Chapter 12
Grace
Ibury my face against Nate’s collarbone, shaking in his arms. I still have the urge to bolt into the night, to run until I can’t breathe anymore.
But I know he’d be right behind me. As for calling the police—his confident words ring in my ears.
I know what my history looks like; I’ve thought more than once about collating my own medical, school, and personal records, putting it all together to see the whole picture.
If he accessed my medical history, possibly through Nick, he’d have no trouble putting together a case.
I can't leave.
“There now,” Nate murmurs, stroking my hair, “it’s time for me to take care of you, Grace.”
“No,” I whisper, even as I lean into him.
He’s muscular and strong where Nick was wiry and smooth. Loss cuts through me as I realise the resemblance between the two was entirely superficial; Nick is gone and nothing Nate does to replace him will ever ring true. He’s harsh even though he pretends to be offering me comfort.
“Let me go,” I hiss, flattening my palms against his chest. His heart pounds, the deep throb reflecting the pain I should be feeling. It’s absent, somehow, and I don’t want to consider why.
“Not a chance.”
His hand slides to the small of my back, pressing me against him more deeply.
“Are you…” my voice is breathless and I swallow, trying to calm down. “Are you going to force yourself on me, Nate?”
His hold loosens enough for me to look into his eyes. His pupils are blown so wide I can barely see the grey.
“Would that make it easier for you? Just say the word, love.”
Desire shoots through me, squeezing my heart on its way down to my diaphragm, then deep into my belly.
“No,” I whisper.
He regards me, a half-smile playing around his lips. “You don’t sound very sure, Grace.”
I push away from him experimentally. To my surprise, Nate lets me go, then takes a long, deliberate step back, ravenous eyes still on me.
I look away to distract myself from how deeply I’m throbbing, forcing myself to process what I’m seeing.
The bedroom is beautiful. Its ecru walls are softened with subtle picture frame mouldings.
A wood-burning fireplace is set beneath a driftwood mantle.
The king-sized bed is layered in sandy-coloured linen and phthalo-green cotton.
I approach a vintage desk against the north wall.
My breath catches—there’s a bowl full of sea glass on the desk.
I touch the pieces, half-losing myself in colour, texture, and sound.
Nate draws the heavy curtains throughout the room, making the large space feel cozy.
I realise this room has been decorated in the frosted whites, viridian greens, and weathered ambers of all this glass.
Smaller chips lie at the bottom of the bowl, too dark to see properly.
I stir them, listening to the chime of reclaimed beauty against crystal.
Nate’s voice comes from directly behind me. “Those are from your beach, Grace.”
I don’t know how long I’ve stood here, my body absorbing the peace in this room, this sanctuary. I hear the crackle of flames—he has laid a fire. Heat comes from the man behind me as he clicks the lamp off. The firelight glow makes the place feel more than ever like an ocean-carved cave.
“Where’s the beach?” I ask, tilting my head towards the window, listening for the whoosh of waves on a shore.
“Down the cliffs,” he answers. “I had a staircase built. I’ll show you in the morning.”
I withdraw my hand from the bowl. “Nick used to collect sea glass for me. Until he stopped.”
“I’ve collected them from the cove for years. For you.”
Tears threaten again, this time for the loss of the man who stopped bringing me pretty things from his beachside runs.
“Did Nick tell you about our marriage?” The words fall from my lips before I can stop them. “How empty it was?”
“I always asked about you, Grace,” his voice lowers half an octave, “and he always overshared.”
Fingers grip my shoulders, compelling me to turn.
I obey, though I can’t meet his eyes. Instead, I look at where the fire flickers in the grate.
I don’t want to cry, certainly not when this layer of grief feels so much like the poisonous resentment I’ve held inside for so long.
Anger at my mother for loving me sick. Anger at Nick for refusing me love.
“He didn’t want me,” I whisper, the pain reawakening in my gut.
It might be emotional rather than physical, but I know it means orange is the final colour of the day.
“You were there that day, Nate. That night, I thought he’d want me the way I wanted him.
We were married. I’d said yes and so had he, and I thought that meant—” I shake my head, wishing I could stop these useless tears.
