“We were together for two years,” she says.“He wants to end it.I don’t accept that.”
“So you—what—kidnapped him?”
“I relocated us.”
“You drugged him and drove him to a farmhouse and strapped him to a bed.”
“When you say it like that, it sounds?—”
“Like what it is.”
She goes quiet.Drinks her coffee.I watch her throat move when she swallows and I file that away with everything else—the strip of skin, the scar on her shin, the way she smells after a shower.I’m still cataloging her.Even now.Especially now.Something is wrong with me and I’m not sure it started today.
“He cheated,” she says again.Like that’s the key that unlocks the whole thing.And maybe it is.Not because it justifies anything, but because it tells me what this is about.It’s not about love.It’s about refusal.Marin doesn’t lose.Marin doesn’t get left.Marin doesn’t walk away from a deal that hasn’t closed.
I understand that better than I should.
“What’s your plan?”I say.
“My plan?”
“With him.Long term.You can’t keep a man strapped to a bed forever, Marin.What’s the endgame?”
She stares at me.And for the first time—the very first time—I see her without the pitch.Without the performance.Just a woman standing in a kitchen holding a mug that mocks her, realizing she doesn’t have an answer.
“I don’t know,” she says.
I believe her.
I finish my coffee.Rinse the mug.Set it upside down on the rack.
“I’m going to finish the soundproofing,” I say.“We can talk about the rest later.”
She stares at me like I’ve grown a second head.
“You’re—you’re going to finish the soundproofing.”
“That’s what you’re paying me for.”
“Luke, the situation upstairs is—it’s complicated.”
“I know.I met him.”I pick up my keys.“Foam’s in the truck.I’ll start with the far wall.”
I head for the front door.She doesn’t follow.I can feel her standing in the kitchen behind me, holding that mug, trying to figure out what just happened.
Good.Let her wonder.
I’ve spent two years fixing things for people who can’t fix them themselves.Porches.Fences.Marriages.Men who hit their wives.
This isn’t the strangest thing I’ve walked into.It’s just the first one I didn’t want to walk out of.
26
Marin
Ican hear Luke in the basement.The steady rhythm of a man measuring, cutting, placing.Methodical.Unhurried.Like he didn’t just find a hostage in my spare bedroom and decide to finish the job anyway.
I’ll deal with that later.Right now, I have a boyfriend to feed.
