It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I assure him I’m not planning to leave. He doesn’t believe me, and I don’t know how to make him understand that I’m not looking for an escape plan.
Since the day Bunny fled, he’s been watching me like he thinks I’m going to make a run for the door the moment his back is turned. His fear of losing me is so palpable that he wears it likean omen hanging around his neck, and it’s only escalated since Sammy admitted that I’d been the architect in our plan to push Evan to claim her.
His needy possession has gotten more and more obvious as summer has drawn to an end, and now, he barely lets me out of his sight. But my hidden security team suddenly becoming very, very unhidden is an intensification that I never expected him to make.
Our history is so fucked you could write a book about how toxic our relationship is. But when I realized I loved him enough to overlook most of the reasons I hated him, we talked about his need for control and where my personal lines in the sand were.
I’ve never condoned the way he drugged me and put a tracker in my neck without my knowledge or permission. But it’s hard to argue over its value when it literally saved me from being raped. According to Sebastian, I’ve had security following me since I was sixteen, so again, it was difficult for me to protest their presence when they were my shadow for years and I had no idea they were there. But I only agreed to my continued security protection on the proviso that I never had to see them.
I might have gotten used to always feeling like I’m being followed, but knowing that I have a security team—actually being surrounded by a full team of massive men dressed like they’re protecting the president, not a twenty-year-old—is a step too far.
I can’t live like this. I won’t be a prisoner to his paranoia, nor will I stay locked in this house just to make him feel better.
I see the way Sebastian loves me. I see the way he’d literally do anything to keep me. But all the sweet things he does for me haven’t made me forget how much of a monster he’s shown himself capable of being.
I’m not sixteen anymore. I’m not the poor kid struggling to survive in a school designed for the elite. I’m not soft and weakand scared anymore. I’ve evolved and become what I needed to be to survive, because you have to learn to be a piranha, not a guppy, if you’re swimming with sharks.
I made a plan to leave Sebastian because I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t his prisoner anymore. If I’m honest, I doubt I’d ever have used it, but knowing that it was there helped me sleep at night. It reminded me over and over that I was with him by choice. That I loved him more than I hated him, and that if that changed, I had a way out.
Since Bunny, I’ve felt different. I’m still married to him because I love him, but now if I decided to leave, I wouldn’t flee. I’d walk my ass out the door while he watched, so he saw what he’d driven me to do. But instead of acknowledging who I am now, Sebastian seems to be having a hard time understanding that I’m capable of taking him on face-to-face, so I don’t need to run and hide anymore.
Deep down I know that he’s secretly impressed and proud of the way I orchestrated Bunny’s escape and the way I controlled the narrative and manipulated all of them to help Sammy land her man. But he won’t admit that he loves how ruthless I’ve become, because if he does, he’ll have to admit that all traces of the naïve freshman he fell in love with and the broken eighteen-year-old he tricked into falling back under his spell don’t exist anymore.
Since the day we met, he’s controlled me with threats, manipulation and underhanded planning, plotting, and coercion. If he accepts that I’m his equal when it comes to strategy and toxic gameplay, then he’ll have to accept that I’m here because I choose to be, and not because I’m so buried beneath his control that I couldn’t get away if I wanted to.
But Sebastian needs control. It’s why he stalked me for a year before he uttered a word to me. It’s why he drugged me instead of charming me. It’s why when I ran from him the first time, hetook control of the only thing still beneath his power. My mom. He broke the bond my mom and I shared, and even though he feels some guilt over the ruination of our relationship, a part of him still enjoys the power he thinks that wields.
The day I walked into the kitchen at Collinswood House my first week at Kingsacre University and saw him was probably his proudest moment. He’d won. I was exactly where he wanted me to be. I’d evaded him for years, only to be caught in the trap he laid for me with no way of breaking free. He took my virginity, then he stole my heart, and it’s messed up and toxic and wrong in a million different ways. But despite everything he’s done to me, I do love him, and he loves me, and since the day I truly gave myself to him, that’s been enough.
Now, I’m not sure it is anymore.
The moment he slows the car to a stop in the garage, I open my door and climb out of the car, keeping the blanket I’m wrapped in tightly around me as I climb the stairs to our bedroom. If I’d married a different man, I’d slam and lock the door behind me, but with Sebastian, there’s no point. This might beourhome, but it’s his domain, and he’ll follow me without ever considering respecting the boundary a locked door would mean to a normal person.
Stepping into the bathroom, I turn on the shower and step under the stream of water. Sinking to my butt in the shower, I pull my knees into my chest, then rest my head on them, letting the water fall down onto me. My skin is sticky with sweat, salt, and sand, but I don’t try to get clean. Instead, I close my eyes, letting the sound and the constant barrage of water silence the racing thoughts in my head.
I’m not sure how long I sit for, but it’s long enough for my body to warm and for the bathroom to fill with steam. My eyes are closed, but even though I can’t see him, I can feel Sebastian’spresence and the oppressive weight of his eyes. Watching me, always watching.
Exhaling, I push to my feet, turn my back on his heavy gaze, and reach for the soap, washing the remnants of the sadness, anger, and pain from my body. Rubbing shampoo into my hair, I stare at the tile wall as I tip my head back and let the water soak me, rinsing the suds away. Wishing it could wash away the pain and insecurities as easily as it can the soap.
Finally clean, I turn off the shower, then reach for a towel, wrapping it around myself as I twist a second around my hair, flipping it into a turban on top of my head. The moment I stand in front of the vanity, he steps up behind me, the wet shirt he’d been wearing removed, leaving his bare chest still damp and flushed with cold.
“I’m not sorry for loving you,” he says, his voice low and rough.
Swallowing thickly, I nod.
“I need you.”
I nod again.
“You’re mine. My little bird. Mine to cage. Mine to lock away.”
Lifting my chin so that our eyes lock in the reflection in the mirror, I ask, “But what happens if I’m not a little bird anymore?”
“You’ll always be my little bird,” he growls angrily.
“I’m not sixteen anymore. This isn’t high school, and you can’t scare me into being your girlfriend. I’m your wife, Sebastian. I chose you. I picked this. I picked you.”
“Then you made a plan to leave me,” he says, his tone lethally cold.