“He just went to bed and turned his back. So I asked if he wanted to—to see me. I was wearing something pretty. I chose it just for him. He never saw it.”
I swallow. I shouldn’t be sharing these details with Nate, who has me cornered and blackmailed. He’s a presence outlined in flickering light, warm and receptive despite being the barrier between myself and the rest of the world.
“What happened after that, Grace?”
Memory closes over me—it has teeth, sharp and unforgiving. If it were to unhinge its jaw, it would swallow me whole.
“I got into bed with him and tried to get close. I kissed the back of his neck. He didn’t even turn around.
He told me I had to be healthy first. It was like something Mother said when I wanted to go to school events or summer camp or sleepovers.
And I was never healthy enough. Later on, he said I was trying to numb myself using sex, but we barely had any, ever. ”
“You were trying to get what you needed, and Nick kept it from you.”
I’m raw and open after voicing the ugliness I acknowledged only in my journals.
I used my charts to track when Nick and I had sex purely because my body couldn’t handle hormonal birth control, and I reacted to all other forms of protection.
My journal ended up being more about tracking hormone shifts than a means of avoiding pregnancy, and the reality of sexual starvation cropped up in those pages in the absence of little hearts.
That bullet journal is in the townhouse, and I’m here with Nate, with nothing to say for myself. I default to the words I was taught.
“Nick wanted what was best for me.” The phrase doesn’t have the talismanic ring it used to. “Besides,” I say, feeling as if I need to explain further, “I didn’t really need—”
Nate’s fingers cover my lips and his arm goes around my waist. “My brother shut you down in your own marriage, Grace. He hurt you, just like your mother did, in a gentler but deeper way.”
“I’m not hurting right now.” I’m as surprised to hear the words as I am to realise they’re true. The emotional pain in my gut quieted the moment Nate took me in his arms. Instead, I’m throbbing. Aching.
He runs a hand down my arm, a gesture I find disturbingly comforting. “Does that scare you, love?”
I nod. I can’t tell if my body is shutting down after the extremes of the day, or if it’s simply numb after too much input, or if—God, don’t even think it—desire is somehow canceling it out. Nate nods in return, accepting my fear just as he’s accepted every other emotion I’ve given him today.
“I’m going to kiss you, Grace, and you’re going to let me. Okay?”
Nothing will ever be okay again.
“No,” I whisper, even as I lift my face. “I can’t do this.”
“Wrong. This,” his gaze sweeps from my eyes to my mouth, “is the only thing you can do.”
He pauses, his body poised over mine. I can feel his ready power and, beneath that, a predatory passion. I should push him away. Run screaming from the house. Call the police. Claw myself away from Nate and never come back. Instead, I look into those eyes, so dark and fixed.
“Please,” I whisper, knowing I shouldn’t. “Nate, please.”
“Say yes.”
I squeeze my thighs tight and my stomach twists as I realise I’ve been wet since he carried me into this room.
God, what is wrong with me?
“It’s too much,” I whisper, “I can’t—”
“Say the fucking word, Grace,” his breath is hot on my neck, “say you’re my wife and say yes.”
I shake my head, even as my entire being screams an affirmative. Guilt sweeps through me, potent and heavy. Instead of dispersing, my need sharpens. The teeth are deep within, chewing on me, and I know I’ll be consumed if Nate doesn’t give me what I need right here and now.
I’m tearing at his shirt, pulling him close, closing my eyes, willing him to do what I can’t.
He growls and fastens his lips to my throat.
I moan when his teeth rake a sharp path along my carotid artery.
I dig my nails into his chest in answer, feeling the give of his skin through the fabric of his shirt, hurting him on purpose.
He hisses and pulls back enough to stare into my face. I suppress the absurd urge to apologise. His eyes are heavy-lidded, but as sharp as ever.
“So it’s like that, Grace? You make me decide for you so you can pretend not to want it?”
I draw a terrified breath to tell him no, I don’t want that. I’m not that sick.
But it would be a lie.
What he’s offering is exactly what I want—what I need.
