CHAPTER 23
Kian
Ah, fuck.
This wasn’t how I pictured my sweet, cranky girl stumbling over the truth.
I hadn’t intended to tell her at all. That’s how diabolical I am.
But here we are. And as I reach to grab Samia’s hands, she recoils from me like I’ve thrown a punch. The pain of her rejection sits like a hard rock in my gut, and though I know I should take things slow, easing her into what is true, I can’t do that.
She’s my madness, my utter obsession in life.
Samia is why I’m no longer a reckless idiot skating by in life with no direction. She’s the only woman I’ve ever wanted to marry, to tie to me in every way.
But the agony on her face tells me she wants to throw me out of the top window and watch me fall to my death.
I start as I mean to go on.
With the most crucial explanation of all.
“I love you, Samia.”
She scoffs and rolls her eyes even as they fill with tears. “More lies. You’re pathologically deranged.”
Perhaps. I’ve done nothing the right way or the easy way. Where’s the challenge in that? But Samia is wrong. Loving her is the most truthful thing about me.
I hate how worry spikes across her brow, buckling her eyebrows low over her sharp eyes. And because it’s been too long since I’ve had my hands on her, I ignore how she tries to ward me off as I take hold of the top of her arms.
“Whatever you think you’ve heard…”
“Oh, great, gaslighting me now?”
“I love you. Like a fucking madman, I love you, Samia, believe that if nothing else.” She steals her eyes into angry slits. It puts a firecracker in my chest, but doesn’t stop me from drawing her closer.
“Get off me.”
“No. You’re going to listen to me. You’ll hear every word I say before you try to walk out on me.”
She shakes my hands off. It’s in her determined features she refuses to submit, and I let her pull away because she doesn’t go far. Her eyes are like bursting stars staring at me, the stubbornness of her chin points high, and all I want to do is fucking love her until she’s drowned by it. I want her smiles back; they belong to me more than anything. So that I’m not towering over my girl, I drop my ass to the coffee table. If I weren’t so fucking tired, I wouldn’t have been dumb enough to discuss anything incriminating for her to overhear. I rake a hand through my hair and inhale, ready for the fight of my life.
Because Samia is my life. No doubt about that.
She’s the reason I walk this earth, I’m sure.
I became a man the moment our threads intertwined.
She’s mine.
I’ve known it for a long time.
I understood how it would be.
As soon as the word mine took root, nothing else mattered.
To fight to keep her, I’ll be as diabolical as I need to. I was dirty to get her in the first place, so why change the habit of a lifetime?
I’m on the brink of failure.
Without her, I’ll be downright uncivilized.
And she needs me, too.
I might be delusional in thinking that. The part of my brain which is wholly fucking selfish, which, truthfully, is all of me. Because if I weren’t, I would have left her alone to fall for someone better. To live a mundane life with an ordinary partner who didn’t light up her existence the way I do. Someone who doesn’t surround her with intense adoration and keeps her supplied with an obsessive love.
But I’m not that magnanimous guy. I’ve always been self-centered.
A man can’t be blamed for shifting the world to his advantage when he sees the love of his life.
Even if she can’t recognize it now, the way she wants me is unlike anything she’s ever experienced. No one has ever offered her pleasure quite like I can. I know this because we’re in the same position. Samia’s love invigorates me like nothing else. One look from her and I can pretend to be a good man who lives in the light with her.
“Tell me you believe I love you.”
“If you told me the sky had clouds, I’d check before I believed you, Kian.”
I half smile. There’s my fighting girl.
People have never really gotten Samia - they think she’s just an introvert. Samia stands out like a vibrant pop of color in a monochromatic world. She’s not serene and modest; she’s crashing solar systems and supernovas.
And she’s all mine.
My wife.
My timeless love.
My cranky girl, who is the perfect, peaceful part of a storm.
“Have you manipulated me this whole time? Did you lie about us being together before my accident?”
