Chapter 20
Marin
Charles is awake.
Not the groaning, half-sedated version I’ve been managing for the past three days. Actually awake. Eyes open. Tracking me as I come through the bedroom door with a tray—water, toast, two ibuprofen, and a protein bar I found in the bottom of my suitcase that may or may not have expired.
“Room service,” I say.
He doesn’t laugh. He’s propped against the headboard, wrists strapped to the bedframe with equipment I bought at a kink store two states ago.
The cashier didn’t even blink as he personally demonstrated its durability.
I’d say it was the most interesting purchase of my life, but then I bought a Faraday bag the same week, so the bar has moved.
The bruise on his forehead has deepened into something purple and planetary.
His left arm is still cradled against his ribs.
He looks like a man who fell down a flight of stairs, which is accurate, and like a man who’s been kidnapped by his girlfriend, which is also accurate but less sympathetic when you know the full story.
“How long,” he says. Not a question. A demand.
“A few days.”
“A few days.” He stares at me like I’ve told him the earth is flat. “Marin, you drugged me. You drove me to—where the hell are we?”
“Upstate.”
“You drove me to upstate and tied me to a bed.”
“A bedframe. There’s a difference.”
“There is no difference!”
“Charles.” I set the tray on the nightstand and sit on the edge of the mattress. Not too close. But close enough. “I need you to take a breath and hear me out.”
“Hear you out?” His voice cracks on the last word. “You kidnapped me.”
“I relocated us.”
“To where? A crime scene?”
“To a house. Our house. A fresh start. Away from the noise and the city and the — the women, Charles. Away from all of it.”
He goes quiet. That’s worse than the yelling because quiet Charles is calculating Charles, and calculating Charles is the version of him that knows exactly where to cut.
“This is about Vanessa,” he says.
Vanessa. Even the name feels like a paper cut.
“This is about us,” I say.
“There is no us, Marin. I told you that. I told you clearly, multiple times, in language a child could understand—”
“You told me I wasn’t wife material. On a Tuesday. While you were eating the dinner I cooked you.”
“I was being honest.”
“You were being a coward. You know what men like you do, Charles? You leave. And then the next woman—the very next one—gets everything. The apartment. The ring. The future you swore you weren’t ready for.
You weren’t not ready. You just weren’t ready with me.
And I refuse to be that woman. The one you practice on.
The one who teaches you how to love someone and then watches you do it for somebody else. ”
“This is insane, Marin.”
“You didn’t want to end things—you wanted me to end things so you wouldn’t have to feel guilty about Vanessa. But I don’t quit, Charles. That’s not how I’m built.”
He pulls against the restraints. They hold. He looks at his wrists, then at me, and something shifts in his face. Not fear—he’s too arrogant for fear. Something closer to fascination. Like he’s seeing me for the first time and isn’t sure yet whether to be impressed or terrified.
“You’re insane,” he says. But he says it softly. Almost gently. The way you’d say it to someone you’re trying not to provoke.
“I’m committed,” I say. “Look it up.”
“Marin—”
“Do you remember the Whitmans’ party? The rooftop in Tribeca?”
His mouth opens. Closes. He’s thrown by the pivot, which is exactly what I want. Let him be the one who’s shocked for a change.
“You wore that fitted charcoal suit. The one I picked out. And you introduced me to everyone as ‘my partner, Marin’—not my girlfriend, not the woman I’m seeing. Partner. Like we were building something. Like I was the person you’d chosen to build it with.”
“That was a word, Marin. I used a word at a party.”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t a word to me.”