Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Margot
The morning after dinner out with Jigsaw and Rooster, I’m barely awake when I sense someone staring at me. By the feel of his body and the sound of his breathing, I know it’s Jigsaw.
“What’s wrong?” I whisper.
“Nothing.” The weight in his voice strips away the last bit of sleep clinging to me. I roll to my side to face him.
His gaze is heavy, his features carved from stone—no teasing smirk, no playful glint in his eyes. Just quiet intensity that tightens the space between us.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” I ask.
He reaches over and brushes hair off my forehead. “You’re my very own Sleeping Beauty.”
“So, why didn’t you kiss me awake?”
“You seemed peaceful.”
I shift closer to him, my leg brushing against his. “That’s because you’re here. Why can’t you sleep?”
A flash of pain creases his forehead but he doesn’t answer. Just keeps his steady gaze on me.
I brush my fingers over the sheet draped over his hip. “Is there something I can do to help you sleep?”
Instead of answering, he captures my hand and presses it to his chest, halting my exploration.
Okay, so he’s not up for early morning sex. What has him so tense?
“What is it?”
“Can I ask you something?”
His tone instantly sets me on edge. It’s too calm. Too curious.
I push back, creating a little distance between us. “Not when you say it like that.”
“Is Dan the Douchewaffle?—”
I let out a giggle, even though Jigsaw mentioning my ex is already tensing my body with anxiety.
Jigsaw remains stone-cold serious. “Is he the one who—” He frowns and swallows hard, as if he can’t put his thoughts into the right combination of words. “Is he the one who made you think you needed sex lessons.” The corner of his mouth turns up in a weak attempt to add a little light teasing to the heavy question.
“I told you, none of my previous experiences were good ,” I hedge, sensing he won’t stop this time. Not until he has answers, and I want to delay as long as possible.
“Yeah, I could tell.”
My heart thuds. Is that his way of saying I was terrible when we first started? “You could tell?”
“Just…from some of the questions you asked.” He frowns. “We’ve talked about this—you thought you couldn’t come, didn’t want me to go down on you, expected sex to hurt…”
Shame heats my skin as he lists all the little signs he picked up on that loudly announced how awful my prior experiences had been.
“Hey.” He slides his arms under my body, pulling me closer. “Stop. None of that made me think badly of you. ”
“Just sorry for me?”
“No. Your…inexperience is one thing, but you were convinced you were broken. And then yesterday, I overheard how that guy spoke to you. Is he the one who made you feel that way?”
“Yes.” I squeeze my eyes shut, scared that once I open the door to my past, I won’t be able to close it.
“How? What’d he say?”
Why does he want to know so badly?
Will he use the information to judge how much abuse I’m willing to tolerate and change the way Daniel did?
“Just mean stuff.”
“Like what? That you were broken because he couldn’t figure out how your body works?”
“Pretty much.” Please, please stop asking.
Maybe it would be a relief to finally purge it all to someone.
And Jigsaw’s the safest person I know.
He’s staring at me intently, waiting for more details.
“You promise you won’t tell anyone?” I ask, hating the pitiful pleading in my tone. “Not even Rooster? I know he’s your best friend and as much as I like him, I?—"
“Promise.” He presses his hand over his heart. “Not even Rooster.”
Shame I shouldn’t even feel wraps around my throat. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not broken.
Why is it still hard to share something so embarrassing even though I trust him?
“It’s okay.” He lets out a long sigh. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
He doesn’t try to guilt me into spilling my pain, just keeps his arms around me. The solid protection of his body surrounding me finally loosens the knot of embarrassment tangling my tongue.
“Daniel and I started out…nice. He seemed perfect at first.”
“How’d you meet?”
“Through my dad’s bank.” I roll my eyes. It sounds so absurd. “He works in finance.”
Jigsaw snorts. “Go on.”
“He’d take me out to dinner. Invited me to meet his friends. Seemed very interested in getting to know my father.” I pause, searching for details I’ve buried. “One time when we were at an event, one of his college buddies made fun of my job in front of everyone.”
I scowl, the details of that awful night returning with painful clarity. “It embarrassed me terribly, but I laughed it off because I’m used to people saying stupid things about what I do.” I stop and close my eyes briefly. “But Daniel seemed really bothered by it. Slowly, we stopped socializing with his circle. He started criticizing me a lot more. I wasn’t smart enough. Or pretty enough. I dressed too weird. Wore too much makeup. Not enough makeup. Nothing I did seemed to make him happy.”
