Chapter Sixteen
No.
Amber
I hate Liam. I hate him. I hate him so much, I’m liable to slip on the slush and fall to my death outside his fancy business building while I’m rushing, because I’m late to work, because he turned off my alarm. I didn’t even have time to make myself a coffee this morning!
I need to have a word with Apple concerning the ability to access alarms without password protection. I need to get up to our floor, march into Liam’s office, and wrap my hands around his throat . I need to—
Something both vaguely wet and vaguely dry all at once hits me in the face as I step into…what was, just yesterday, the lobby.
Now, silly string in roughly forty shades of pink, red, and white coat every inch of the place. Streams of the stuff hang off that foul megalodon painting while grown men and women chase each other, laughing like children.
All the emotions I thought I’d shoved directly into my book last night bubble up my throat, threatening to make me vomit.
I’m the one who needs to get my act together?
I’m the one who needs to meet quotas ?
Rage blinds me, and I sling the stuff off my face before I turn on my heel, stomping through the slush back to my car. I dial Liam. I hate phone calls.
Liam picks up immediately. “Bam—”
“I quit .”
“—bi…”
“I quit !” I shriek. “I quit . And I hate you, and I want divorce papers, and I don’t care .” By the time I’m shoving my key in the ignition of my Accord, tears are pouring down my cheeks. “I never want to see you again. I’m done !” My voice breaks. “I’m…done.”
Hanging up, I silence my phone and chuck it in the backseat, then I drive, all the way to the only person who has ever felt like home.
? ? ?
“Sometimes,” Limoncella murmurs into the darkness broken only by the glow-in-the-dark constellations she has painted all over the ceiling of her bookstore, where we’ve tucked ourselves in for the night in a mound of pillows and blankets, “people hurt us when they don’t mean to.”
Obscured in the scent of books, hidden away where no one will ever find us, my sister and I lie opposite each other, our heads on one another’s shoulders.
I clench my fist against my stomach. “It doesn’t matter if he meant to, Limon.”
“I know.” She lifts her face, pressing her bare lips to my temple as she cradles the bonnet I’m borrowing against her hand, stroking the black silk that matches the one she’s wearing with her thumb. “Right or wrong, he’s hurt your pride.”
“He insulted years of effort. Years of work. He basically said I can’t do anything by myself. And…and I know that I don’t know what I’m doing, but he can’t just sweep in so suddenly and pretend that he does.”
Limoncella hums. “Amber, when you two came over for dinner, he asked me if I was going to save the rib bones from my meal for decoration. He looked me square in the eye and stated that it would be on brand of me. He called my decor chilling and devoid of joy in the same breath he used to apologize for invading unannounced, then—when he shook my hand as you two were leaving—he assured me that once his plans of world domination came to fruition, he’d remember me.”
My eyes close.
“Can we admit that Liam is odd as—” she swears.
Releasing a taut breath, I say, “…yes.”
“Can we consider that odd as—” she swears again, “—people show love in unclear ways?”
That.
That makes me bristle. “Why would Liam be showing me love ?”
“He married you, didn’t he?”
“Did you miss the whole part where I explained that our marriage was foretold on a Taco Bell napkin and only remains upheld so long as he bribes me with cash? He thinks of me like I’m a collector’s doll.”
“See point A,” she replies.
Right. Weird as frick. But. There has to be a limit, right?
My hand snakes up to my neck, where the memory of his kiss still burns whenever I let it grace my thoughts. “There’s no way Liam knows what love is.”
“What do you think love is?” she asks, soothing voice mystic and haunting.
I swallow, wet my lips, go back to tracing the constellations and galaxies gleaming on the ceiling with my eyes. “How am I supposed to know what love is?”
She scoffs. “Because, stupid, I’m lying right here.”
Moisture fills my eyes at that. I do my best to blink it down. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Deflection is natural. Take your time. I’ve got all night.”
I wonder if I can fall asleep before I have to answer… Probably only if I want Limoncella to shake me awake. She’s determined like that. “I guess…” I mumble, “…love is kind.” I fill my lungs with air. “And Liam is not kind to me. He’s manipulative, and self-seeking, and evil .”
“I like Liam.”
Ew. “Great. You can have him.”
“I like him for you.”
Double ew . “ Why? ” I snap. “Because he’s got money ?”
“No. Because after we ate, we were chatting in the kitchen for a minute after cleaning up, and you asked if I had any water in my fridge, while you had already shoved your head in my fridge.”
“Um.” My brow furrows. “Okay?”
“Liam was standing beside you. And, without pausing whatever we were talking about, he blocked the corner of my freezer with his hand so you wouldn’t bump your head when you straightened. It’s like breathing to him, the way he’s honed in on you. It’s actually a little disgusting.”
“You have got to be kidding. That can’t be the basis of your opinion.”
