The Amendment (Arrangement #2)

Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

AINSLEY

H e was lying, again, but I didn’t know why.

All I knew was that there was still something keeping us apart. I loved my husband, but how much longer could we go on like this?

How much longer could we pretend things were okay?

As I slid back into bed, my body radiated with anger, but I couldn’t allow it to consume me. Something had to change, and I’d be the one to change it.

I rolled over to face him, running my hand across his chest. He looked shocked, then pleased, the redness fading from his cheeks.

“Do you miss it?” I asked, working to keep my expression unchanged.

His eyes narrowed. “Miss what?”

I glanced down, then back up. “ It. ”

“It?” He was playing dumb, but I was game.

“What you did in that room.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed, his face blanching. I felt his heart begin to race under my palm .

“No,” he said after a moment’s pause. “Of course I don’t. Why would you ask me that?”

“You told me it was an addiction. After you found my note. The night it all came out. You said it was like an addiction… Now you’ve given it up cold turkey. You must miss it.”

He looked away from me, pulling the cover up over his chest farther. “Why are we even talking about this?”

“Because we can.”

“Well, we shouldn’t.”

“Says who?” I challenged.

“Says me, Ainsley. What the hell are you trying to do? Start a fight?”

“ No ,” I said gently. “I’m not trying to start a fight or trick you. Of course I’m not. I just want to understand it— you —better.”

He snorted. “I think you understand me well enough.”

He had a point. “But not that part of you. Not the you who exists in that room.”

“You don’t want to know that version of me.” He still wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I gripped his chin, turning his face to look at me. “Peter, please…”

He resisted my pull, but eventually gave in. His face was red again, not from lying, but from pure shame. “What?” I heard the exasperation in his voice. “What do you want from me, Ainsley? You know what I’ve done. I haven’t done anything, haven’t hurt anyone since that night. Since Illiana. What do you want me to say?”

I sat up, leaning against the headboard. “I want you to tell me about it. ”

“What about it?”

“Everything. What does it feel like? Who are you in that room? I want you to tell me everything.”

“Why?” He winced, shaking his head. “Why would you want that? I’m a monster, remember?”

“You’re not a monster,” I argued, feeling embarrassed by my lashing out that night. “I shouldn’t have said that. I was angry.”

“You were right to call me that. It’s…accurate.”

“It can’t be. I know you, Peter.” I didn’t believe it. Maybe some small part of him had monsterlike qualities, but more important than that, there was a man I loved sitting in front of me. A broken man. A man I could fix if I could just understand where the break was.

“You know a version of me. You don’t know what it’s like in there. What I’m like.”

“So tell me.” I just needed to get him talking. If I could get him to open up, I was sure we’d be able to get to the root of it all. What made him tick? What brought out the monster?

“I can’t,” he said, his voice cracking. He hated himself, and I couldn’t blame him, but he needed me to make this right. Somehow, I had to believe I could.

I gripped his arm, pleading with him. “Peter, we can’t be in this together if you won’t tell me the truth about everything. This is what’s driving us apart. This is what’s always driven us apart, even before I knew what it was. You keep this wall up between us in order to protect me from the truth, but I’ve known the truth for years and I’m still here. Can’t you understand that? ”

He was silent for a moment, then pulled the covers off his legs and sat up, his back to me.

“What are you do—”

“No,” he cut me off.

“Wha—”

“No. I can’t understand that.”

“Peter—”

He scowled, looking over his shoulder at me for a second. He was staring at me as if I disgusted him. “You’re perfect, okay? You’re perfect and put together, and you never lose control of yourself, you never break down. You never lose your cool. I’m not like you.”

“That… That’s not entirely true. And, even if it was, I never expected you to be like me.” I liked knowing that was how he saw me, despite it being untrue. “I want you to be like you.”

“But you can’t understand it. Even if I tell you what it’s like, unless you’ve lived it, you can’t understand what it’s like. You’ll just think I’m crazy. You’ll realize it’s been a mistake to stay with me. It’s better to keep you in the dark. To keep you on that side of the wall.”