“Jesus, Margot. All of that is bullshit. You know that now, right?”
I half-heartedly lift one shoulder and nod. “Even though he seemed to hate everything about me, he still asked me to marry him. Gave me a beautiful ring.” I glance down at my bare fingers. “I had this uneasy feeling in my stomach. But like an idiot, I still said yes.”
“You said yes to this guy?” he asks in a pained voice.
I shift my gaze to his, but there’s no judgment in his eyes, only curiosity.
“I did. On paper, he seemed like a good fit for me. I’d never come close to feeling anything like I thought people in love were supposed to feel.” I press my hand over my heart. “I kept telling myself that’s because this is real life, not a movie or a book. I’m an adult, not a teenager. I didn’t need to be romanced and smothered with affection all the time. He paid for our dates. Introduced me to his family…”
“Margot, that’s the bare minimum.”
“I know.”
“Adult or not, you deserve to be cherished.” He entwines his fingers with mine and pure affection flows through the simple gesture. I can’t bring myself to agree with his statement, though.
“Once we were engaged, he ramped up the complaints. Suddenly, I needed to lose weight, my breasts were too squishy and big, my thighs too jiggly.” Humiliation rains down over me as I list each small insult that, over time, added up to a mountain of pain.
He squeezes my hand. “None of those things are true. You’re perfect the way you are.”
I duck my head, allowing my hair to cover my face. “I mean, I know I’m not tiny. I’m not blind. But I started to feel really awful.” I peek up at him through my hair. “I think you already know the sex was bad.”
“Yeah,” he says quietly.
“It had never been great for me.” I scoff. “Another thing I thought was just reality versus fiction.” Heat blooms over my face but I’ve told him this much, I might as well give him the whole story. “I bought some books. Did some reading about how to…I thought maybe it was his lack of experience too. So one time I asked if we could explore doing something to make it last… longer . So maybe I could, you know, enjoy it too.”
I risk a glance at Jigsaw, expecting to find him laughing or smug. But his face is stone-cold serious. “Go on.”
“He was…angry. Really angry.” I press my hands to my face. “His cheeks got so red, I thought he might explode. He said it was my fault that our sex life was so bad.”
He snorts a humorless laugh. “How so?”
Just say it. Get the words out. “He said I was as exciting in bed as a corpse . How working around dead people must’ve rubbed off on me because I was cold and boring…There was more, but I stopped listening. It wasn’t just what he said. It was how he said it. So hateful and vicious when he supposedly loved me.”
Tears of anger and humiliation burn my eyelids, but I blink them away. How did I allow someone like that into my life for so long?
“I will kill that piece of shit if I ever see him again,” Jigsaw swears. He squeezes my hands again. “None of that is true. None .”
He’s the reason I know that now, but that sounds really pathetic and I’m already feeling low enough. “Since my prior experiences hadn’t been stellar, I felt like the common denominator had to be me . And maybe he was the only one with the spine to say it.”
“Bullshit. There are just a lot of shitty guys out there who don’t know—or care to learn—how to please a woman,” he protests. “That’s not your fault.”
I study his face, feeling all the shame and doubt bubble up again, waiting for a hint of doubt in his expression.
Nothing. He’s serious and waiting for me to continue.
“The corpse comment hurt,” I admit. “I’d told him how kids made fun of me for growing up in the funeral home. So, he kind of knew that was a sore point and used it against me.” I let out a deep sigh. “That was it for me. I tugged the ring off my finger, left it on his kitchen counter, picked up my purse, and left.”
He blows out a relieved breath. “Good.”
“And I was afraid to get involved with anyone again until I ‘fixed’ myself.”
“There is nothing about you that needs fixing ,” he says with venom in his tone. “I want to strangle this fucker for hurting you that way.”
Jigsaw
Strangle is the polite way to put what I want to do to her ex. Mutilate. Dismember. Butcher. Those are all better words to describe what I want to do to him.
At the very least, cut out his tongue. A poetic punishment for his crime of using it to destroy Margot’s confidence. And it would have the added bonus of stopping him from hurting anyone else in the future. A gift to the world. One less asshole offering his worthless opinions to a woman he claims to care about.