His expression turns lupine.
“If that’s what you want me to do,” his hand curls gently around my neck, “then that’s what I’ll do.”
My knees buckle and Nate catches me without missing a beat, lifting me effortlessly into the shadow of the four-poster bed.
“I’m going to take that kiss, Grace.” He stares into my eyes. “Then I’m going to hold you down and give you the wedding night you never got. And you can scratch me raw and pretend you don’t want it—and I’ll do it anyway.”
My breath seizes in my chest, tears renewing their well-worn path down my cheeks. I’m so turned on I might start begging.
“Do you want that, love?”
His hands are everywhere—dipping beneath my sweater, then into my pants.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
“Such a gracious girl, letting me decide for you.”
That word, so close to what Mother and Nick insisted on calling me, is punctuated by the sound of tearing fabric. I whimper, trying to cover myself, but Nate brushes my hands aside as he strips off my shirt and bra. My jeans come next. My underwear.
I’m trembling and exposed. I could stop him, even now. And I should. I really should. But I don’t. Nate stares into my eyes, then tilts his head as he looks me over, a small smile still playing around his lips.
“Perfect.”
That word cannot apply to me, but he says it again.
Like a designation to each part he touches: shoulders, neck, breasts.
Nate says they’re perfect, even though they hardly fill his palms. I moan at the dissonance between his words and the truth.
But his hands are reverent as he presses me down on the bed.
Nate stands back, eyes glimmering. He shucks himself naked with none of the ceremony he afforded me. I watch what the flickering light reveals: a broad, strong chest, two powerful thighs, and his cock, hard and ready. I crawl backwards, breaths heaving, worried I might truly panic.
He matches my retreat with pursuit, crawling over me.
“Going to run, Grace?” He shifts my hips, centering me on the bed. “I’ll give you a head start, then I’ll hunt you down. I’ll be your big, bad wolf.”
His words are igniting what I’ve tried to drown for years.
I’ve locked this scorching part of myself away, willing it to die the way Nick wanted.
But it’s still here, fragmented and jagged.
And the desire isn’t flame any more. There’s been an elemental shift, and now it’s like the floods of spring, flowing from me, slicking down my thighs.
Even as I try to scramble out from beneath him, I open my legs just a little.
I know this is the moment I should deny everything I’m feeling, the truth within that’s forcing its way out.
I should choose grief instead. Or anger.
Even fear. I don’t. Instead, I open up and show Nate the truth of what I am: the insatiable woman at the centre of this burning flood.
His eyes lock onto that untouched part of me.
I snap my legs shut, shame filling me with heat that has nothing to do with arousal.
“Don’t show me then pretend you didn’t,” Nate snarls. Then his eyes find mine and he grins. “Not when you’re panting for me.”
Embarrassment brings on the mental static, and I try to crawl away again. He catches my wrists in one hand; his other presses my legs open, and—damn me—I let him. I let him pry me open.
“I’m going to eat you alive,” he promises, his lips at my thigh.
It’s all the warning I get before he presses his tongue into me.
I spasm around the invasion, crying out.
There’s no warm-up, no preliminary petting, just that wicked muscle forcing its way inside.
I try to clamp my thighs, to control his pace, but he thrusts his tongue deeper and I almost weep with the intensity of it.
When I open my legs for more, his hand finds my clit. A reward.
Fuck.
I’m dying already, my body quaking. The pleasure is as inevitable as the tide coming in, as the moon filling up, as Nate himself.
I open myself to it, my yes finally on my lips, my body ready to accept everything.
I haven’t come in more days or weeks or months than I want to think about, and even then I always had to try for it.
Now I can’t stop myself, and I can’t shut up.
I’m saying things I shouldn’t, my voice breathy and desperate.
This orgasm is hurtling towards me, getting ready to take me rather than the reverse.
At the last moment, Nate changes tactics.
His fingers plunge downwards, filling me in a way that’s almost painful as his lips fasten on my clit.
I try to free my wrists—I need to cover my mouth and shut myself up because I am screaming.
Nate holds me down, just like he promised, as he brings the obliterating orgasm crashing down.