I slid across the bed toward him, placing a hand on his back, but he shied away. “Is that what you think?”

“It’s what I know.”

I moved to sit next to him, pulling his chin and giving him no choice but to look at me. “Peter, you’re wrong. I may seem put together, but it’s only because that’s what’s always been expected of me. I never had any choice but to keep pretending like I’m perfect. Like everything’s perfect. My mother put me in a fat camp at age seven. I was seven years old, I barely had any understanding of body image, but already I was told that I wasn’t good enough. Normal enough. From there, it was a constant state of worry. She was always fussing over my hair, highlighting it and straightening the slightest frizz. I never felt perfect—not then and not now.”

I shook my head. When he didn’t reply, I went on. “And the way I coped—bingeing and purging with food, running through my neighborhood every single day until my feet bled and I’d burned off every calorie I’d consumed, pretending to be perfect, pretending I enjoyed it—it wasn’t healthy. I’ve tried my hardest to be the opposite of who my mother is. I don’t talk to the kids about their bodies or their appearances. For a long time, I thought the only person I’ve tried to control was myself. But then, after the Stefan thing, I started to see patterns. I realized then, the things I thought I was fixing, the ways I tried to keep things perfect—that was me controlling you, all without ever even realizing it. I thought I was being kind by keeping things in order. It was my way of showing you I loved you. Showing the kids that I loved them. But it wasn’t any better than what my mom did. Not really.” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“Oh, Ains, that’s not true—”

“It is. The truth is, I always thought I would do better than she had. But I haven’t.” My body revolted against the confession, my skin cold, mouth dry. I’d never allowed myself to admit my darkest fear until that moment.

“You’re not your mother.” He seemed shocked, his jaw slack. His eyes showed a seriousness that warmed the pit of my stomach. “And you’re not controlling. You’ve done what you had to do. It’s because of you that we have such good kids. They’re kind, they get good grades, they never get into real trouble. Trust me, they didn’t get any of that from me.”

“You have a dark side to you, I won’t deny that. But you are kind. Do you remember…when Dylan was first learning to walk, and you went out and bought all of those padded corner guards and Styrofoam? You had the house coated in them. All to protect him.”

“Of course I did. I love our kids.”

“You always have. And what about the Christmas gifts you buy for the people at work? Or the way you always stop when we notice someone broken down on the side of the road. There are so many different versions of who you are…” I rubbed my hand across his arm, and this time, he didn’t pull away. “And I love each and every one.”

His guard had come down, if only by a tiny bit. “I want to be better for you. For the kids. I swear to you I’ve tried. It’s just…sometimes I lose control. I’ve…it’s like…” He held his hands out, palms up, fingers bent like claws as if he were trying to grip the thought from thin air. Finally, he cut himself off, shaking his head.

“Tell me what it’s like,” I insisted. “Please tell me. I won’t judge you…or…or fear you. I just want to understand it the best I can.”

“How will you ever be able to understand it when I can’t even understand it?”

“Maybe I can help with that. And, if we can understand why you do it, maybe we can find a way to…” I didn’t want to say fix you, which was the phrase on the tip of my tongue. Though it was my nature to fix everything in our life, maybe the solution to this problem was just letting things happen as they would. To fight against my very nature, as painful as it was, just as I was asking Peter to fight against his. “To make things easier for you.”

“Easier how?” He seemed intrigued.

“I don’t know until you tell me what you know. What you do. Tell me everything and let me help you work through it all. No judgment. No fighting.”

He groaned, hanging his head. “You don’t know what you’re asking me.”

“I do. I know it’s a lot, but I need you to trust me.” He met my eyes warily. “Like I’m trusting you.”

He seemed to be contemplating, then huffed in a big breath as if preparing to head into battle. “Okay, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I won’t.”

He ran a palm over his face. “Well, you… I mean, you know the gist of it. I…I lose control. It can be the smallest thing that sets me off, and suddenly, I can’t stop it. I can’t help myself. The only thing that makes me feel better…that makes me feel like I have any control, any power—”

“So, it’s about power for you? Not attraction?”

