“I’ll be back,” I say instead.
She doesn’t believe me. I can see it all over her face. Just when I think she’s about to fall apart, she straightens. Wipes her eyes. Lifts her chin.
She doesn’t follow me when I turn.
Good.
I head to my room to get dressed and leave. I walk to the edge of the room, grab my coat off the chair, and shrug it on with mechanical precision. My watch snaps into place—knife in my waistband.
Methodical in what I do to avoid menial things like feelings.
When I come back downstairs, she’s still standing around in my robe, but now in the entryway, watching the front door with arms wrapped around herself, staring into space as if she lets herself blink, she’ll fall apart.
She doesn’t speak, and I should leave without another word.
And yet…I turn back.
She meets my eyes. Red-rimmed. Proud. And something else, something that looks an awful lot like punishment. Not for me. Forherself.
I step back toward her, slowly, until I’m close enough to touch her, but don’t.
“You asked for Dale,” I say. “Fine. One visit.”
Her breath hitches, but she says nothing.
I lean in, voice low, right at her ear.
“But if she tries to do anything to you, or help you leave me in any way, she won’t walk out.”
I don’t wait for her reply.
I press a kiss to the hinge of her jaw and pull back before she can see whatever expression threatens to rise behind my eyes.
Then I turn, walk out the door, and leave her exactly how I want her,
Shaken. Waiting. Still mine.
Chapter seventeen
Martine Lilian Herron
I’m distracted as I dress for the day, rubbing a bit of cream across the wound between my breasts, unashamed at how my nipples harden when it hurts to the touch.
I loved him pressing his nail into the cut this morning. Reopening the commitment we made to each other. He, by design, me by submission.
I don’t want to let it heal. I don’t want to let it close. I want to pick the scab off until it becomes a sliver of scar tissue. Something ours that can be pressed into the history of time.
If Hayden Herron destroys me, if he takes every ounce of me I’m willing to give, there will be nothing left. I'm sure of it.
So for now, I’ll have my scar.
I phoned Dale not long after Hayden left, and she immediately jumped in the car.
I hear the tires crunching on gravel before I see her. The old windows rattle faintly in their casings, and I let the curtain fall as Dale’s car pulls up the drive, a silver ‘95 Mercedes coupe gleaming in the morning light. She parks beside Hayden’s black Jaguar XJR, sleek, silent, and impossibly arrogant, like its owner.
She steps out, smoothing the front of her pale trench. The collar flips smartly against the breeze. I catch the edge of her sunglasses, oval-shaped and tortoiseshell, and a flash of classic pearls beneath her freshly blown bob. She looks expertly polished. Her heels clack against the stone steps as she walks up to the door, pausing just once.
I open it before she can knock.
