Say You Will (Trust & Tequila Book 3)

33. Franki

thirty-three

Dinner passes with only the occasional sound of cutlery clattering, ice clinking in our water glasses, and my “Thank you for cooking,” and his “You’re welcome.”

When he finishes his meal, he rises from the table. “I’ll take care of the kitchen when I come back inside. I’m going to deal with the firewood while we still have daylight.”

“I’ll wash the dishes.”

Henry barely nods in acknowledgment as he heads for the bedroom, then emerges minutes later wearing well-worn jeans, a pair of boots in his hand. At the back door, he stuffs his feet into the boots, tugging the laces into place and tying them with brisk efficiency.

When I turn back to the table, the door snicks closed behind me as Henry escapes the breath-stealing tension between us.

I wish I could do the same. I hate everything about the way we’re acting with each other, but I don’t know the answer to fix it either. Every tender moment we’ve shared is now something I feel the need to put under a microscope and examine to determine his motives.

I believe him about his cousin and that creates a layer of guilt for me, as if by refusing to marry him, I’m about to be personally responsible for thousands of people losing their jobs and homes. Ridiculous. He could find someone else in a day.

Someone who will marry him for his money, who doesn’t understand his humor. Someone who doesn’t appreciate his intelligence and quiet, bossy, interfering kindness. Or understand that his feelings can be hurt because he hides his pain by pretending he has no feelings at all.

My face crumples, and I scrape my palms across my eyes to wipe away my tears. There’s no mascara to make a mess because I’ve never scrambled to put on my mask with him. He doesn’t treat me any differently whether I’m in a silk gown or pink pajamas. Or if I’m having good days and able to get around on my own or driving around a grocery store on an electric scooter.

He manipulated me because he wanted to use me, and I promised myself I’d never be that person again. I practiced saying “no” over and over. I can’t give him what he wants.

I’ve earned every ounce of my self-respect. I dragged it back when bullies at school wanted me to feel like garbage for being different than they were. In elementary school, I sent Jonny those humiliating Father’s Day gifts in some twisted belief that if I loved him hard enough, he’d love me back. Then I stopped. And I clawed my way to a place where I could let go.

My mother, with all her tantrums and control issues. I’d tried to extricate myself from her so many times. I’d known within six months of going to live with her that I’d made a mistake, but she pulled me back every time I tried to leave, convincing me that I needed her. Until this last time, when I took my self-respect, wrapped it around me like a fucking cloak, and walked away.

It was one more attempt that neither of us was convinced would stick, but I’m not the same person I was.

“I gave you a ladder, not a cage.”

He did. Not just that Henry gave me a job, but that he put me in positions where I could prove to myself that I was capable of handling things on my own. I have lots of useful skills. I’m educated and intelligent, and the voice I heard telling me I couldn’t survive was never mine. It was my mother’s.

Fear kept me from cutting those last ties with my parents. I thought I couldn’t do it unless I had a safety net. If I had Henry, I wouldn’t be alone.

What I did with my parents was every bit as half-assed as what I’m doing now when I sit here and debate whether letting Henry use me is something I can live with if only he keeps looking at me like I matter.

I rise from the table, walk to the bedroom, and open the closet door. My personal phone sits there on the shelf, a silent accusation of my cowardice. “You thought you could hide me in a closet and pretend?”

It’s been in here since the first day. I’ve used Henry’s iPad and the work phone he provided me to talk to my friends while I left my personal phone powered off and stuck on a shelf in the closet. Never once did he pressure me to do anything else.

I was playing a game with myself. As if pretending mine didn’t exist would mean that I didn’t have to deal with any of it. I could stay here on the mountain, exactly the way ten-year-old me imagined. All the adventure, but none of the suffering or work. I could hide from my life and not have to deal with it or make a choice.

I power the phone on. The moment I do, the screen fills with notification after notification from both of my parents. A pop-up warns me I have less than 5 percent battery life, and I carry it to the charger on my nightstand, plugging it in and sitting on the edge of the bed. I dismiss and delete every notification, every voicemail and text from my parents without bothering to read or listen to them. I block my father’s number. Then I call Guinevere Jones.

