Chapter 16
JOSEPHINE
The air stirs seconds before something clamps over my mouth, and my eyes shoot open. Instinctively, my feet kick at the blankets, tangled sheets twisting around my legs as my arms swing wildly in the darkness, clocking against something hard.
The room’s still, with the quiet of a resting house in the middle of the night.
Gauzy curtains billow from the window I left open to let in the cicadas’ comforting song bleed in.
Deep shadows bathe the room, broken by the faint amber glow of the digital clock on the nightstand and the streetlamp outside.
My pulse roars in my ears, drowning out the soft hum of the ceiling fan above.
“Calm down, mama,” Vik’s gruff whisper lingers against my ear.
Still floating somewhere before full consciousness sets in, my heart thunders, trying to escape through my chest. The warmth of a large body presses over mine, the scent of him cutting through the lingering sleep fog.
“Where’s Haley?”
His question infiltrates the haze, but I can’t answer with his hand still wrapped tightly against my lips. So, I do the only logical thing. My teeth sink into the meaty bit of his palm, and he jerks it away, but his firm body doesn’t retreat from hovering above me.
“I think I’m bleeding,” he observes casually.
“Good. What the fuck do you think you’re doing!?” I hiss.
“Right, back at you, baby. Where’s Hales?”
“She wanted to sleep in Sienna’s room. Jesus, would you get the fuck off of me?”
Instead of listening, the asshole collapses his weight.
His knee shoves between my thighs, resting against my core.
Thick arms bracket my head, and his chest flows in tandem with my heaving breaths.
There isn’t an inch of space between us.
It’s stifling, throwing my feelings into an emotional blender that leaves me wobbling on the brink of sanity.
The mattress dips beneath his size, the antique frame creaking softly in warning.
The faint scent of lavender detergent wafts from the bedding beneath my head, a reminder that this isn’t home.
The room still carries the impersonal touch of a guest space, except now it’s filled with my husband’s overwhelming presence.
“Vik,” I seethe, fully awake now.
“Josephine.”
My fight calms, but only because the more I do, the harder it is to breathe and the more his eyes light with the excitement of a sparring match.
“Why are you here? I told you I need space.”
“And I asked you to promise you’d stay so we could figure this out, but look where you are.” He turns his gaze around the room before drilling it back to me. “Not in our fucking bed, where I expected to find you.”
I huff indignantly. “Last time I checked, you’re not my keeper, and I don’t answer to you.”
“No, but I am your goddamn husband, and when shit goes sideways, I’d appreciate it if my wife would give us the opportunity to work through our problems instead of running from them.”
“I’m not—”
“You did.” He cuts me off with a glacial glare.
So, maybe I did. But he wasn’t listening, and I know his bulldozing ways. I just didn’t expect him to break into Pierce and Lexi’s place. I thought he’d be too preoccupied with Trenton to come looking, and by the time he did, I’d be cooled off and ready to come home anyway.
The steady quiet presses in again between us. Somewhere down the hall, a floorboard groans as the house settles. Haley is only a few rooms away, curled up beside Sienna, blissfully unaware that the adults in her life are unraveling in the dead of night.
“Did you find him?” I redirect the subject.
Whatever my hurt and issues with Vik are, I can’t help the worry seeping in about Trenton.
I know the best place for him is with us.
It’s not going to be easy. It’ll come with all sorts of questions from Haley that I don’t know if I’m ready to answer.
Yet, the alternative of turning our backs on him isn’t even remotely an option.
“He’s at the house. I want him to stay.”
Vik moves, lying his huge frame beside me, giving me my first real chance to breathe since my rude awakening.
The sudden space feels strange after being pinned beneath him.
Cool air brushes my flushed skin, raising goosebumps in its wake.
Thick fingers trail up my body until they’re softly cupping my cheek.
My angry facade cracks under his full attention.
Our connection is dangerous to my plan of demanding the space I need to process everything.
It’d be so easy to let him pull me into his orbit, wash away the worry with his touch, kiss away the hurt from the shock of it all.
But something in my gut twists at the idea.
I don’t know what’s stopping me—why this feels so much deeper than it seems on the surface? I’ve lost sight of true north, and I’m wandering an endless forest of doubt.
A wall the size of the Empire State Building shoots up between us. I can’t do this right now. In the middle of the night, with my defenses down and my body craving his, it’s too damn much.
Rolling away from his touch, I quietly pace away from the bed, putting the space between us that he won’t allow.
The sturdy hardwoods offer their ancient support as I move through the dim room, my eyes now adjusted.
A sliver of streetlight sneaks through the curtain’s edge, casting a stripe across the wall and the dresser opposite the bed.
My reflection stares back at me in the dark mirror above it.
The rumpled hair matches my swollen eyes.
She’s a woman in the midst of a battle, on the brink of meeting her breaking point.
“I think you should go.”
“And I think you should come home.”
“Vik.” I sigh. “It’s three in the morning, Haley’s asleep. I’m not about to wake her and everyone else up because you can’t wait a few more hours.”
“I don’t trust you to come home.”
“I guess that makes two of us with trust issues then,” I say, defeated.
He’s up and out of bed, a squall of furious man speeding toward me. I expect his hand to lift and pin my neck like he always does to command my attention, but it doesn’t come.
In the blink of an eye, his knees hit the ground in front of me. Strong arms snake around my waist as his head rests against my stomach.
The unexpected gesture knocks the breath from my lungs.
“I can’t stand this, Josie. I fucked up, I see that.
But, baby, please believe me when I say I never meant to keep it from you.
The day you walked into my life, anything before that moment ceased to exist. You were all I could see.
All I cared about. You consumed me, Josephine.
” His arms tighten as if he’s scared I’m going to shove him away.
“Miranda was a mess of a decision. I hadn’t thought of her in years until you said her name earlier.
You’re my everything. You and Haley, without you, I’m nothing.
And I know you want space, that you need it, but I can’t…
Fuck,” his voice cracks, and his chin tilts, meeting my gaze.
Tears I don’t realize have been collecting on my lashes fall, raining down on the man, laying everything bare at my feet.
My chest constricts, stealing the breath I’m gasping for, stolen by the look of anguish in his piercing blues.
I’m stuck between wanting to comfort the man who’s always been mine and fighting this unnameable anger that won’t be extinguished for some ungodly reason.
“Don’t leave me, Josie. Don’t take her. We can get through this, baby. I know we can. Just give me a chance to make everything right. Come home.”
Our voices are hushed to make sure the rest of the house isn’t woken by our attempts to find solid ground. It’s as if the entire world has paused outside these walls while our marriage teeters on the edge of something fragile and potentially earth-shattering.
My fingers tangle in the soft blond locks at the nape of his neck and pull, urging him up from the ground. He interprets my wordless demand and stands, hesitation written between his worried brows.
“I’ll come home. Let Haley wake up and have breakfast with Sienna, Pierce promised them pancake sundaes.”
He doesn’t look happy, but it’s the best I can offer when the uncertainty coursing through my system threatens to take over, decimating the inch of progress we’ve made.
Soft lips press against my forehead, calling forth a wave of melancholy so strong my knees almost buckle.
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
Then, like a ghost summoned from another time, he vanishes out the window before my eyes. My back hits the wall with a hollow thud before my body slides to the floor in a heap.
I have hours to get my head on straight. Figure out what’s warring inside me against the words and genuine efforts of a man desperate to cling to his crumbling life.