Despite the anger coming off her in icy waves, there’s hope in her eyes. Hope that I’ll tell her this is all a big misunderstanding. Ethan was right, and I can’t keep this secret between us for the rest of our lives. And I intend to have Samia at my side until I’m buried in the lush hills of Ireland in the family burial plot.
Consumed by remorse and deceit. I’m sinking, only seconds away from losing the one thing far too good for me.
I don’t want to crush her hope, but I look up and answer. “Yes.”
She exhales and swipes at an escaping tear rolling down her cheek. Her lips part, prepared to speak.
Every expression crosses her features, and she is incredible, even as her pain is set free. The pain I’ve caused.
“You cruel bastard. Why? Why would you do that to me? Was it all some sick prank you got off on by humiliating me? I was living my life, and you took it over because you could. Because you wanted to. With never a thought of what you were doing to me. You fucking railroaded me into marrying you. Was that real? Was the celebrant an actor?”
“We’re married, Samia. I have the paperwork in my safe to prove it.”
“Well, you can shred that. It’s meaningless.” She snaps.
“I will tell you anything you want to know, but that’s the one thing that isn’t happening, dreamgirl.” She recoils when she hears my endearment, and I have to swallow around the thickness in my throat to continue. “We’re married, and it’s real. And it’s staying real. I meant every one of my vows. I waited years to speak them to you.”
“You lied to me.”
“It changes nothing.”
It’s as if self-preservation is a thing of the past, it’s fled the building. Common sense is no more. My only destination is Samia.
Her eyes fire as her neck snaps back to stare across the room at me as she paces. “It changes everything. You lied to me at every step. That’s not okay. And what about living together? How did you manage that?”
That’s another straightforward answer. A terrible one, but I can only give Samia the truth now. “Once you were back at your parents’ place, I hired movers to bring everything here.”
She gasps but remains unmoving, her eyes so wild and big.
Fuck my patience, as short as it is. She’s too far for me to reach, and I don’t think she’ll come over to sit on my lap. I stand and see her eyes flatten as I approach. She takes careful steps back until I have Samia trapped against a wall.
“Move.” She issues in a strained voice. So I move closer, letting my body press into hers. We’re so close that I experience every sharp inhale she takes. Her scent fills my nose, and I breathe deeply.
Being obsessed with Samia fucks with my head because I only want to inhale her into my lungs.
“Move back, Kian.”
“That’s not happening. I’m sorry I hurt you, baby. So fucking sorry, I hate seeing this wounded look in your eyes.” Cupping her cheek, I hold her face up. She doesn’t even struggle, like the fight has gone out of her. That’s on me. Another strike against my decisions. But I’m prepared to fight enough for us both. “I can fix it.”
She shakes her head vehemently. “You can’t. I don’t care about any part of this. I don’t want you.”
Her words hit their intended target, and I groan and lower my head.
“You don’t want us, dreamgirl?” my lips trail across her soft cheek. I flick out my tongue, tasting the dried saltiness of her tears. “You don’t want me?”
She trembles against me.
It’s like we’re in sync. Samia’s reactions merge with mine as I grab her by the neck and tilt her face up, kissing her and swallowing her words.
We explode as always. Kissing like fucking animals.
Chemistry has never burned this hot or scorched marks all over my soul as her lips do, and I’m lost to my dreamgirl. But the kiss ends as fast as it started when she wrenches her mouth free and avoids as I try to dip in and show her why we are beyond any fucking lies I’ve told.
“No,” she shrieks, “that’s not helping. It won’t work this time.”
My nose roams over her cheek again, feeling unhinged and reckless. I want many things, but my wants aren’t the priority here. Samia’s are. But I’m not gentleman enough to give her space, so I keep her pressed between me and the wall.
“This is how good we are. You taste the fire between us.”
“And you constructed it on lies. You worked me like a damn puppet. I don’t even know if my feelings are my own now or if you manipulated me into them.” She accuses, standing so still, so sedate, as she stares at me with questions and accusations. It’s like I see her hardening her heart against me.
And that won’t do.
“I constructed our foundation, Samia. But the feelings you have now are real. You love your husband and our life together.”
