribs. Celia barely managed to part her lips.
“What is… this.”
He set the bottle back carefully on the table—a quality of wine impossible in such a shabby place.
“Wine.”
“Wine?”
“I’d meant to give it to you back in the carriage, but things unfolded differently.”
Only then did Celia look closely at the bottle.
It was… Rubiel Wine, the kind grown increasingly difficult to find.
A white wine made from grapes that grew only on the highlands of the eastern Isbrila Continent.
Famous for its subtle floral aroma, it was fermented with dried flower petals and grape must into something very sweet.
He tilted the bottle, and through its crystal-clear glass, pale violet bubbles rose.
“Would you like to drink it?”
He nodded toward the glasses set beside the wine.
“It might seem odd in a place like this, but the taste should be quite fine.”
Drink together? Him and her?
At the impossible pairing of words, her lips parted slightly. Celia didn’t often drink. Of course, a glass or two of wine wasn’t beyond her in the right circumstances, but—
A thought flickered through her mind, not entirely unwelcome.
“All right.”
The brief answer fell heavily.
His silhouette trembled slightly.
“I’ll drink.”
She spoke again, short and clear.
At her acceptance came a breath—deep, as though held in check.
Lucius’s body expanded fractionally. From her eye level, the first thing visible was the movement of his solid chest.
Celia didn’t bother looking up.
***
The plan had been to get Lucius drunk and leave him outside the door.
It was Celia’s scheme—she who despised alcohol.
But what could be done? In this shabby, narrow, foul-smelling little room, there was only one bed.
Celia didn’t enjoy drinking, but she held her liquor well enough that it wouldn’t matter. So her plan had been perfect.
It should have been.
“Are you all right?”
Clunk—Celia covered her mouth and bent toward the table.
“Celia, does your stomach hurt? Are you going to be sick?”
His tone—as though coaxing a child—made her scowl and shake her head quickly. The room spun.
‘This is strange. His head is the one addled, not mine.’
She exhaled heavily, struggling for breath.
A whimpering sound escaped her throat, and Lucius cradled her tilting head in a gentle hand.
“Do you want to lie down?”
“No. The bed is… awful.”
As though he already knew this, he released a soft laugh.
Celia took offense at his amusement.
“Why did you suggest we come here? I hate this inn. Since we arrived, there’s been this strange sound from the floor—”
“It’s fine. The floorboards are just a bit old; they won’t collapse.”
“Old floorboards… I still don’t like them.”
He managed to understand her slurred complaint and offered an apology.
“I’m sorry. I should have found somewhere better.”
He offered no excuses, and even when she drank and blamed him without cause, he didn’t rebuke her.
The former could be expected from his temperament, but the latter was unlike Lucius.
The Lucius she’d known before—
“Why aren’t you angry…?”
Celia blinked with heavy eyelids and voiced the question plainly.
By now he should have lashed back and more.
Lucius’s hand, moving to brush the hair from her forehead, stilled.
“Should I have been angry with you?”
“The situation… warrants it.”
Such a situation. He turned the words over in his mouth.
“Whatever the situation, I don’t think… it’s right for me to be angry with you.”
Through her clouded mind, she heard his words drift past as she laughed.
“You’re lying.”
……
“You’ve always been angry with me. The fact that you’re not is strange.”
A sound like a heavy breath being drawn came from him. Celia struck away his hand as he reached toward her and leaned back against the creaking armrest of a chair.
They sat across from each other with only a table between them—a table so small their knees almost touched—and found fault with nearly everything.
His glass, nearly empty despite being filled at the same pace as hers; hers, meanwhile, still half-full. The shelf, its edges slightly tilted.
On the thin table lay a cheese plate, and beside it rolled a small cheese knife.
A knife.
“Did I… get angry often?”
His voice had gone hard, staccato, but she barely heard it.
Celia lifted her gaze from the knife and swept it across his shoulder.
“-lia.”
……
“Celia.”
Celia stretched her arm out.
Toward the blurred form.
When her hand finally made contact, she laughed softly, tilting her chin upward. Through the murky haze that had invaded her sight, he appeared indistinct.
But even that didn’t last long. The wine’s warmth circled her temples before seeping, unbidden, past her eyelids.
‘Even that old bed seems fine now.’
Anywhere would do if only she could close her eyes and sleep.
“So sleepy…”
Her last memory was of a hand brushing her cheek and a low voice heard dimly between his breathing.
All sensation dissolved into a warm, hazy darkness, and her memory ended there.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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