29. Vian #2
“Ouch,” I say, pretending it hurts just to add some levity and break this suffocating tension.
She shoots me an earnest look. “Keep quiet and stop behaving like a damn child. I know your endurance.”
“I thought it would make you treat me more gently.”
She offers me the fakest sweet smile. “With gloves around your throat, I can be gentle.”
I burst out laughing, making a mess of my wound, which pulses.
“I swear to God, Vian,” she says in a no-nonsense voice.
“Tough crowd,” I groan, gazing at her. Incapable of taking my eyes off her, I debate whether she’s real or a figment of my imagination.
“Stop looking at me.”
“Missed you.”
Focused on my wound, she says, “You’re impossible.”
“What took you two days?” I ask again.
She inhales a lungful of air, disinfecting my wound. “Had to deal with something.”
“What could be more important than me?”
“Your arrogance knows no bounds.” She shakes her head at me, then stitches me up.
“If it’s another man, he won’t be here for long.”
“I slept with Conrad.”
The words hit me like a grenade rolling at my feet and exploding my damn world. I freeze into a statue, incapable of mustering a reaction.
Fuck the lockdown, I will end him and scatter his limbs around her fucking compound for her to find.
With murder on my mind, I shoot out of bed with her following close behind.
My finger hovers above the panel, about to type in the code, when my sanity returns, halting me.
“Come on, I was so close,” she blows out a frustrated breath and turns on her heel.
She played me. Fuck, she didn’t mean that.
Relief hits instantly, and I can breathe again.
I return to the bedroom and catch her dashing into the bathroom.
She closes herself in, which has never been the case—a clear sign to stay out.
Yeah, that won’t work. Not even a thousand doors could hold me back. I’d breach every single one.
I knock out of courtesy before entering. Who am I kidding? With her, even when I want to act gentlemanly, I fail.
She shrieks, sitting on the toilet. “Get out.”
“No.”
“I’m peeing.”
I lean back against the doorframe, hitching a shoulder. “Pee.”
It’s not like it’s the first time she does that. The intimacy she doesn’t remember. No, it was more important for her to remember me as the guilty one.
Once she’s done, she washes her hands and stares at me in the mirror. “So, what exactly is your master plan? Let me guess: you want me to listen to your side of the story.”
Sarcasm drips from her, and it feels like a fist punching me straight in the gut, knocking the breath from my lungs. “You think you know it already, don’t you? So why should I bother?”
She huffs, taking it personally. “I will get my memories back. I just haven’t found the time.”
“Fine. Let them tear you apart for a second time. I’ll do what I did the first time.”
“You fucking asshole,” she snaps and finds the first thing to attack me.
It’s the toilet roll she hurls at me.
“Sure, wipe me to death.”
It hits my chest, then rolls between us like life moving too fast to preserve the special moments.
She bursts into manic laughter, then turns her back to me and starts the water in the tub. “You’re an insensitive asshole, but to tell me this to my face? Do you believe I would ever be grateful for that?”
“I didn’t do it so you would be grateful. My reason stemmed from wanting you to have a life, even if that life didn’t include me.”
She spins to me and stabs an accusatory finger my way. “You didn’t let me try with someone else either.”
“You weren’t that interested.”
“And you know that how?”
I cup my neck, not knowing how to reach her. “Because I watched you all the fucking time.”
Her entire body shakes with barely contained anger. “Not a stalker at all.”
“If you really wanted it, I would have fucking let you do it. But I recognize what’s on your mind from a micro-expression alone. I had no idea what finding out would do to you.”
“So you sabotaged me?” She rips her clothes off and gets in the tub, bubbles covering her up to her neck.
We lapse into stilted silence, and I tread carefully, determined not to force my luck, so I take a seat on the toilet lid.
“What you did… no sane person would ever condone that.”
I will feed her only the truth from now on. Decision made, I chuckle. “I was never sane, mi sol. Can’t be sane with you.”
She dives her head into the water, staying under for thirty seconds. I am about to pull her out when she slowly resurfaces. “That’s how it feels to be with you. Like I am drowning.”
What every man in love wishes to hear. Fucking great.
“Nothing you could do or say will make me change my mind. I need you to let me go.”
I place my elbow on my thigh. “We’re married. In case you forgot how marriages work in the underworld.”
“We’ll stay married on paper, like it should have been.”
The civilized conversation makes me want to pull my hair out. We should fight instead because our love is worth it, damn it.
I jerk my chin at her to rouse her from her comatose behavior. “Yeah, for how long?”
“This time it must work. We must be civil with each other.”
Shooting up, I get in her face, towering over her so she can get it through her thick and stubborn skull. “We fucking burn for each other. Do you think we can ever be civil?”
She splashes me with water as if that will prompt me to leave. Giving up, she says, “Two weeks. You get your wish. Once again. But then promise me you’ll let me go. If you ever loved me, you need to let me go.”
I stare at her with one question running through my head. How, when I can’t fucking breathe without you? How when you’re my damn life.
If you ever loved me…
“I’ll let you go,” I lie through my teeth.
If that proves it, then I’ll continue doing what I have in the last few years. Love her from the shadows.