Peace.
Then she fucking stole it from me, which was worse than never knowing what it felt like. Because once I had, it fucked me up worse than the insomnia.
No. It wasn’t the insomnia.
It was her.
She was fucking with me in ways I’d never experienced before, and she was clever about it. The smartest adversary I’d ever been up against.
She refused to kiss me.
Refused to kiss me.
Gave me her cheek, like she was offering me her right after I’d assaulted the left side first.
She refused to sleep with me. She refused to fuck me.
If that wasn’t cause enough to drive me to the edge, she found a loophole in my one demand: Eat dinner with me.
She didn’t eat. Not really.
She’d take a bite or two of her food and then stare at me, arms crossed over her chest, like a spoiled fucking kid. She was losing weight, but it wasn’t completely physical.
How did I know that? I couldn’t fucking tell you. We were bound together by something I didn’t have a word for. It was a feeling. Something that went beyond flesh and bone.
I didn’t have bags underneath my eyes, either, and she knew that, too.
We were both at war with one struggle.
Sitting at our table, watching her pick at her food, while everyone—Maureen and the little girl—ate and carried on like nothing was wrong made me want to flip the table over. I’d found peace through chaos before, knew the meaning of it, and I was ready to claim mine again.
I needed fucking sleep like a heart needs an artery.
As if she could hear me, my wife’s eyes rose to meet mine. She dropped the vegetable she’d just picked up from her full plate a second later.
The tension in my jaw was tight, sending shocking lines of heat up to my temples. She wasn’t playing games, not on this, and that unsettled me even more. The heart I stole from her was doing a wicked thing to seek its revenge—it had gone on strike and refused to beat. And that beat was what calmed every noise that was causing chaos in the emptiness for me.
I picked up my drink, putting it to my lips, wondering if the glass was going to shatter in my hand. Something soft tapped against my skin before the liquid touched my tongue. I looked down and saw Connolly, who had her hand on mine. She smiled and then inclined her head behind her. I turned to look. Maureen had set out a pie.
“You want dessert?” The sound of my voice echoed inside of the glass. I put the fucking thing down; I hadn’t even taken a drink out of it. I glanced at her plate. “You ate all ofyourfood.” My eyes met my wife’s again, but this time she rolled them at me.
Connolly giggled and shook her head, moving her warm hand on my arm and pulling herself up closer to my ear. “Ha-ppy,” she whispered in a scratchy, low voice.
I narrowed my eyes at her and she narrowed hers back. She was getting plenty of practice in for later—her man wasn’t going to know what to do with her someday, either. All female talk was in fucking code.
Instead of waiting for me to understand, she jumped up, going for the pie on the counter. Keely followed her, going to help. It was the only time she smiled, when she was doing something with one of the kids.
Books. Movies. Broadway. Archery. Even painting. Nothing compared to when she looked at those kids.
Connolly’s smile was even bigger when she set the plate in front of me and then patted me on the head. Maybe she thought I was a big fucking cat.
“Ha-ppy,” she repeated, staring at me.
She kept staring at me.
I looked around. Everyone was staring at me. Maureen was trying to hide her grin. Keely was scowling, as if I better do something then and there or she was going to fling the pie in my fucking face. I opened my mouth to speak, but I was met with a mouthful of whipped cream before I could.
I’d never heard a kid laugh so hard. Connolly doubled over, the spoon still in her hand, laughing so loud that the entire table started to do the same.
