Page 43 of Crown of Thorns

Renny

The anger is still there when I wake. It lives in my chest like a second heartbeat. I didn't sleep more than two hours. Spent the rest of the night thinking about Maura. About my mother's hands. The way she'd organize the world by proximity to her own need. The careful pruning of her daughter's life. The total control justified as protection.

I am not that. But he is. And that was the point of naming it.

The house is quiet. I can feel that he's awake somewhere in the dark. The calculating husband. The one who makes decisions and then executes them with precision. The one who didn't come back to bed. I heard him in the study around 2 AM. The sound of glass on wood. Whiskey becoming meditation.

I shower. Water runs down my back. I think about his hands gripping the counter when he cancelled that dinner. He did it right in front of me. No privacy. No pretense of detachment. Just proof that I'd gotten under the skin he spends years maintaining. That the comparison to Maura had landed exactly where I meant it to land.

The kitchen is warm when I come down. He's sitting with tea. The morning is grey. Dublin rain. Everything smells like wet stone and cold. His hair is damp at the ends. He's showered too. We've been in separate rooms, preparing ourselves.

He looks at me. Really looks. Not the strategic assessment. Not the calculation of what I'm thinking or how to manage it. Just the actual seeing of me. The focus that makes you feel exposed.

"I'm not her," I say.

"I know."

"You're not allowed to isolate me. Not for strategy. Not for control. Not because you're scared I'll leave."

He sets the tea down. The cup finds the saucer with minimal sound. His hands are steady. Everything about him is steady except the muscles in his jaw. I can see them working. The physical answer to what I've said. The body revealing what the voice won't.

"I know," he says again.

"Then why did you do it?"

He stands. The chair moves back. He walks toward me. Not predatory. Careful. Like approaching something that might bolt. His eyes are locked on my face. The grey morning comes through the window behind him. Makes him look like he's cut from marble. From something older than marble.

"Because," he says, "when I see you with someone else, I want to burn them. And I can't. So I remove them instead."

The truth of it lands. Not gentle. Not soft. Just the actual thing, spoken without filter. Without the euphemisms that usually soften consequence.

I step closer. The kitchen counter is between us. I can feel the cold of the marble through my palms. My fingertips are on the surface. His are maybe a meter away. The distance feels intentional. Like we're both holding a line we're about to cross.

"That's not acceptable," I say.

"I know."

"I'm going to build relationships. Friendships. Networks. And you're not going to stop me."

"I'm not," he says.

"You already have."

"Renny—"

"I'm not finished." My voice is low. Not loud. Controlled. Like the voice I use when an animal is panicking. When I need them to understand I'm not a threat. "You can feel however you want. You can want to burn people. You can have the feelings. But you don't act on them. You don't make my world smaller because you can't manage your own neurosis about control."

He moves. Fast. Around the counter. He doesn't touch me. Just stands close enough that the air between us is warm. Close enough that I can smell him — tea and whiskey from last night and the detergent he uses. Something underneath that. The specific smell of his skin.

"I won't do it again," he says.

"You will. Unless you deal with the actual thing."

"The actual thing?"

"That you love me and it terrifies you because it means you're not in control. And you think not being in control kills people."

He closes his eyes. His jaw tightens. The muscles cord along his neck. It's the physical manifestation of something internal breaking. When he opens his eyes again, they're the colour of winter water. Clear. Unfathomable.