I look at the food, and my stomach turns. The idea of eating with Saint makes me ill. I don't want to be around him longer than necessary. Every time we are together, I feel like I'm barely able to keep it together. I just keep reminding myself that he actively betrayed me.
It makes my stomach turn.
"I'm not hungry." I truly am not. I know he thinks I'm trying to be difficult, but I'm not.
"Please." He sets the tray down on the bed and sits next to me. "Just a few bites."
I take a strawberry. Put it in my mouth. Chew. It tastes like nothing. Like cardboard. Like ash.
I swallow.
"Good." He sounds relieved. "More?"
I take another bite because that's what good wives do. They eat when their husbands ask. They smile. They pretend.
Pretending is so much harder than I thought.
It takes too much energy, and it makes me want to lay back in bed and drift away.
"Tell me something," Saint says. "Anything. What are you thinking about?"
Death. The way Adrian's hands felt around my throat. The fact that I have no name. No family. No identity. That I'm a ghost pretending to be human.
I know Saint doesn't want to hear any of this. He wants me to tell him I'm thinking of rainbows and unicorns, but I can't fake it that well, so instead I say, "Nothing important."
"Gemma..." His hand finds mine. It's warm, and his thumb caresses my knuckles. "Talk to me. Really talk to me."
It should make me sad to see Saint look so desperate. It's not like him. He's an asshole. He's charming. He's not a beggar.
And yet, I don't care.
"About what?"
"About how you're feeling. About what I can do to help. About..." He stops and closes his eyes.
I look at him. At the man I love. The man who destroyed me. The man who hates me enough to betray me. Saint broke me, and what's worse is that he wants me to absolve him of his actions.
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're..." His jaw tightens. "You're disappearing. And I don't know how to stop it."
You can't. That woman is gone. You killed her when you gave me to Adrian. When you chose your position over me. When you proved I was right, I'm just a thing to be traded and used and discarded. I loved you. I let myself love you, and you spat on me.
But I keep my lips tight together.
"I'm here," I tell him. "I'm doing what you asked. Being a good wife. I'm trying to listen to you." I close my eyes. They are heavy. "Isn't this what you wanted?"
"No. This isn't..." He runs a hand through his hair. "I wanted you. The real you. The woman who challenged me. Who fought back. Who made me think."
"That woman was a problem." I use his words. Adrian's words. I didn't believe them at first, but they'd spoken them to me enough times that I now believe them. "This is better."
"This is not better!" His voice rises.
I flinch. I'm not sure why, but it's the first real reaction I've had in days.
He sees it and goes still.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell." He's gentler now, like he's talking to a child. "But I need you to understand, I don't want this version of you. I want my wife back."
