11. Wyatt
11
WYATT
“What are you doing?” a dark voice says from behind me.
I don’t bother to lift my head as I cover the bulb with dirt. I know who it is. “Baking a cake. What does it look like?”
Shiny wingtips appear in my peripheral vision and I make sure to flick dirt on them. Petty, I know, but still. I can’t help it.
If he notices the mess, he doesn’t comment on it. “If that’s a cake, I think we’ll stick to what Jules bakes.”
Sitting back on my heels, I glare up at Matthias. He’s framed against the sun, harsh shadows thrown across his arrogant face. I hate that even now he looks good, a little wet from the storm that moved through here, his suit jacket clinging to his wide shoulders. While I sit here, dirt-streaked and sweating. “Then why ask if you know the answer?”
He shrugs. “Maybe I just like to hear your voice. You’ve been ignoring me.”
I turn back to the dirt, biting back my smile. Six nights of sleeping naked in his bed, encroaching on his personal space, and generally trying to provoke him during the day had gotten me nowhere. I felt small and deflated, my ego almost nonexistent.
So, last night, I’d taken a new approach. One where I simply pretended he didn’t exist. He was nothing. Just the air being swept through the trees outside.
Less than twenty-four hours later, here he was, showing his cards. Men like him never like to be ignored. “I didn’t realize pretending to be your husband meant having to pay attention to you.”
“You aren’t pretending to be my husband, you are my husband.”
I glower up at him. “That’s not what I signed up for and you know it.”
“Really?” He arches a brow, hands deep in his suit pants pockets. “Because I’ve got a piece of paper in my office that proves otherwise. I made sure they printed it too. So we could see it.”
He wants me to bite. I can see it in the gleam of his eye. He almost gets me too, but at the last second, I pull back. I roll my eyes and shrug. “Call it what you want, we both know what this is at the end of the day.”
He smirks as though he knows something I don’t. “Indeed. Anyway, why are you out here grubbing around in the dirt? We have someone for that, you know?”
“Yeah, I know, and it’s called gardening,” I say flatly, gathering my tools. Thanks to the money in my account and online shopping, I’ve built up quite the collection. And it helps that Corbin set the seeds and bulbs out the other day, delivering on his promise. He and Jules are in competition for my favorite person in this mausoleum. Matthias isn’t even in the race as far as I’m concerned. “It’s something people do when they don’t mind getting their hands dirty.”
I stand up, not realizing how close it puts me to Matthias. I’m practically on top of him, our breath mingling in the frigid air. “I’m quite fond of getting my hands dirty.”
There’s no missing the innuendo in his words. I still don’t bite. I refuse to let him get the upper hand in this fucked up game we are playing. “I couldn’t care less what you do with your hands.”
I can almost hear them crack as he continues to stand there, staring at me.
“Is that so?” he asks, his eyes glinting.
I step even closer to him, my hands fisting at my sides. “I. Don’t. Care, Matthias. We aren’t in public right now, so leave me alone. Corbin’s given me plenty to handle and he’s much better company than you.”
Matthias’s jaw clicks, and I see it. The jealousy. It’s barely noticeable, but I fucking see it.
“Do I need to remind you about the fidelity clause in the contract?”
Yep. He is jealous. “Do I need to remind you that I’m straight?”
Matthias smirks, his eyes dropping to my mouth. I remember suddenly how close we are, once again. It would take nothing to bring our lips together. A stiff breeze could do it. “Are you really? For a straight guy, you sure like getting up in my space.”
“Yes,” I hiss, flushing as I step back. Raking a hand through my hair, I try to assess what it is about Matthias that’s making me feel this way. “It’s my anger toward you. That’s what’s getting me all fucking heated up. Nothing more.”
He takes a step, erasing the one I took. His hands are still in his pockets, only the flashing in his eyes giving away his ire. “Why are you angry at me, Wy?”
“Why do you think?” I laugh bitterly. “I’ve hated you for so fucking long, and now I’m stuck with you.”
“Because of a request you made,” Matthias’s voice drops low. “Don’t forget that. Your actions put you here. You went into that graveyard knowing fully well there would be consequences.”
“I didn’t know I’d be married to you .”
