“What do you want?” I asked angrily, picking up the pillow beside me to hug tightly.
Her nostrils flared.
“Get up,” she demanded.
I considered refusing, a want within me to fight the command, but remembering how she had handled me earlier, I followed the command and stood from the bed, clutching my pillow like a barrier between us.
“Stand in the corner,” she continued.
“You can’t be serious?” I asked. She simply stared at me. “You’re sending me to the corner like a misbehaved child?”
I looked around. “And we’re in a tower, there is no corner,” I pointed out cheekily.
“Face the wall, pet,” she demanded and pointed to where she wanted me.
“That’s still not a corner,” I whispered, as I marched to the wall.
This was ridiculous. I had done nothing wrong, and here I was, facing the wall.
“I want for this to stop,” she stated coldly.
So chilling was the way she spoke I felt like a bucket of ice water had been thrown over me. She wantedthisto stop?
“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice wavering, uncertainty twisting my stomach.
She couldn’t mean… us? No.
“This.”
She waved her hand between us—I saw as I turned to see her response.
“Face the wall!” she barked, and I spun back around, my heart pounding hard in my chest.
This wasn’t happening. She couldn’t even bare to look at me as she, as she…
“I want this to stop,” she stated again.
The air rushed out of my lungs. I deflated, physically curling around my pillow that I still held to my chest.
She was rejecting me. So easily.
And over one fight. Because I wanted to help people?
It wasn’t like we hadn’t fought before. Was I always so easy for her to throw away? What about all her talk of love and family and marriage and a life together?
Was it all just fantasy?
Did it never mean anything?
I tried to take a breath, but it strangled in my throat. My eyes burned. I tried to lift my head so I could twist to look at her, but my chin was pressed tight against the pillow I clung to at my chest, and it felt like I was frozen stiff.
Overly warm hands gripped both my waist, wrapping around me, her front pressed against my back.
“Look at me,” she commanded, and when I didn’t respond, she forced my head up and towards her, her hand wrapped tight around my jaw. Her eyes glowed liquid-silver, shimmering in the room, which was lit with nothing more than the glow of the fireplace.
“We cannot continue like this. It is not healthy for either of us. It is entirely unsustainable,” she explained.
Was she saying she had tried to give the soul match thing a go but had decided it wasn’t for her?
