Chapter Thirty-Five
Sabrina.
Maksim stands tall with nothing but guilt on his bruised face.
I don’t know if I'm allowed to be angry with him. I don’t know what I can or can’t say.
He hasn’t touched me. He hasn’t kissed me.
He’s back to grunting at me, and all he does is stare listlessly at walls.
The first night my hives were gone, I wore the skimpiest negligee I owned to seduce him, but he was already asleep by the time I got into bed.
Parker’s been… quiet as well.
I don’t know how to approach him anymore without it feeling like I'm nagging him. We’re all walking on eggshells around each other. It’s so much worse than before. At least when Maksim disgusted me, he made conversation—grunts included.
So yes, my husband is standing tall with his shoulders squared and chin lifted, dark eyes peering down his nose at me in his stupid suit that makes him look twice as menacing as he approaches.
He is so beautiful it haunts me. His hands come up and his busted lips part, but I take a step back and I put my hand up for him to not come closer.
He does not deserve to crowd me when he’s left me feeling invisible and worse—–unimportant. “What are you doing?”
He sighs loudly, like I’m the one who’s the issue, and maybe I am.
But I don't know how to fix it because I'm scared that whatever happened in Wales broke something in my husband’s psyche, and his physical and emotional retreat is his way of wanting things to go back to the way things were before the stupid motherfucker made me fall in love with him. Damn my stupid heart. I’ve damned myself because I do not love with my heart.
I love with my entire soul. And that… is what makes me fucking toxic.
Those dark eyes of his with microscopic hints of green search mine, and I shake my head.
He runs the tip of his tongue along his bottom lip, over the swollen cut, before tucking it between his teeth.
Maksim looks to the side, out the window, before he faces me again.
“I trained with Niko this morning. Things got heated.”
He didn’t train with Niko. He let himself get the shit kicked out of him and then laughed.
I know because Niko called me. “No gloves,” he said.
I look down at his hands, not seeing any of his knuckles bloody or bruised.
I was hoping it had been a lie, but it seems my husband is the liar. “And after?”
“I went to the office.”
“For six hours?”
He closes his eyes like he’s losing his patience with me; the slight cuts deeper than it should. It opens another wound above so many others, and I don’t know if I can handle any more. I’m going to bleed out frantically. “Then I drove around.”
That’s how it starts, isn’t it? The physical and emotional distance, then lies, then…
what? Someone at the club that looks just right in a tight dress, and I mean, he hasn’t fucked me, so obviously he’ll get it from whatever bombshell throws herself at him at the right moment.
Ugh, God—and there are so many beautiful women who patron and work at Eden.
My blood slows and whooshes in my ears at the thought of another bitch on him, but let’s be honest, I went into this marriage knowing I would be getting cheated on eventually.
And I can't even complain. I have no room to talk. I have Parker. It wouldn’t be fair of me to ask Maksim for exclusivity when I have them both.
But the thought of him with another woman, of smelling another woman’s perfume on him, of another woman earning his smile, his cum—makes my stomach recoil in hurt and disgust. I can’t handle this.
Christ, I think I would rather him be kidnapped again than know he’s out with other women.
I’m so fucked. I am so fucked up. I can’t do this.
“I think you need to go to the penthouse.”
His dark brows furrow together and his face contorts into an unbelieving grimace. “What?”
I go on a tirade about the spiraling thoughts I just had. “And that’s precisely why you should go to the penthouse. I won’t be witness to my own broken soul. I would rather it be now before there are children involved.”
“I don’t want another woman, Sabrina. I don’t know how you got all of that in your sick, twisted mind in the span of three goddamn seconds.”
“At this point I don’t know if what you’re saying is true—” But hearing it sounds so fucking good.
“You hardly look twice my way, you don’t kiss me—a rule you put in place, need I remind you.
You fucked me while I was covered in your enemies’ blood, and then it’s like…
like—” My heart cracks, and I swallow down the chunk of my heart that’s crawled up my throat, choking me.
I can feel the tremors beginning, the anxiety, the anger, the guilt, the sadness.