His hands come out of his pockets, but he doesn’t touch me. “Is it really that bad?”
“Of course it is!” My words come out as a shout. “You’ve taken over my whole life, Matthias. Everything has fucking changed, because of you.”
“You’re damned right it has,” his voice doesn’t rise to meet mine. If anything, it gets quieter, more threatening. “Before you were sleeping on a block with one of the highest crime statistics in the city. You had minimal heating. You weren’t eating, if the weight on you is anything to go by. Now you sleep in a safe location, in a warm bed. You have a cook at your disposal, and a gym, if you decide you want to use it.”
“That’s thanks to The Firm, not you.”
“No, it’s thanks to me, ” his eyes are blazing now. “The Firm took care of Jackson and filled your accounts. Everything that’s happened since is because you’re married to me.”
“I would’ve been fine without you.”
“Would you?” His brows rise questioningly. “Because I’ve watched you. The only thing you’ve done for yourself in the past decade was push yourself through law school. And even that wasn’t because you wanted it. No, what you wanted was a way to escape the world you grew up in.”
“That’s not true,” I whisper.
“Isn’t it?” He doesn’t back down, flinging truths at me that I wish I could ignore. “Tell me why you chose a high-rise apartment when you’ve always dreamed of a big yard where you can grow vegetables? Why did you give up your entire fucking life when Jackson got into his accident?”
“Because that’s what you do when you love someone,” I search his face, confused. “I don’t look at those things as bad, they were necessary to keep those I loved happy. Safe. Cared for.”
“Exactly!” The volume of the word stuns us both. We stare at each other with wide eyes, and I wish for a second that I knew what he was thinking, what was happening behind the walls he’d constructed since we were teenagers.
“Exactly,” he repeats, stepping backward and loosening his tie. He’s no longer looking at me, pretending to find my gardening interesting. “That’s how I know you wouldn’t have used that money to take care of yourself. You would’ve funneled it all into rebuilding Jackson’s life for him.”
I want to argue with him, but I can’t. “So? What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. But you deserve to be looked after too. If you won’t do it, then I’ll damned well do it for you.”
“But why?” I’m shaking now, but I’m not sure if it’s from anger. It’s no longer riding me as another long-forgotten emotion replaces it—confusion. “Why are you doing this? Hang on—did you ask for me to be your husband?”
“Of course not,” he rubs his hand over his eyes wearily. “But there’s no changing the fact that you are my husband now. And as such, I’m going to take care of you, whether you like it or not.”
I want to scream at him that I don’t need to be taken care of. That I was managing perfectly fine until he showed up. That I would’ve used the leftover money to get my feet back on the ground once I had Jackson’s life sorted.
Would you, though?
That’s what stops me from speaking. All of my plans had been centered around getting Jackson the rehab he needed, a place to live that could accommodate his needs, and tuition fees for his college courses.
I hadn’t made a single plan for myself. I didn’t need one. Jackson comes first. He’s all I need to worry about.
Or so I thought.
“I think it’s time you look closer at why you’re mad at me,” Matthias says quietly, his hands returning to his pockets. “Maybe it’s time we talked about that night. About what you think happened.”
Just like that, my rage flares once more. It patches over the walls that Matthias almost cracked through. “We don’t need to talk about it. I don’t think I know what happened, I know. I know you set me up, and you let me take the fall.”
Everything I’ve been holding back, the thing that hurt me the most, comes flooding out of me. “Then, I don’t see you again for over a decade. A fucking decade . We were best friends, and you vanished off the face of the planet. Do you have an explanation for that, huh?”
Matthias swallows, his throat clicking. “I do. Question is, are you finally ready to hear it?”
Blood is thundering in my ears. I can’t. I can’t do this right now. I’m too angry. Too upset. There’s nothing he can say that’ll change the past.
So why even bother?
He laughs bitterly. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
He spins on his heel, his long strides eating up the ground. He’s almost to the back door before he stops, speaking back over his shoulder. “We have a gala to attend tonight. You better practice looking at me with something other than hate in your eyes, husband. People need to buy this.”
“I know how to play my part.”
“Good,” he turns away from me. “Like you said, we played well together once.”