“Jensen.” Margot’s low, scolding tone halts the violent storm brewing in my chest. “You’re looking murdery. Whatever you’re thinking—stop. He’s not worth it.”
“You’re worth everything .”
She tilts her head. “If I wanted him dead, I could’ve done it myself.”
Now why’d she immediately assume I jumped straight to murder? “I’m not plotting to kill him.”
She studies me for a few more seconds, but I keep my face blank and un-murdery. Or at least I try to.
“Words aren’t enough to take someone’s life.” She squints at me. “ Or permanently disfigure them.”
She knows me so well.
“Disagree. You spent, what? Three years doubting yourself because of this asshole? He deserves at least a few punches to the face, don’t you think?” I fucking hate that he ever had any piece of Margot’s heart—he’s not worthy to breathe her air, let alone touch her or hear her voice.
I take a breath and push back my need for vengeance. “Does your father know what a piece of shit Daniel is? They seemed kinda cozy earlier.”
She stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “No, Jensen. I didn’t tell my dad I broke up with Daniel because we had a terrible sex life and he called me a corpse.” She delivers each word with deadly precision. “We don’t have that kind of father-daughter relationship.”
“He should know the guy’s a piece of shit.”
“Daniel was always on his best behavior around my father—mostly because I think he wanted to manage my family business’s finances.”
I bet he did.
“Don’t you dare tell my father what I told you.”
“I’d never do that. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone. And I keep my word.”
“Then promise me you won’t seek Daniel out and try to murder him.”
“Ahhh, no. I won’t promise you that.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” I hold up one hand, pretending to be a man of reason. “Okay, I promise not to seek him out.”
She stares at me as if she’s planning to bargain for how much violence I can visit upon her ex. But it’s not really up for debate. The need to put my blade to his throat rages inside me.
“I mean it, Jensen.” Satan save me, she’s so damn cute when she’s trying to be stern. “It’s in the past. There’s no reason your paths should ever cross. So if something happens to him, I’ll know you went against my wishes, and I’ll be upset.”
“Soooo.” I tap my chin, pretending to work this all out in my head. “Does that mean if I run into him by chance, the universe is giving me the green light to fuck him up?”
“No.” She laughs and presses her hands against my chest, attempting to shove me. “Now that we’ve had this conversation, and you know everything, I want to forget I ever knew him at all.”
“As you should.”
“Well, if you kill him, then it will be all over the news and it will bring all those awful feelings back up. You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”
God damn, if that isn’t the best argument she could’ve made. No, I don’t ever want to cause her any pain.
How much news coverage would a guy like that get if he just vanished off the face of the planet?
“Besides.” She reaches up and runs her fingers through my hair, pulling me out of my plotting. Her touch is gentle but deliberate, like she’s trying to soothe all my evil thoughts away. “If the universe is trying to tell us anything, it’s that I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
She means with me .
The weight of all the cosmic events that had to take place to bring us together wallops me in the chest. Not that I’m sentimental, but I grew up on the other side of the country. A mortician and a biker? Our worlds shouldn’t have collided. Shit like that doesn’t happen unless the universe is trying to screw with someone. Maybe it’s me.
The only reason we’re even together is because she thought she needed someone to fix her. All I had to offer her was physical. She deserves so much more. And I want to be the one to give it to her.
Is it insane to think we can turn this into forever?
I’m so slow to respond, she snatches her hand away. “Well, you know what I mean.”
My mind’s spinning through all the reasons I’m selfish as fuck. Being with me will eventually drag her down. I stare at her and try not to let the thoughts spill out. That I want to be enough for her. That the world isn’t big enough to hold the things I feel for her.
“The universe is smarter than I give it credit for,” I finally say.
She laughs again; this time it’s lighter. I want to keep that sound.
But the dark part of me—the part that knows what I am, what I’ve done, what I want to do—starts pulling me under. I’m not right for her. Not long-term. Not even close. Her moral compass might skew in a different direction than the rest of society, but it’s for the right reasons. Mine was shattered years ago. I’d kill for her. I’d maim. I’d destroy the world if it meant keeping her safe.
Her hands twist together in her lap. “You okay?”
I swallow hard and force myself to meet her concerned gaze. “More than okay. As long as I’m with you.”
If only she understood how not okay I am.
I’d kill a man just because he hurt her feelings.
Is that love or madness?