Chapter 17 Saint #2
“I can’t do this with you right now. I’m exhausted, and I need sleep. You don’t have to like it, but I’m sleeping in the other room,” I say and turn toward the door.
“Like hell you are.”
“Try to stop me.”
I make it three steps down the hall before I hear him moving.
“Saint.” My name comes out as a warning.
I don’t stop. Mainly because I can’t. Because I know if I stop, if I turn around and look at him, I will shatter into a million pieces, and I don’t have the bandwidth or strength to put myself back together right now.
The guest bedroom door is in front of me. It’ll give me the safety and privacy I need. A place to fall apart without him watching. I slip inside, slam the door shut, and turn the lock into place. For a moment, there’s nothing. Just the sound of my own ragged breathing.
Then Calder’s rough voice filters in through the door. “Open the door.”
“No.” I shake my head as if he can see it.
“Open the fucking door, Saint.” Impatience coats his words.
“No,” I whisper, but somehow he hears me, or maybe he doesn’t care.
Either way, it’s the wrong thing to say. I know it even as the word leaves my mouth. The first kick rattles the frame. The second splinters wood around the lock. The third sends the door crashing inward, lock mechanism torn completely free.
Calder stands in the doorway, chest heaving, face twisted in pain and rage. The effort of kicking down the door clearly hurt him. I can see it in the way he’s favoring his ribs and in the white-knuckled grip he has on the doorframe.
That doesn’t matter. He did it anyway.
“I told you,” he says, voice deadly quiet, “we share a bedroom.”
Fear and fury war in my chest. “You’re insane.”
“Oh, but you already knew that, sweetheart.” He pushes off the doorframe and stalks toward me with predatory intent.
“Knew it when I forced my ring onto your finger, and your daddy’s name on the marriage certificate.
You’re mine Saint, and I don’t let what’s mine sleep anywhere that I can’t protect it. ”
“I don’t need or want your protection.”
“And I don’t care.” He’s close now, close enough that I can see every bruise, every cut, every mark Roman left on him. “You want to hate me? Fine. You want to fight me? Go ahead. But you do it in our bedroom, in our bed, where I can keep you safe.”
“Safe?” I laugh, and it comes out slightly hysterical. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe again.”
“There ain’t no goddamn place safer in this valley than you are with me.
” He reaches for me, his hand near my face.
I don’t think. I merely react, flinching before I can stop myself.
My reaction makes him freeze, and a look of pain flashes in his eyes.
“I’m not going to hit you, Saint. I would never. ”
“I don’t know. Your father did. I just—I don’t know how to deal with all of this. I host bake sales and volunteer at drives. I don’t deal with this.”
“No one will ever hit you again.” His jaw clenches. “If I could’ve stopped it without getting us both killed, I would have. I’d have buried him in a shallow grave, Saint. You have to believe that.”
Part of me wants to, but another part of me, the rational part of me, wonders how that’s possible. How a man raised in violence, who does terrible things to people, can possibly want to save and protect me from it all.
“I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know how to feel. I’m confused, overwhelmed, and afraid.”
“All of which is understandable. I’m not telling you that you can’t feel how you want.” He sucks a ragged breath into his lungs. “I just… can you please come back to the bedroom? I’m too fucked up to fight with you right now.”
The admission of weakness surprises me.
Calder Bishop doesn’t admit weakness. Doesn’t show vulnerability.
But standing here in the wreckage of the door he just kicked in, bruised and battered and barely able to stand, he looks human. Almost.
“Fine,” I say. “But I’m sleeping on top of the covers, and if you touch me, I’ll make those broken ribs worse.” It’s a threat that I doubt I could hold myself too, especially with the amount of pain I know he’s in.
A ghost of a smile touches his split lip, and that eases some of the tension.
“Deal.” It’s almost like he enjoys it when I argue with him now.
Sometimes I guess. We walk back to the primary bedroom together, and while the silence surrounds us, it doesn’t feel as suffocating as before.
Calder sinks onto the edge of the bed with a groan that he tries to muffle.
I grab a spare blanket from the closet and settle on top of the comforter, as far from him as the bed allows.
The house settles around us. Creaks and sighs of weather-worn wood finding its place.
After a short while, my eyes start to grow heavy, and I find myself slipping into a fitful sleep.
It’s in that space between consciousness and sleep that I swear I hear Calder apologize to me for what his father did.
