“You’re somewhere else.You sure the fuck aren’t sleeping with me.”
He locked his eyes on mine.“This part is mine.You don’t need to stress over business stuff.”
“What am I supposed to do while you keep the world from burning down?Try on dresses?Pick curtains?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It isn’t.”As my husband, he should know better.How many times did I have to tell him different?
“Then don’t.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Nothing about this is easy,” he said, and the fatigue scraped through again.He shifted, and the bench creaked.“I’m asking you to trust me.”
Silence stretched again.“You told me I was yours,” I said finally, not looking at him.“And for one minute, I believed that meantwanted.Not justkept.”
“You are wanted,” he said.The words were steady.
“Of course you say that,” I muttered, but the sting didn’t have teeth.
“Someone is coming for what I built.Plus, they might be after you too.Hell, for the crown they think sits light on my head.”
I turned then.A stripe of light from the high window cut across his cheekbone.“And you can’t tell me more.”
“Not yet.I don’t have much to go off of yet.”
“Because you don’t trust me?”
“Because I trust you,” he said, finally meeting my eyes.“And I won’t turn you into something to be compromised.”He shook his head once.“I will not make you a tool.”
“I hate that your protection feels like punishment.”
“I don’t know another way to keep you safe,” he answered, voice roughening at the edges.
These last two days have been lonely.He suggested we slept in separate rooms, but then I didn’t see him at all.Loneliness was not something I signed up for in this marriage.And I wouldn’t stand for it.
“I thought you weren’t interested anymore.That you had gotten what you wanted and casted me aside.”
His jaw tipped toward surprise, then anger—not at me; at whatever force in the world had given me that idea.“You think I married you and then lost interest?”He shook his head like he could dislodge the thought.“You think I am capable of indifference now that you sleep under my roof?”
“I think I was something you wanted and now that you have me… the fun and games are over.”
He was quiet for a long time.Then he said, like a man admitting a sin he didn’t yet know how to stop committing, “I am trying to be a different man.For you.How to be the type of husband you deserve.”
The confession landed in my chest like a weight and a relief.
“Come here,” he said, and the words were soft enough to be optional.
He didn’t reach for me right away, but our fingers threaded together, the simple human fact of it making something unclench along my spine.His skin was warm.The callus along his ring finger rasped my knuckle when he tightened his grip, like an apology and a claim in one.He didn’t kiss me.He didn’t pull me into him like I wanted and erase all the edges.
“Go tomorrow to the townhouse.Take Catrina and a guard though.If not, I’ll go insane.”
He lifted my fingers to his mouth.A kiss on the knuckles like a vow.He didn’t have to saymine.It lived in the way he observed me.
“Let’s take you to your room so you can get some rest.”
When we reached my door, he didn’t cross the threshold.He peered into the room like it might bite him.He stepped back.I closed the door and leaned my forehead against the wood for a long breath.The red dress whispered when I moved, silk catching skin.I changed slowly—hung the dress like an apology, washed my face and then slid between sheets that still smelled like jasmine from another lifetime.
