The silence stretches between us, taut and terrible.
This isn’t about sleeping arrangements. It never was. This is about something far worse.
Finally, Calder speaks. “What do you want me to say? That I wish I would’ve killed you? Because I never will. I’ll never want you dead in place of being here beside me. I’m sure that makes me a selfish prick, especially with all you’ve gone through, but it’s the truth. The thought of losing you made me feel out of control. I couldn’t do it. I don’t lose control. I don’t make irrational decisions. I don’t second-guess anything. Except with you.”
I’m not sure how I should feel right now. His confession hangs in the space between us, and it sounds deeper than survival and protection. It sounds like… I don’t dare say theword inside my head or out loud. I cut the thought off like cutting the head off a venomous snake.
I can’t wrap my head around the fact that the man who kidnapped me and subjected me to all these terrible things is the same man who just said he couldn’t bear the thought of me dead.
“I can’t do this with you right now. I’m exhausted, and I need sleep. You don’t have to like it, but I’m sleeping in the other room,” I say and turn toward the door.
“Like hell you are.”
“Try to stop me.”
I make it three steps down the hall before I hear him moving.
“Saint.” My name comes out as a warning.
I don’t stop. Mainly because I can’t. Because I know if I stop, if I turn around and look at him, I will shatter into a million pieces, and I don’t have the bandwidth or strength to put myself back together right now.
The guest bedroom door is in front of me. It’ll give me the safety and privacy I need. A place to fall apart without him watching. I slip inside, slam the door shut, and turn the lock into place. For a moment, there’s nothing. Just the sound of my own ragged breathing.
Then Calder’s rough voice filters in through the door. “Open the door.”
“No.” I shake my head as if he can see it.
“Open the fucking door, Saint.” Impatience coats his words.
“No,” I whisper, but somehow he hears me, or maybe he doesn’t care.
Either way, it’s the wrong thing to say. I know it even as the word leaves my mouth. The first kick rattles the frame. The second splinters wood around the lock. The third sends the door crashing inward, lock mechanism torn completely free.
Calder stands in the doorway, chest heaving, face twisted in pain and rage. The effort of kicking down the door clearly hurthim. I can see it in the way he’s favoring his ribs and in the white-knuckled grip he has on the doorframe.
That doesn’t matter. He did it anyway.
“I told you,” he says, voice deadly quiet, “we share a bedroom.”
Fear and fury war in my chest. “You’re insane.”
“Oh, but you already knew that, sweetheart.” He pushes off the doorframe and stalks toward me with predatory intent. “Knew it when I forced my ring onto your finger, and your daddy’s name on the marriage certificate. You’re mine Saint, and I don’t let what’sminesleep anywhere that I can’t protect it.”
“I don’t need or want your protection.”
“And I don’t care.” He’s close now, close enough that I can see every bruise, every cut, every mark Roman left on him. “You want to hate me? Fine. You want to fight me? Go ahead. But you do it in our bedroom, in our bed, where I can keep you safe.”
“Safe?” I laugh, and it comes out slightly hysterical. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe again.”
“There ain’t no goddamn place safer in this valley than you are with me.” He reaches for me, his hand near my face. I don’t think. I merely react, flinching before I can stop myself. My reaction makes him freeze, and a look of pain flashes in his eyes. “I’m not going to hit you, Saint. I would never.”
“I don’t know. Your father did. I just—I don’t know how to deal with all of this. I host bake sales and volunteer at drives. Idon’tdeal with this.”
“No one will ever hit you again.” His jaw clenches. “If I could’ve stopped it without getting us both killed, I would have. I’d have buried him in a shallow grave, Saint. You have to believe that.”
Part of me wants to, but another part of me, the rational part of me, wonders how that’s possible. How a man raised inviolence, who does terrible things to people, can possibly want to save and protect me from it all.
“I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know how to feel. I’m confused, overwhelmed, and afraid.”
