“Knight.” Her sweet voice only reminds me of how badly I’ve let her down, so I keep my gaze downcast, too much of a coward to confront the hurt in her eyes.
I recognize the rustling of her clothes and the sound of them landing on the floor, but I don’t move until her foot enters my line of sight, and I throw my arm out. “Stop,” I say.
“You don’t want me to get in with you?” she asks, her voice quiet.
“The water’s cold,” I tell her, reaching up to increase the temperature, not allowing her to get in until it’s warm.
“Knight,” she says once I lower my arm and allow her to step in. “Knight, baby, look at me. Please,” she begs, wrapping her arms around my waist.
“I hurt you,” I remind her, telling her why she shouldn’t want to touch or talk to me.
“I know. But you didn’t mean to.”
“Don’t defend me,” I growl.
“I’m not,” she quickly says. “If you’d meant to do it, I wouldn’t. But even though your words…” She pauses, then finally says, “Hurt me. You didn’t know that would be a trigger for me. Now that you know, will you say it again?”
“No,” I immediately reply.
“I know you won’t. I’m not angry about this morning. But I am upset that you left me.”
My gaze instantly snaps to hers.
“You left me downstairs, Knight. You don’t like me out of your sight, but you just turned around and left.”
“I hurt you,” I remind her.
“And you think fucking me, then leaving me, made it better?” she asks, her tone suggesting that I’m being obtuse.
“I don’t deserve you,” I tell her.
“You claimed me. You married me. Are you changing your mind?” she asks, her lips pursing as she waits for my answer.
“No,” I growl.
“So you’re punishing me to punish yourself?”
“No. I…” I falter, struggling to explain.
“I haven’t been alone in days, Knight. You’ve made it so I don’t want to be. You’re always with me. You quit your job, flew across the country, fucked me, married me, and are trying to knock me up so that we’re always together. So neither of us gets to be alone anymore. We don’t get to be alone anymore, okay? That’s not how this works.”
“You walked away from me this morning,” I remind her.
“I know. I shouldn’t have done that. From now on, we won’t do that anymore. If we’re upset, or hurt, or angry, or no matter what we’re feeling, we don’t leave. We stay. We fight. We talk, or fuck, or whatever. But we don’t leave. Okay?”
“We don’t leave,” I repeat.
“We don’t leave,” she says it back to me, like we just sealed a deal or made an oath. “Can we get out now?” she asks.
“We should clean up first,” I say, feeling the driving urge to take complete care of her, to make sure she’s okay, even if I’m the reason she isn’t.
“Okay,” she agrees, not moving, just waiting for me to take over, the way I’ve been doing since I made her mine.
Once I’ve washed her skin and hair, she takes the soap from my hands and washes me, covering my skin with the same levelof care I do for her. Instead of our usual ritual of me drying her hair, she braids it and secures the end with a hair band, then looks up at me. “Let’s go to bed.”
Holding the covers open for her, I follow her across the mattress, wanting to be close to her, but bracing myself for her rejection. Instead of rolling to her side, she positions herself on her belly, her legs parted, her one leg bent up and toward her chest.
Climbing in behind her, I shuffle close to her, tentatively laying my arm across her back.
