"How was it? How's the angry feminist?" he calls when he notices I'm home.
"Still angry. Still a feminist," I mutter flatly, passing by.
His eyes lift, drilling through my outfit with that husbandly audit I usually dread.
Tonight, though, I don't give a flying damn. His rules are the smallest of my problems.
Still, I rush to the closet, yank clothes off me so fast it feels like I'm tearing skin and shove myself into gray sweats—and that's when my phone buzzes in my purse.
I practically leap for it.
Ben:The word courage comes from the French word coeur
Ben:It means heart
Ben:Thought you should know
I blink, reading the messages over and over. Even without a voice, I can hear his anger, but mostly I can hear the hurt.
My throat cinches as the tears sting hot and my thumb flies over the screen:Meet me upstairs, now.
Delete. I can't vanish at midnight right after I walked in.
Then:Why the hell did you storm off?!Delete.
Then:Please don't leave me.Delete.
"Are you okay?" Richard's voice slices in from behind, startling me so hard my phone almost skids out of my hand. I shove it into my pocket before he steps close enough to see the screen.
"Oh... hey." I turn my head slightly and try to twist mymouth into some kind of a smile.
"Hey."
His voice sounds weird, like it belongs to a stranger.
When he brushes a kiss to my cheek, my body goes rigid, a crawl of cold running under my skin.
"Richard—"
"Mm? You smell nice. What perfume is that?" He keeps pressing slow, heavy kisses, his hand sliding around my waist to reel me against him. I nearly slap it away.
"I'm sorry, Richard," I say, holding his hand instead and twisting my head away. "I'm just exhausted."
He doesn't really stop, and now I taste bile in my mouth.
"You've been tired a lot lately." Not quite an accusation, but close. "Maybe you should see a doctor."
A doctor. There is a doctor I want to see.
I almost blurt it into the air, shatter everything, but bite it back, and turn around so that Richard can't find me again.
"No, it's fine. It's been a lot lately. That's all," I say, forcing a smile.
Richard nods. Then his face quickly hardens and his hand rises. "Or maybe you should let me see your phone."
I take a step back, feeling chills. "Excuse me?"
"Your phone." His fingers flick in a commanding gesture, and his voice drops to that terrifying, calculated quiet. "Let me see your phone."