“Oh, my god, you’re crazy, you know that? You don’t see what you did as wrong.” We share air, and then she asks. “Just tell me why.”
“I wanted you to be mine.”
She inhales like I’ve slapped her.
“You have no idea how long I wanted you for. I saw you, and I was gone, Samia.”
“Then tell me. Tell me it all. I need to know why you’ve broken me. Why did you lie at every turn, and you did it at my lowest point? Did anyone else know what you were doing? My parents?”
“I told Lachlan and Ethan much later.”
She blanches. “So they laughed at me, too?”
“No one was laughing at you, least of all me. Are you listening to me, Samia? I’m fucking obsessed with you. I wanted you, and I wasn’t good enough for you.”
“That’s bullshit. You don’t get to justify what you did with that fragile excuse. You should have asked me out if you wanted to date me.”
The growl builds in my throat as my head lowers to go almost nose to nose with my beautiful wife. “I did ask you out on a date. You laughed in my face and thought I was pranking you.”
Samia’s eyes go wide. “When?”
“Two years ago. We were at a mutual party. I found a better way.”
“You’re criminally insane. You can’t draw yourself into someone else’s life like that. It’s…it’s…”
“A man in love. You’re my reason, Samia. I am who I am because of you.”
“Don’t come at me with your delusions.” She pushes at my chest and slips out from underneath me. Her pacing ensues, and I stalk her around the room with my eyes.
She fires questions at me, and I answer honestly and calmly, even as Samia loses her composure. She breaks me open when she cries, but she won’t let me hold her.
My wife. My queen. She could ask for the world, and I’d get it.
She knows now how demented I felt, not being there the night of her nearly attack.
“That’s how it started when you came to the hospital and told everyone we were dating.” She repeats like she’s reciting minutes from a meeting.
I can’t say I planned it, but once the opportunity presented itself when the doctor said she had partial memory loss, I didn’t hesitate. It was the only way they’d allow me to be close to my girl when the family-only order was put in her room.
“The lie facilitated my feelings, baby. I built the foundations, but you’re my wife because you want to be my wife.”
I’m a fucking impatient prick because I need to hammer home one point my Samia isn’t getting yet. “That’s how it’s staying, baby. Be pissed as much as you want with me; I’ll put in the work to make it right. I swear you’ll know I’m sorry I hurt you. But we’re together now.”
From her place by the wall of windows, she swirls around to glare at me, giving me her famous cranky girl scowl, and my heart tumbles.
Fuck me, she’s incredible.
She could be right; I might be certifiable, but I’ll go to my strait jacket, loving this woman with every lying inch of my heart.
My means justified the outcome.
She starts for me, and my cock perks like a fucking animal, thinking we’re going to get some, but all Samia does is jab a skinny finger into my chest.
“You’re a liar and a conman, Kian MacNamara, and I’ll do everything I can to unravel myself from this mess.”
The conversation is done because the love of my life sweeps by me like I’m dirt on her shoe without glancing back as I hear her going into our bedroom, slamming the door hard enough that it rattles my teeth. Smiling, I follow at a slower pace. She hasn’t stabbed me, so I’m taking it as a good sign. But as I try the door handle, I find it won’t budge.
My wife has locked me out of our bedroom.
The laugh comes like a relief valve springing open in my chest as I rest my forehead on the door and breathe her name. It isn’t loud enough that she’ll even hear me. It’s said with awe and love. But she’s near because she yells.
“Just wait until my dad hears about this. He knows five hundred ways to kill a man, and I hope he uses all of them on you, you lying jerk.”
Goddamn, I worship that woman of mine.
She hates me now, but she won’t always.
Her pain is my pain.
Samia doesn’t leave our bedroom for the rest of the day, but that’s okay. I sit with my back to the wall in the hallway, arms over my chest, ankles crossed, and my eyes on the locked room holding my woman.
Obsessions don’t have a timetable, and I’m prepared to wait for as long as it takes to earn her back.
My wife is going nowhere.
And nowhere is where I stay.