I inhale once more and then, “It’s like I extinguished myself to become the dark part of you, and now I’m unfit for you.
You placed this crown of thorns upon my head, dear husband, and now I leave a trail of blood and diamonds in my wake… and you can't even look my way.”
“How could you even think that?”
Because you don’t touch me. Because I held it all in. I didn’t break. I did so good, and you haven’t kissed me.
But I can't say any of that because I'll sound weak.
I'll sound as broken as I feel. Instead I peruse him.
I look upon his bruised flesh, purple eye squinting shut, and imagine the other bruises Niko left on him.
New bruises over the old ones I had tended to in Wales.
New bruises he probably won't let me touch or kiss…
and after everything, it's this goddamn distance between us I can't fucking stand.
“Why did things at the gym with Niko get heated?”
He blinks a few times before he shrugs. But there is so much in his eyes he doesn't say, but I can feel the energy radiating off him like he's ready to burst.
I mimic his Robert De Niro frown, shrug back at him, then dip my chin in acknowledgement, huffing out a perturbed, “Right,” and continue mixing whatever the fuck it is I have in this stupid, oversized bowl.
Cookies? Cake batter? I can't remember. “Just go to the penthouse, Maksim. You’ll be much happier in your solitude. It will kill me. But I would rather you be… happy… even if it means being away from me.” I’m going to die.
Maksim lets out a frustrated growl with an even more frustrated “Ergh!” right before “Because the first hit felt… bright!” His chest heaves, and his eyes are wild, like he doesn’t understand any of this himself.
But I do. “It was the first time I didn’t feel this fucking—” He makes a motion with his hands from his chest to his stomach before grunting in frustration.
“I don't even know what to call it!” He shoves his hands in his hair then lets them drop and swallows. “Because there’s shit that happened to me that I can't remember, but I can feel it. I was fucking drugged up and I couldn’t talk, and I still feel it all. All the goddamn time, Sabrina!”
I feel my brows rise in surprise then knit together in contemplation. “And you thought you couldn’t come to the one person who knows exactly what that’s like? Or is it because I remember what happened to me that you think I can't empathize?”
His eyes round like it’s finally registering, but his features turn hard. “It’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it? Were you not drugged up and violated? Or am I getting it wrong somewhere? Or is it because you’re a man?” I hunch my shoulders and act like a caveman, grunting, “Me man, feelings baaaad.”
“Sabrina—”
I put a hand up and shake my head. “Go to the fucking penthouse, Maksim. You want to feel something other than whatever was done to you by getting beaten to a pulp, fine. Go to the fucking penthouse. Go feel whatever over there.”
“You’re acting insane.”
Mother. Fucker.
I straighten my spine and put my hands back on the counter.
Okay. He wants to see me insane? I’ll show him I'm insane. “Am I?! You fucked me to within an inch of my life the night after you survived. You came to me like a mirage in the snow, bloodied but triumphant. I stacked up your fucking enemies like goddamn bricks, swallowed it all down, ate and choked on every emotion like it was the most delicious cancer, and you can’t even kiss me! AND NOW, ONCE AGAIN, I’M STUCK MAKING FUCKING TREATS FOR ANOTHER GODDAMN FUNDRAISER!
” I dig into the mixing bowl and throw the batter at him, feeling slightly satisfied when it lands on his face and his stupid pristine white shirt.
Oh, they’re going to throw me into Lorne Wood for this. I’ve gone completely fucking bonkers.
“You want to hurt? You want to be humiliated?” I fling another helping in his direction.
He tries to dodge it, but it’s all in his hair and the cupboard behind him.
“You think you can’t talk to me? You don’t want to look at me?
You don’t want to touch me? You want someone else to make you feel bright?
” I rasp in a heaving breath as he blurs due to the tears now falling, but I can't help it. I’m so fucking angry.
“Then LEAVE!” I wipe away my tears with my clean hand trembling violently, and take another shuddering breath.
“Sabrina—”
“No!” I point at him with my batter-laden finger, chest heaving, voice cracking. “If you want someone else to take it away for you, then what good am I? Hmm? I can’t even…” I’m not good enough to help. “Get out of my house!”