“I feel you now more than ever,” I trembled out. “So, let me say all the things you can’t. The truth. I broke your heart—ah!” The words both pacified and made him cringe, and he squeezed my ass even harder. “I broke you with my words.”
“Because we both know they’re fucking untrue. How could you even speakto mein such a way.” His eyes felt like they were pressing in on me, taking whatever they wanted, even things too far buried for me to grasp. “Yeah, you broke my heart. That’s a start.”
“I broke your soul.”
“You fucking brokeme,Scarlett. There’s not a part of me that’s safe from you.”
“I’m broken too,” I sobbed, but no tears escaped. I was dry. So dry. I attempted to lean my head forward, to use his strength to keep me upright, but he wouldn’t allow me to move! To just…to just close my eyes and escape it all. “You should. You should just go! I’ve done enough to…to ruin your life!”
He released my face to snatch a knife from the back of his pants. The silver glinted in reflection to the soft lights and shadows in the room, and I could almost make out my distorted reflection in its face.
“I fucking hate this dress,” he said.
The edge of the blade easily ripped through the thin fabric, the tearing rip echoing in my ears, until the dress fell to the floor in a whisper.
He made quick work of my bra and underwear, leaving me totally vulnerable to him. Then he took the knife and forced me to take the handle in my palm.
“You want me to go,” he said, running his teeth over his bottom lip. “You know what to do.”
“That’s not what I meant!”
“Do it!”
He lifted my hand up, situating my wrist so that the knife faced his heart.
“You don’t want me. You want me to go. Fucking do it!”
The tone of his voice scared me. The hopelessness in it. The rage. The hurt. It was as though I had already stuck the knife in his heart and had twisted it.
“There’s only one way out of this marriage, Scarlett Rose Fausti,” he said. “Till death do us part. And I refuse to part with you even in death,mywife. So, either do it, or speak the truth. Free us.”
The knife wavered in my hand, the trembling making it almost impossible to keep it steady. “I told you the truth!”
He came closer and the tip of the blade grazed his skin. In an instant, blood welled up and ran down his chest in a thin river. He didn’t even flinch, just kept staring at me with eyes that were duller than a knife, yet they still cut me. Slower, so much slower.
Moving so quickly that he couldn’t stop me, I flung the knife over his shoulder, and it landed with a metallic clatter against the wooden floor.
“I never wanted you to leave me!” I shouted. “How could you?You packed a bag for me. You brought me to my parents’ house, you—you bastard!”
“It doesn’t feel good, does it?” He grinned. “When you’re the one left behind.”
My hands balled into fists, because if not, I was going to slap him. “How dare you!” I seethed. “I didn’t try to die on purpose!”
“You can’t lie to me, Scarlett. You were afraid. Afraid of what I’d see when I looked at you—” He shook his head, almost in incredulity. “How could you ever think that of me? That I could ever see you as fucking less, when you’remylife.”
It was then that I truly heard the hurt in his voice. The vulnerability.
“You let me go,” he said, the bitterness back. “You didn’t try to stop me when I left.”
“I did! I refused to go. You picked me up and hauled me to the car. Like a child!”
He shook his head, disagreeing.
“And how could I really?” I shot back. “You’re so fucking hardheaded! A girl against a beast!”
His mouth slammed into mine, and I tangled my fingers in his hair, yanking. When he pulled back to give us some room to breathe, we were inhaling each other’s breaths.
“Not as hardheaded as my wife,” he said, his grip on my hip almost bruising. “Mywife. Where is she? Tell me where the fuckmy wifeis!”