I want to tell him that his apology doesn’t change what happened, or what will continue to happen, and that if he’s really sorry, he will try to find a way to end this, to truly keep me safe, but I’m already slipping further into the darkness to make the words come out.
I wake to sunlight streaming through unfamiliar windows and the smell of coffee.
For a moment, I forget where I am. Forget everything that’s happened. Then it all comes rushing back—the rodeo, Roman’s rage, the beating, this house that’s supposed to be my new home. I roll over and find the spot beside me empty, the sheets cool to the touch.
I sit up and wince at the movement. Every muscle aches, and my face throbs where Roman hit me.
Climbing out of bed, I catch my reflection in the dresser mirror and barely recognize myself.
There’s a vivid bruise that’s formed across my cheekbone, my eyes are swollen and puffy from crying, and my hair is a tangled mess.
I look like a complete mess.
I hate how unkempt and different I am from the person I used to be. Will I ever find my way back to her? I guess only time will tell. I walk into the closet and find the racks filled with clothes. Some of them are my size, and others appear to be Calder’s.
I pull on a pair of jeans and grab a T-shirt, slipping it on as armor for the day ahead. With a sigh, I head downstairs. I’m not surprised to find Calder in the kitchen. He’s moving carefully, one arm wrapped around his ribs.
There’s coffee brewing and toast in the toaster. Domestic normalcy in the wake of violence. I suppose a person still has to eat, right?
“Morning,” he says without turning around.
“Is it?” I lean against the doorframe. “I didn’t really sleep well.”
“Yeah.” He pours two cups of coffee and slides one across the counter toward me. “Me either. Turns out sleeping is difficult with broken ribs.”
I take the coffee but don’t drink it. “Are you going to get them looked at?”
He finally turns to face me, and in the morning light, the damage looks even worse. “No point. Doctors can’t do anything about broken ribs unless they are in danger of puncturing something. It’s best to let them heal on their own. I’ll have to suffer through the pain.”
I’m sure his father knew that when he decided to beat the shit out of him. Anything to inflict the most suffering. It’s stupid, but my chest hurts thinking about how he knows what doctors do and don’t do for broken ribs so well.
“I don’t like that,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Me either, sweetheart, but I didn’t get to choose my punishment. If you’ve learned anything about Roman so far, it’s that it’s his way or death. I should be grateful that I’m still breathing. I’ve seen him kill men for lesser reasons.”
“I guess that means I won’t be able to get out of the branding?” I’m kind of proud of how steady my voice is when I speak.
“No, you won’t be able to get out of it.”
“I know it doesn’t matter, but I don’t want to do it.”
Calder’s jaw tightens. “I understand that, and if I had a choice, it wouldn’t happen, but I can’t do anything to stop him. This is tradition. If you don’t accept the branding, then he’ll kill both of us.”
“Is it really too much to just want to live? To not have to accept pain and violence in order to survive?”
“No.” He sets down his coffee and meets my gaze. “You aren’t used to this way of life yet, and you crave normalcy. My hope is to give that to you someday. Right now, though, we have to make it through this, survive my father, and whatever he throws at us. Together.”
“I don’t want to just survive, Calder. I want to live.”
“And you will. At some point, this will be behind us.”
“That might be so, but I’ll always have a scar on my body. A physical reminder of what happened.”
Calder growls in frustration. “What the fuck do you want me to do, Saint, and if you say kill you, I’m going to turn you over this counter and spank your ass until you drop that notion from your brain for good.”
What do I want him to do?
Before I can respond, his phone rings.
He pulls it from his pocket and frowns as he stares at the screen. “It’s Sawyer.”
“Okay? Answer it.”
His blue eyes cut through me a moment before he lifts the phone to his ear. “Yeah?”
I can’t make out what Sawyer’s saying, but whatever it is, it isn’t good based on the shift of emotions in Calder’s eyes. He goes from irritated to angry, to downright furious in seconds.
“When?” A pause. “Fuck. Yeah, I’ll be there in ten.” He hangs up, shoves his phone into his pocket, and starts moving toward the door despite the obvious pain it causes him.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Ranch business. Nothing you need to worry about,” he says and grabs his truck keys from the counter. “Stay here. Don’t leave the house. Don’t answer the door for anyone except family.”
“Calder—”
Turning, he gives me a pleading look and says, “I mean it, Saint. Stay here. Please.”