Archie’s head bobs. “Yes.”
Hm.
“You wish me to remain here, married to you?”
“Desperately,” he answers, sounding just that.
Well, then. I white out bawling in a stranger’s car from my imminent plans.
“Okay,” I say.
“I can show you his files. They’re awful, but I can prove that he’s bad. The worst sort of bad. I swear.” Archie’s hands shake in his lap, so he moves them behind him.
My brows furrow. “I trust you,” I reply. “And I don’t really want to see any ‘proof’ of his crimes. If it’s really that bad… I can barely handle my parents’ non-abusive, non-traumatizing brand of yikes. I don’t think I could intake details of something much worse and come out of it okay. Selfish as it is, I do not want a front-row seat to someone else’s nightmare.”
“You’re not selfish,” he retorts immediately. “No one is selfish for not wanting to look at that.”
I nod, then glance at the floor. My head tilts. “He’s really in the basement right now?”
“He is. I… don’t really have anywhere else to put him right now, but if you’re uncomfortable being in the house with him,Heidi and Basil have a guest room you can stay in while we figure out what we’re going to do.”
“What we’re going to do?”
“About our marriage,” he clarifies. “I can’t really do anything about Ted at the moment. He’s… in the middle of something.”
“What do we need to do about our marriage?” I ask. “You said you want to stay married.”
“Yes,” he says slowly, “but there’s a man being tortured in my basement.”
“I’m not seeing the connection,” I confess. “You said he’s a bad guy?” I mean, he said it abunchof times. Bad guy, torture, basement.
The intensity of Archie’s focus on me ratchets up from one-hundred percent to about one-thousand. “Can you narrate your train of thought for me?”
I stop thinking all together in order to look at him—really, truly look at him. He is… bouncing. Feet, legs, fingers, jaw. Anxious taps and jiggles, small enough that I hadn’t noticed, but big enough that they’re clearlythere. A clammy sheen has taken over his skin, and his coloring has gone from pale topale.
My heart twists. “We’re married,” I blurt, throwing my previous thought thread out for him as quickly as I can get the words to form. “You want to stay married. I definitely want to stay married. You’re torturing scum of the earth in the basement, and that is something that will continue, because it’s a job you do. I feel…” I pause, thinking about all of the dark romances I’ve written—published and unpublished. The line between fiction and reality is solid, dark, and should not be crossed. Dark romances are dangerous, no matter how pretty a bow you put on them. They have contentwarningsfor a reason. As I’ve mentioned before, reading dark romances messes with your worldview.
Imagine whatwritingthem does.
“I feel not one single negative emotion about the torturing,” I conclude. “If anything, I’m curious.” I remember his talk about mailing fingers. “Since we’re working on me having boundaries and all, I have to say that I will not be dealing with any severed organs.”
He blinks.
I blink.
Then, he lunges.
He’s on me in an instant, mouth against mine in a kiss just as rough as the last one, but this roughness carries a much different edge. His hands stray from my face, following the curve of my neck and lower, to my waist. His fingers dig, then pull.
Frantic breaths fill the space between us as I fall over him. “My princess,” he pants.
“My knight,” I reply, tugging him back to me.
He groans as his lips rejoin mine.
He tastes like cinnamon tea and sunflowers, like cozy nights and summer days.
Like home.
