𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐑 || 𝐋.𝐌 ✓

➢Chapter 18- A life of secrets

Note- In this fanfic, cars are a normal thing for wizards.

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"Behind the monstrosity lies a damaged heart"

I don't know why he's doing this. We never go to his house," Lucius grumbled, hands tightly wrapped around the steering wheel. He mumbled under his breath that he'd rather stay home.

When she'd met Lucius for the first time, Y/n would've concluded that this was him being a spoiled baby who didn't want to drive outside the city to his father's house and deal with a cookout on a random June weekend. But knowing the man she shared a home with now, she didn't think it was so simple.

Like the night in the hot tub when she'd pointed out the bedroom on the other side of the glass. He'd walled up and fallen silent. She used to believe he was a one-ply, super absorbed a-hole. Now she saw he was more complicated, had more depth. Even a sense of humor, and dare she think it? Feelings.

Feelings she suspected were unresolved and maybe unexcavated in some circumstances.

It's not your job to fix him.

It wasn't. And it would do her good to remember that.

She had practically felt him retreating from what would likely be a painful discussion.

He'd never expounded on the "I used to sleep there," but it wasn't hard to guess that he probably slept in that room with someone he'd rather not talk about. Maybe several someones. Didn't that thought make Y/n's stomach twist.

She'd talked to Charlotte about it in person, too afraid to owl her in case the letter was hijacked and printed at the IvyGate, the latest gossip magazine to pick up every bit of non-news about the new Malfoys. Carl listened between bites of a rushed lunch before her next meeting. The conclusion they'd arrived at was to "let it go" much in the same vein of that overplayed song from a muggle movie called Frozen, and so that's what Y/n had done.

Whatever lay behind his reasons for leaving the largest room with the best view in the house unoccupied were his and his alone. She'd had to remind herself that more often than she liked.

Today, though...today was a different beast, but possibly the same species. Pain waited for Lucius at the end of this trip. It tightened his eyes and pulled at his firm mouth. He hadn't prepared for today emotionally, and had attempted to avoid it by going to work today even though he should have taken the day off.

Men.

"Great," he added at the end of his grumbling tirade as he parked at the end of a long driveway. Rows and rows of expensive, shiny cars—several of them convertibles—lined the massive parking area to the left of a large, three-story house. "I see Phineas's car. Maybe he brought his girlfriend. You'd like her. She's your age."

Well, this promised to be fun.

Y/n would have grabbed his tie to get his attention, but he wasn't wearing one. Lucius was dressed in a casual collared shirt and jeans . In lieu of the aforementioned tie, she put her hand to his face and ran her fingers down the barely-there scruff that lined his sharp jaw.

He held his frown, his eyes scrunched in frustration.

She leaned closer and his expression softened, those scrunched eyes opening enough to dip and take inventory of her ample cleavage. She had gone with a summery turquoise dress that wrapped in the middle, low-cut enough to give the girls a day in the sun.

"Your tattoo." He stroked the skin above her breast.

Okay, so the cleavage wasn't front and center. He continued to surprise her.