Chapter 5 Makenna
FIVE
MAKENNA
He pulls together something edible, which is a miracle considering the junk he’s working with.
Just like he always used to.
His shoulders are tight as he dishes up the food, coiled tight. He’s holding on by a tangled thread and I’m the one tugging on it.
My instinct is to do what I always do. Soothe him, but I don’t know how to touch him without losing myself.
He sets a bowl in front of me, the smell warm and comforting.
Just one.
Nothing for him. He’s falling into old ways and I’m not sure if he’s doing it intentionally or if he’s slipping into the role he used to play before life got complicated.
It’s some kind of pasta and sauce, but the smell of it churns my stomach. Everything makes me queasy lately.
I don’t move to pick up the fork. I can’t eat right now, even though he went to the trouble to make it. He eventually grabs it and offers it to me. “Eat, firefly.”
I remember the first time he called me that, the way it made butterflies flutter in my belly. Now it feels wrong, like it doesn’t belong to me.
“You’re the light that always guides me home,” he’d said. “My little firefly.”
Back then, I felt like I was the only thing tethering him to the world. A tiny beacon of hope in the night to find him when he was lost.
I don’t know when I stopped being that for him.
“I told you I’m not hungry.”
His throat bobs like he’s swallowing down the frustration he wants to unleash. It wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone else, but I see everything about him. “I didn’t ask if you were hungry. I asked you to eat.”
I raise a brow at him. “And I’m just supposed to do what you tell me to?”
The words are sullen and make me sound like I’m sixteen again. I don’t care. My emotions are wrung out and I’m past being polite.
A tendon twitches in his neck and his fingers curl around the fork like he’s about to snap it. “When was the last time you put food in your belly? And I don’t mean shitty snacks you grabbed from a petrol station. I mean actual food, Makenna.”
When I was home…
I don’t say it. He’ll lose his mind if I do and he’s already teetering on the edge of sanity.
I snatch the fork from him. “I don’t need you to manage my eating habits.”
His shoulders loosen as I stab a piece of pasta, but don’t lift it to my mouth, not yet. I feel like I’m under a microscope.
“Are you going to watch every mouthful?”
“Yes.”
At least he’s honest. “Fine.” I lift it to my mouth and chew. My belly grumbles as I swallow, the warmth of it filling my belly. I didn’t realise I’d missed this. Food. Him. Us.
I eat a few more bites then rest the fork against the edge of the bowl. His eyes narrow and his lips press into a tight line as he surveys how little I’ve eaten.
“Makenna.”
I slide it toward him purposefully. “It’s your turn.”
It’s a small gesture, but it lands like I handed him the world. This is how we used to survive. Sharing food. Taking care of each other. He’d feed me first, always, and then I’d make him eat. He’d usually lie and say he already had, but I knew better even back then.
The way his brows come together, that little dip between them deepening before picks up the fork and eats.
His eyes don’t leave mine as he chews methodically, just like everything he does. “It’s not bad,” he says.
“We’ve definitely eaten worse.”
He eats two more forkfuls before he offers me it back. “You eat the rest.”
“I ate enough.”
“You didn’t. A woman of your height and weight needs at least eighteen hundred calories a day to survive. Three forkfuls of questionable pasta isn’t enough to keep a toddler alive.”
I lean back in the chair. I don’t care about the food. “What’s the plan here, Zane? We can’t stay in this place forever.”
His fingers drum on the table just once then he stills completely. “The plan is you come home with me and we sort this out.”
“I can’t do that.”
I hate to say it. It makes it seem like I don’t want to fix this between us and I do, but I need to breathe first, find my strength before I confront this.
His nostril flare just once. “Why not?”
“Because… because I need space to think, to breathe. I ran because I couldn’t do that at home.”
I wish I could take those words back. Hurt ripples across his face before he shuts it down, his impassive mask hiding the truth.
“You needed to escape me?”
I fiddle with the sleeve of my sweater, unable to look at him. I don’t want to see how much I’m hurting him. “You didn’t leave me much choice.”
He doesn’t speak, and not because he’s furious or upset. He’s processing what I said.
I wait a beat, and then another. Then he hands me the fork.
“Please eat more.”
I stare at it. It feels like a bridge between us and if I don’t take it there will be no way back for us.
I take it from him, the metal heavy in my hand.
“You never need to escape me, Makenna,” he says quietly, rasping like the words are strangled in heartbreak.
“Right, because you would have let me go if I’d asked?
” He doesn’t answer, which is the answer.
“I’m not trying to hurt you, Zane. I just can’t keep living like this.
You disappear for weeks at a time, then turn up in the middle of the night like a ghost. We have sex, you hold me like I’m the most precious thing you’ve ever touched, and then I wake alone.
” My chest aches and I swallow back my tears.
“I’m worth more than just being a warm bed for you. ”
His stare drops to my hands before he looks away. “You’re worth everything, but I don’t know how to make you believe that.”
That guts me. It’s a physical pain that spreads through my chest.
“Words are cheap. You say these things, but you don’t show them.
” A tear rolls down my cheek and his jaw ticks as he follows it path.
“You keep me around because I’m familiar, because it’s better than being alone, but I need more than that.
I need a husband who is present, who isn’t hiding me away like a dirty secret.
” I stand slowly, every bone in my body feeling like lead.
