He nodded, his nose nuzzling the side of her face and his hand running back down to slide under her shirt. “Yeah.”
“Must be amazing inside.”
“It’s too nice for me.”
Uma didn’t like that. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t need a big house like that, all that fancy scrollwork and trim and stuff. Grew up in a trailer.”
“So, what are your plans for the house?”
“First, I thought maybe I’d—” He cleared his throat and shifted away, taking with him the heat of his hand. “You don’t wanna hear this crap.”
“No, I do.”
“So, when my uncle left me the house, it was like I could change the future. Had plans for…stuff.”
“Seems reasonable to think of the future.”
“Well, it didn’t pan out.”
“I know how that goes.” Something about his reticence made her want to spill her own story. That was why they’d come out here, after all. But still, she hesitated.
He must have sensed what she was thinking. “Why don’t you tell me your story, Uma?” he asked gently.
She sighed. “I had plans before I met Joey.”
Ivan went completely still, his breathing taking a backseat to his listening.
“Joey was…convincing. Lawyers are like that. And he’s good at what he does. Got me to do things I didn’t really want to do, you know?” She wasn’t sure if he did, but he nodded anyway. “It all happened so fast between us, like he’d decided on me, and he wanted me, and he wanted menow. I kept thinking we’d talk about what I wanted later. And then later and then later and then…later never came.” She closed her eyes and continued. “I used to have friends. I didn’t notice they were gone until I looked around one day and it was just me. Well, me and Joey. But not even that, ’cause he worked all the time, came home late—dinners, drinks, schmoozing. All that political crap. And I had weddings on the weekends.”
“Weddings?”
“I’m a photographer. Weddings are my bread and butter.”
“Makes sense.”
She shifted and craned her neck to look at him. “What makes sense?”
“The photographer thing. The way you were with that camera last night. And the stuff you do. How you look at things…at me. Like you’re framing a shot in your mind.”
“I do that?”
“Also, your hands.” She clenched them unconsciously. “You’re always doin’ that. Squeezin’ ’em, openin’ ’em, like you’re itchin’ to pick somethin’ up.” He nudged her gently. “But go on. You were talkin’.”
Uma took a huge breath in and continued. “I was in so much denial that it could have gone on for a while, I guess, but then he cheated on me. With a colleague. They’d been working this case together—the first time he was lead prosecutor on something that major. That was his excuse, at least. How high stress it was, how they were thrown together, a tight-knit team, blah, blah, blah.” The shifts in breathing beside her told her of Ivan’s reactions, but he didn’t interrupt. “It got so confusing. He apologized, so loving and so, so sorry.” She huffed out a frustrated breath, trying to explain why, how she’d let it happen. “He convinced me to stay, but I felt different. Things had changed, and I think he knew it. We had an okay couple of months after that, although he still spent so much time at work. But when he was home, he was this perfect boyfriend. Like diamonds and flowers and spoiling me rotten and constant, constant attention.” She shrugged. “I guess I kind of liked it. Even though I never entirely trusted it. But, frankly, it wasn’t what I wanted.”
She shifted a little, enjoying the arm that wrapped around her. Comforting, but not imprisoning.
“Then he lost the case. It was a big deal. In hindsight, he must have been on something even while they were trying it, to keep up with the workload and the media, all the pressure. When they lost, his boss made him take some time off. That was the last straw. He’d be sucking back the booze, probably popping pills, while I was trying to process photos in the next room, him constantly breathing down my neck. One night we fought, badly. And he hit me.” Tears pricked at Uma’s sinuses, not uncontrollable, but enough to let her know that the emotion was there. Clean and unfamiliar. “He apologized, said he couldn’t help it. He was overtired… The whole fucking rigmarole you hear from battered women. I couldn’t let myself keep falling for that. So, I decided to move out. Packed up, because I wouldn’t stand for that kind of crap. Nobody gets toabuse me, you know? He acted normal. Probably too calm. He seemed resigned to it and…”
She swallowed, and his arm loosened a smidge, enough to let her know she could go whenever she needed to. She appreciated his subliminal support and wondered if he was even aware of it. “I was all ready to go when he brokeeverything. All my equipment. Every camera. Even my goddamned Nikon. He smashed every single thing that mattered to me. He was wasted, weird.” Uma’s throat clicked dryly as she remembered bits and pieces. “Earlier that week, he’d come home with a tattoo machine.”
Machine, she thought,not gun.“Guns are for shooting, Uma. For hurting or killing,” Joey had sneered. “Only white trash use the wordgunfor this.” Ironic, of course, considering what he’d done in the end—the way he’d used the machine to torture her.
“He didn’t say where he’d gotten it, but it didn’t look new, and I wondered about…you know, cleanliness.”
“Why did he have it?”