She picks up on the first ring. “Oh my God, Franki. Are you okay?”

“I’m great.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I’m worried sick about you,” she cries.

“I’m not yours to worry about anymore.”

Shocked silence descends before she regroups. “You can’t tell a mother to stop worrying about her own child. I don’t know what that man is telling you, but you’re not safe there. You can’t trust a man who tries to keep you away from your own family.”

“Mom, I’m giving you the courtesy of a phone call to tell you this because I know if I didn’t, you’d find some way to convince yourself that any text or email I sent didn’t come from me. This is me telling you that our relationship is over. You’re not good for me. I’m better, stronger, and so much happier without you in my life.”

She gasps. “He’s brainwashed you. You need help.”

“When you took me to live with you in the UK, it was because I made the critical error of telling you I was happy.”

“It was Christmas. I was there for the holiday to see you. I didn’t want to tell you this. I knew it would hurt you, but . . . I ran into Henry on that trip. He came on to me. I told him I wasn’t interested because you were in love with him, and he laughed at you. He was cruel. I knew I had to take you with me, then. I had to get you away from him before he broke your heart.”

I breathe in deeply. I’m not even angry at her. I’m tired. “Do you know when you’re lying? Or do you convince yourself your made-up version of events is the truth?”

“It is the truth. Don’t punish me because you don’t like to hear it,” she screams.

“I’m not punishing you. I’m done. I don’t want to hear from you again. I won’t take your calls. I hope you find something that satisfies you and makes you happy. Goodbye.”

I hang up and block her number. Maybe I’m numb. Maybe the confrontation first with Penelope Stanton, then my father, paved the way. Maybe I waited so long to do this and hashed it out in my mind so many times that when I finally did it, it was anticlimactic.

Maybe my heart is so broken by Henry’s betrayal that I don’t have room to feel devastation over my mother. Instead, I feel nothing but relief.

A steady thunk . . . thunk . . . thunk starts up behind the cabin. I walk back to the kitchen to clear the table and clean up our dinner. Somehow, Henry found my favorite chicken piccata recipe, or at least a very close version of it. A glance at his plate reveals he picked off every caper from his own chicken. The man made me something he hates, just to please me.

No. To manipulate me. How could I forget it so quickly?

There aren’t many dishes to wash, but I have a feeling it’s going to take me a long time to clean up a couple plates and a few pots and pans. Because above the sink, a window offers a hint of Henry hard at work at the corner edge of the yard.

I resist the urge to get a better look for all of five seconds, but the steady sound of metal splitting wood has me more curious than I can stand. Before I even decide to do it, I’ve moved into the small utility room off the kitchen. Cautiously, I crack open the back door. Please don’t let him catch me watching him.

Henry tosses two pieces of wood onto an already chest-high stack, then resumes his wood splitting, going at the logs like they’ve personally attacked him.

Henry ignored his jacket when he left, but his skin glistens with sweat, regardless of the forty-degree temperature. Bits of bark cling to his black T-shirt, neck, and arms as he swings.

I know nothing about splitting wood, but he must, because every strike is practiced and efficient. His biceps and forearms flex with corded muscle, and the early evening sun brings out auburn highlights in his hair. Under his shirt, Henry’s pecs twitch with every swing. A familiar grunt of exertion leaves him as the axe makes contact, and heat pools in my pelvis. The last time I heard him make that sound was this afternoon when he was inside my body.

He sets his axe aside, tears the remainder of the log into two pieces with his bare hands, and tosses them onto his growing pile of firewood. When the wood has left his hands, Henry takes off his glasses and drags the hem of his shirt up to wipe the sweat off his face revealing the ridges of his toned abdomen and the defined V of an Adonis belt.

Then, breathing heavily, he sits on the huge log he’d been using to brace the wood and drops his head to his hands. He stays like that for long moments, staring at nothing. Finally, he stands, returning his glasses to his face and glancing toward the cabin.

His gaze catches on mine through the crack in the door, his eyebrows lifting in surprise.

I close the door with a snap and lean against it, my heart thundering in my chest.

The sound of metal tearing through wood begins again.