“And, yet, it is. The 401k is nice, sure, but if everything he has blew up tomorrow, I’m pretty sure he’d prioritize taking care of you over breathing. It took one dinner for me to know two things about Liam. One, he is weird , and, two, he really loves my little sister.”
My nails bite into my neck. Sometimes, Bambi, you are not entirely cute . My chest hurts. “Please stop being insane.”
She sighs. “Fine. I’m trying to skeez you into making up with your super rich husband. Don’t blame me. I’m only human, and I really want that yacht.”
“Despicable.”
“You’ll forgive me, someday. Maybe even while aboard my yacht.”
I will, actually, hold a grudge forever.
Tilting my head against hers so our bonnets kiss, I puff a breath and sniffle. “I shouldn’t have yelled at him.”
“Maybe not. It’s definitely frustrating, but if there’s a chance that he means well, maybe he just doesn’t understand the way it’s affecting you.”
“I don’t want to explain it to him. I don’t know what he’d do with my vulnerability. He’s sadistic sometimes. He plays cruel games. He likes affecting me, and this affects me more than anything else. I don’t want to give him anything to use against me.”
“Like our parents would.”
My stomach dips. “What?”
“You know how Mom and Dad are. They keep a catalog of sins and use them against each other, us, whoever. Did not set us up for success, those two.”
Tell me about it.
Limoncella murmurs, “See what Liam does if you give him some vulnerability with intent. If he uses it to serve himself, we’ll figure out how to cash his life insurance. If he blocks the corner of your feelings so you don’t bump your head on them while you’re trying to regain your footing, though? I dunno, sis. I think that means something. Don’t you?”
I think she’s asking for a lot of bravery from me. I think I’d rather stay here forever, in a cushion of bookish scents and painted stars.
The front door rattles.
My stomach lurches.
Limoncella shoots upright as the door rattles again, then someone bangs on the glass. She stomps before I can stop her from meeting a criminal in her underwear. My own state of undress—which includes a t-shirt of Limoncella’s that I am swimming in and a pair of black underwear—becomes strikingly apparent once I stand and the blankets fall into a heap at my feet. The only weapon in reach is a high fantasy hardback. Should I grab a stack and start chucking them at the intruder? Do I dart upstairs for a kitchen knife?
Paralyzed, I manage neither before, “ Where is she? ” grumbles through the empty bookstore, rattling the shelves. “ Where is my wife ? ”
My heart jolts, and I can’t so much as grab a hardback to defend myself before Liam’s turning the corner into our blanket fort and stopping short on the edge of the disarray.
His eyes, in the dimness, swallow nebulas.
They slide across me. Slow. Steady. Hypnotized.
The fury in his stance does not abate.
Breathless, I whisper, “How did you find me?”
He bends, grabs a blanket, and shakes it out. “I shared your phone location with me when you weren’t looking days ago.”
“You… what ?” Apple and I are really going to need to have a conversation if he could do that without unlocking my phone. “How did you get in?”
“Your password is what it’s always been.” He stretches the blanket, stalks forward a step. “Eights. You like eights.”
Eights have betrayed me.
I swallow hard, inching backward. “What are you do—”
He catches me, wraps me like a fly in a spider’s web, and scoops me up off my feet, unable to move.
I struggle like a useless worm until a thread of street light streaks all the way back here to catch in his livid eyes. Then. Then, I freeze . Desperate, I look to Limoncella for help.
She is yawning, hip cocked against the YA section. She does not care.
“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?” Liam hisses. “I can’t do anything if you won’t talk to me. It’s one in the morning, Amber. One in the morning. You are not quitting. We are not getting a divorce. And I don’t care if you’re done because I’m not. I will never be done with you, Amber. Do you understand me?” His breath skates across my cheek. “ Never. ”
My throat closes. I struggle for air, for words. “You…you can’t do this.”
“I bought you for a year. So I not only can do this, I have every right to. You belong to me until our agreement is up.”
My gaze trails toward my sister again, begging her to hear the red flag, the dark romance energy pouring off him in tides. She is examining her nails, unconcerned, and I remember.
She’s a dark romance reader.
Why would she help?
I’m living the dream.
The dream swiftly devolves into a nightmare when Liam turns, bids my useless sister goodnight, and takes me outside to strap me into his car. The entire drive passes in a blur of heartbeats and street lights. Painful, agonizing silence buzzes in my ears.
Once he parks and opens my door, I hedge a fragile, “Liam…”
His eyes catch mine as he undoes my belt. Dark as the depths of the sea, he says, “What?”
Tears well.
He lifts a thumb to my cheek and swipes it beneath my eye. Pulling my blanket-wrapped body back into his arms, he kicks his car door shut then fumbles awkwardly, cussing at his keys as he gets the front door open without setting me down.
Once inside, he still doesn’t set me down.
Not until I’m surrounded by a horror story of stuffed animals and pastel pinks.
Not until he’s dropped me…in his bed.