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“What do you—” I started, then froze as Ivy approached. She wore a red off-the-shoulder number with a sequin paisley pattern and a thunderous glare. My query died on my lips. “Oh.”
“He thinks he’s cute, but I may stab my stiletto in his eye.” In her Georgia drawl, the threat held little heat, but her expression made me wonder if maybe she wouldn’t follow through.
Bennett gloated. “I don’t think I’m cute. I know I am.” He held a hand out to me. “Care to dance, love?”
Uncertain whether I should get in the middle—but suspecting Ivy might resort to violence if Bennett didn’t remove himself from her presence—I relinquished my festive cocktail to Cam and set my hand in Ben’s.
Once we were safely on the dance floor, swaying to A Holly Jolly Christmas, I shook my head at him. “Why do you antagonize her?”
“Perhaps I’m in love with her, and this is how I flirt.”
My skeptical stare had him chuckling.
“Maybe I just really don’t like her.”
That didn’t seem right either, but I surmised it was something in the middle. “I think you play a lot of games.”
His smile was joyless. “Do I?”
“What are you hiding in there?”
Sharp eyes cut to mine, full of an intelligence he normally hid. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said pityingly. “You hide from everything. You just don’t know it because the person you hide the most from is yourself.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
His dark gaze held mine, assessing and unblinking. “How about…a thought experiment?”
I huffed in frustration, but nodded my agreement.
His hand tightened on my waist—not suggestively, but more like he was holding me captive, like he needed me to hear whatever he was about to say with no chance of my escape. “Imagine a woman in a house. She is told the house is hers. It’s all she’ll ever have in this world and all she deserves. The house has everything she needs and never runs short of supplies. It’s a self-contained system.”
“Sounds fabulous.”
He smirks. “The woman, having never known any different, lives alone in her house without complaint. She eats, drinks, and sleeps without issue. She wanders from room to room, partaking in the small pleasures her house provides. And every day, she stands at the open front door, staring at the sunlight on the porch and the neighbors strolling on the sidewalk, none of whom spare her a single glance…because she hides in the shadows of her comfortable home.”
I frowned. Where exactly was he going with this?
“Each day, the time she spends at the door grows longer, and her idle curiosity turns to rampant interest. What if she could be one of those people on the sidewalk? What if she could feel the sunlight? Still, she never steps foot outside her home, for it’s all she’ll ever have, and she deserves nothing more.”
We stopped swaying to the music and stood at the edge of the dance floor.
“She’s taking a calculated risk,” I said.
“The woman begins to ache,” he continued as if I had said nothing. “The fantasies of the outside and the desire for more have anchored inside. Now the food, the pleasures of her once palatable existence have turned to ash. She yearns for more, but she was taught she doesn’t deserve it, so she remains in the house, alone and forsaken, slowly decaying in the dark.”
“What exactly are you trying to say here?”
“The house is not a house. It’s a prison. And the woman, a prisoner.”
I thought of Cam and our conversation on his theoretical imprisonment by familial obligations. Was I also imprisoned? By my own belief system?
“If she’s a prisoner, what was her crime?” I asked.
He leaned closer to me, close enough that I could smell the alcohol on his breath. “Her only crime is that she can’t see there are no bars holding her inside. Step into the sunshine, Honeycutt. It’s warm out here.”