I heard the scowl in his voice before it appeared on his face, as if it were the most ridiculous suggestion in the world. “Yes. God, yes, Ains. It’s never been about attraction. I only want to…to feel powerful.” He shook his head. “I sound ridiculous. I can’t explain it.”

“So it makes you feel powerful, then? Good? Does it make you feel…feel good? ”

He hesitated, his eyes dancing between mine as if contemplating denying it, but already I could see the light in his expression .

He was remembering.

He’d left me for the moment, stepped back into a piece of his life I wasn’t a part of.

I needed to bring him back. “You can be honest. I need you to be honest.”

“It’s the best feeling in the world.” He didn’t break eye contact with me, in a split second of pure vulnerability, and I knew the way I handled this would be the determining factor in where our conversation went. I needed him to trust me, above all else. I couldn’t focus on my own conflicting emotions; Peter was all that mattered.

“Okay. Tell me more…”

His expression changed again, the vulnerability washing away, his eyes burning dark. “It’s…it’s like… In that room, in that moment, I’m the whole world. I’m the whole world, Ains. I control everything. Whether they live. Whether they die. I’m the only one who gets to control any of it. In the beginning, they beg me to give them mercy, but by the end…they’re begging for death.” As if he hadn’t meant to say it, the dark desire in his eyes disappeared for half a second, gauging my reaction, but when I didn’t budge, it returned. “It’s the only thing that makes me feel like I have any control in this world, Ainsley. We go through so much of our lives being controlled by others—our jobs, the government, our parents—” He didn’t say our wives, but somehow I knew it was next on the list. My fingers tensed in my lap, though he didn’t seem to notice. He’d let me in, finally. I couldn’t ruin that. “And so much is uncontrollable anyway. Everything is uncontrollable, really. Except this. With this, I’m in complete control. It’s exhilarating. Like the only time I get to feel alive. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it.” He glanced down at the bedspread, seeming to realize where he was. His face clouded with uneasiness.

I needed to say something. Anything. “I know what you mean.”

His eyes bounced back up in shock. “What?”

“I may not know exactly how it feels, but I do understand what you’re saying. That night with Stefan, once I’d gotten over the terror of it all, it was invigorating. In the worst and best way.”

“But it’s different…actually doing the killing.”

“I may not have swung the bat, Peter, but I brought him here and practically handed it to you.”

He pressed his lips together but didn’t argue, though I could see he wanted to. I didn’t force the issue.

“Knowing you’d seen me for what I was that night, knowing you’d seen me cross that line, worrying you’d seen me enjoying it… It was the most terrified I’ve ever felt.”

I flinched as he said the words. “Do you…do you miss it?”

He was quiet for a second, then pushed himself off the bed and walked across the room, away from me. For a moment, I thought he was going to leave, but instead, he sat down at my vanity, staring at himself in the mirror.

“Peter?”

“I miss it every single day. I have to fight against it, actively stop myself from thinking about it… Every time I have a bad day at work, or we get into a fight, or my parents or brothers drive me crazy, literally all I want to do is find someone and kill them. Destroy them. It’s the only thing that brings me clarity.”

I was silent, letting what he’d said wash over me. For a long time, I’d known what my husband did. I’d known his darkness.

But knowing it and hearing it from him firsthand were two different things. As much as I’d told myself I could be okay with everything, I found myself conflicted. I was a woman, after all. I was raising a daughter. It was men like him that made life harder for us all. Terrifying for us all. But that didn’t stop me from loving him. It didn’t make me want him less. I just had to find a way to prove that to him.

“Well?” he asked when I didn’t immediately respond.

My eyes flicked up to meet his in the mirror. “You were right. You are a monster.” His shoulders fell, and I stood up from the bed, moving toward him. I crossed the room, reaching him at the vanity and touching his shoulder gently.

When he turned to look at me, I wanted to wash the shame from his broken expression. I wanted him to see how much I still loved him. That our love was all that mattered.

“But you’re my monster. And as long as you’re completely honest with me, I’m not going anywhere.”