“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, but his laughter was jagged and laced with pain.
I prayed he was right.
***
Liam parked the car in the driveway. He stared through the glass, jaw working back and forth. If his molars weren’t pulverized to bits at this point, it was a miracle.
The whole drive, I’d been too cowardly to admit what was happening. Yesterday felt like a coincidence. Today, there was no escaping reality.
Just tell him!
The tracker burned a hole in my pocket. The sooner it was out in the open, it could stop haunting me.
But what if the truth was more painful? Liam already looked at me as if I was a problem he wished would go away. After dinner and some deliciously rough sex, I’d fallen asleep only to wake up to an empty bed only to meet a man who was almost a stranger in the supermarket. When he’d walked through the doors of the grocery store, his lawyer in tow, Liam looked like he wanted to kill me himself.
The murder still raged in his eyes.
Taking a deep breath, I spoke. “I have to tell you something.”
“Yeah, you do, cailín.” Liam turned abruptly in his seat. “Who the fuck is Luca?”
The world tilted.
The sounds of the idling engine faded away. My mouth went dry. Shit, even my heart stopped beating.
In a moment of bravery, I wrote that name. Once. I spoke it into existence, consumed by the idea that by putting my dreams into the world, they would manifest into reality.
Well, now they were stopped by a nightmare.
“How do you know that name?” My voice shook. But not from fear. Wrath, a holy, all-consuming anger, flooded every fiber of my being.
“Where is he?” Liam demanded, words equally deadly.
I tossed my head. “Safe.”
Because…he was.
That was both my solace and my agony.
Liam cursed. His hand shot out and those strong, capable fingers wrapped around my throat. “I will pry the truth of your infidelity from your lips, wife!”
I would have scoffed.
If I could have drawn enough breath to do so.
I grabbed his forearm with both my hands, trying to tear him off. I gagged. My lungs convulsed from the suffocating hold.
“I could snap your neck without a thought,” he snarled.
But his grip loosened a second later. It was still there, a reminder of what he was capable of.
“I’m not cheating on you!” I wheezed.
What I’d written in my journal wasmysecret. This beast didn’t get to pry it out of me. And if I had ever been insane enough to think about telling him the truth, this reaction proved my husband couldn’t be trusted.
Liam let out a deranged, hideous laugh. “Oh, but you’re planning on it.”
The accusation stung.
