“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“You handcuffed me to you so I could look at fish.”
“I can’t risk you running away again.”
“Sure, sure. And you’re telling me this isn’t objectifying?”
“I am telling you that the word is insufficient.”
His eyes narrowed. “That is the most Tobias answer you could’ve possibly given.”
“I want you alive,” I said. “I want you safe. I want you here. I want you to stop looking at me as though I am going to kill you when killing you has never been, and will never be, a possibility I am capable of even considering.”
His throat moved.
I did not step closer.
I wanted to.
I did not.
“And I want,” I continued, each word requiring more control than the last, “to find a way for you to exist in this house without any restraints.”
Cove stared at me for a long time before saying, “I was.”
The words were quiet.
No anger this time.
That made them worse.
I had no answer.
Silence was the only honest response I had left.
Cove looked away first, back to the tank, back to the animals he loved with a purity that made my own wanting look all the more monstrous by contrast.
After a while, he said, “The morays need their feeding schedule shifted back by twenty minutes.”
The conversation had been closed.
Not resolved.
Closed.
I accepted that too.
“Very well,” I said.
He sighed, but there was no real heat in it.
“Don’t say it like that.”
“How should I say it?”
“Like a normal person.”