“It’s late and I’m exhausted. I’ll stay tonight. ”
I don’t say only tonight. I don’t need to. The unspoken words hang between us like a noose, only I’m not sure whose neck it’s around—his or mine.
He straightens the bowl and the fork. Then does it again as if it wasn’t right. He’s not going to let me leave tomorrow either, and we both know it, but for now he gives me the illusion of control.
I don’t breathe properly until I leave the kitchen. The air is thinner in the living room, easier to draw into my lungs. I sink onto the couch, grabbing the blanket I was using before and settling it around me. Maybe if I can sleep for a few hours things will feel—
“What are you doing?” His voice is like steel, and I snap my head around instinctively.
He’s standing in the doorway, his shoulders twitching like he’s resisting the urge to move toward me.
“Sleeping.”
“Not on that fucking couch.”
I lie down, ignoring him and tuck my feet up under the blanket. It smells a little musty and I don’t like the way it feels scratchy, but I’m not climbing into bed next to him as if nothing has changed.
“You’re not a fucking stray and there’s a perfectly good bed upstairs.”
I sit back up. “This isn’t couples therapy, Zane. I gave you divorce papers. I left. I’m not crawling in behind you like nothing has changed.
I can’t open myself to him like that right now. I don’t have the strength to keep up my defences if I do. “You get in the bed or I’ll put you in it.”
I surge to my feet, tired and irritated. “You’re a dick when you’re being bossy.”
My feet pound on the stairs as I rush up them, my jaw locked so tight my teeth are grinding together. I can hear him behind me on the stairs, but I don’t look back.
There are two bedrooms, one with a narrow single bed and the strip of carpet between it and the wall. The room next to it has a double bed. No way am I sleeping in that.
I move toward the smaller room, but he takes my wrist. “No.”
All the fight drains out of me. I just want to sleep. “Fine.” I change direction. “You can fold your giant body into the single bed.”
I move around the bed to the side I usually sleep on. It’s one of those old-style wrought iron things that looks like it crawled out of a period drama. I don’t care if it’s a blanket on the floor. I’m done.
I sink onto the mattress and toe off my trainers. My eyes feel gritty, my head foggy.
“Shut the door on your way out,” I say when he doesn’t leave.
I hear his footsteps, but they’re not retreating. They’re coming closer.
I look over my shoulder, but he’s in front of me before I can move, looming over me like a tattooed guardian. He exhales through his nose, like he’s trying to calm the roaring in his brain.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
He’s sorry? I open my mouth to say… something, but his hand flashes out and there’s the kiss of metal around my wrist before he tugs it over my head.
My mind is so frazzled it takes me a second to realise he’s handcuffed me to the bedframe. I stare at, blink, and wait for it to disappear.
It doesn’t.
He’s not sorry he upset me. He’s sorry he’s cuffed me to the fucking bed. I laugh. I can’t stop it. It bubbles out of me quiet and hollow. “Are you out of your mind?” I tug against the restraint, but it doesn’t budge. “Unlock me right now.”
He walks around the end of the bed, forcing me to twist awkwardly so I can face him. The position digs the metal into my skin.
“No.”
I lick my bottom lip, slow and deliberate, trying to hold back the words I could use to raze him to ashes. You still love him…
I do, even if I want to throttle him.
“Zane Cooper, I’m going to smother you in your sleep if you don’t remove this fucking thing right now.” I jerk the cuff, which rattles against the bedframe in protest.
He ignores my outburst, sinking down on the opposite side of the bed, his back to me. “I need rest, and I can’t do that if I’m worried you’re going to disappear again.”
I close my eyes and count back from ten. Of course this makes sense in his head. It’s logical. I’m a flight risk. It’s also insane.
My tone is clipped when I speak. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Go to sleep, Makenna.”
Go to… sleep?
Oh. I’m going to strangle him. I’m going to wrap this cuff around his neck. “How am I meant to do that when I’m chained up like an animal?”
He bends to unlace his boots, as if this is just a normal night at home and we’re getting ready for bed. “The last time I gave you space you left me with nothing but empty drawers and divorce papers. I’m not taking that risk again. Not with you.”
My cheeks heat. Shame and guilt duel with anger and a hundred other emotions I can’t name. I didn’t mean to be cruel, but I was at my wits end and I was drowning. I needed to get out of there, to think. I ran because that’s what I’ve always done when things get too much.
He stands and shrugs out of his kutte, hanging it on the back of the door.
The Sons insignia stares back at me. That stupid skull mocking me from across the room.
I know it’s not the club’s fault. It’s his.
It’s ours. We’ve never learned to communicate.
We grew up in a world where talking wasn’t normalised.
Emotions were punished. No one cared if you were sad or hurting.
He lies on top of the covers, his eyes closing, as if he’s giving me space. He’s not. He’s doing what he always does when he’s scared of losing something. He’s holding onto it tight, but his grip on me is suffocating whether he knows it or not.
I stare at him in disbelief as the silence stretches between us like a live wire.
“You can’t keep me through force,” I rasp.
“I’d rather you stay willingly, but I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you. Lie down.”
My heart thumps an unsteady beat. He’s fucking serious. “This is unhinged, even by your standards.”
There’s a beat of silence as I settle back on the bed, my body stiff as a board.
“Yeah,” he says softly, “but sometimes you have to be a little crazy to keep the things you love.”