Chapter 21 #2
My head snaps toward her. “You spoke to him?”
“No.” She gives my knee a gentle squeeze. “But I think you should talk to him. He’s not the type of man who takes kindly to being ignored.”
She’s right, but I’m not ready to talk to him. Tori must see the conflict on my face because she pats my knee one more time and pushes off the couch. “I’m going to get dressed.”
She disappears down the hallway, and I’m left alone with my sandwich and my thoughts. Twenty minutes later, she emerges in jeans and a flannel, her hair pulled into a messy bun, her keys jingling in her hand.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” she said.
I nod, and she’s gone, the front door clicking shut behind her.
The apartment falls silent. I reach for my phone on the end table. It’s been off since I left the clubhouse, and I power it on now, watching the screen light up. A string of notifications flood in—missed calls, voicemails, text messages. All from Lucifer.
I don’t open any of them.
Instead, I pull up my contacts and find the number for Dr. Patel’s office.
I have an appointment scheduled for next week, and I want to move it up.
Hopefully, I’ll get good news that I don’t need any more reconstructive surgeries.
If that’s the case, we can end this sham of a marriage and go our separate ways.
I won’t be indebted to the man I fell in love with, and he can go back to fucking his saddle bunnies guilt-free.
I dial, and a receptionist answers on the third ring.
“This is Jessica Holland,” I say, hoarsely. “I have an appointment scheduled for next Tuesday, but I was wondering if there’s any way I can move it up. This week, if possible.”
She puts me on hold, then two minutes later she comes back on the line.
“We actually had a cancellation for Thursday at two. Does that work for you?”
“Thursday is perfect. Thank you.”
I end the call and set the phone on my lap. My thumb hovers over the screen, and before I can talk myself out of it, I open the browser and search how to file for divorce.
The results load instantly—legal aid websites, family law attorneys, step-by-step guides for filing without a lawyer.
I click on one and start reading, my eyes scanning the text without really absorbing any of it.
The process seems straightforward enough.
File a petition. Serve the other party. Wait sixty days. Attend a hearing. Get a decree.
Sixty days.
That seems excessive for a marriage that was never meant to last. I wonder if we can forge all of that too.
My throat tightens, and I blink rapidly, refusing to let the tears fall. I’m about to click on another link when a sound cuts through the silence of the apartment.
The front door rattles in its frame as someone bangs their fist against it, and I jerk upright on the couch, my phone tumbling from my lap.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
“Open the fucking door, Jess.”
My stomach sinks at the sound of Lucifer’s voice.
But then another ferocious bang sounds, and my legs are moving before my brain gives the command.
I cross the living room on shaky legs, my heart slamming against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my throat.
My hand finds the doorknob, and I turn it, pulling the door open.
Lucifer fills the doorway. Two days of dark stubble covers his jaw, and his eyes are wild—bloodshot, ringed with shadows, burning with something that makes my pulse hammer.
His cut is dusty, his boots caked with dried mud, and there’s a streak of something dark on his forearm that I’m pretty sure is blood.
He looks like a man who’s been through a war and is about to start another one.
“Your phone fucking broken?” he growls, his gaze raking over me from head to toe. Taking in the sweatpants, the oversized T-shirt, the tangled mess of my hair, the dark circles under my eyes. His jaw tightens, and something flashes across his face—anger, concern, possession—I can’t tell which.
“Lucifer—”
He steps inside, and the door slams shut behind him.
“Homeboy said Ginger got to you.”
I turn my back to him. My throat is so tight I can barely breathe, and I don’t know how to shape the words into something that won’t destroy me.
Every emotion I’ve been carrying since Ginger walked into that clubhouse is sitting right beneath my skin, raw and bleeding, and if I open my mouth now, I’m going to say something I can’t take back.
“Your voice broke along with the fucking phone?” he growls. “I’m talking to you. Turn around and fucking look at me.”
Something hot and sharp flares in my chest. I spin around to face him, my hands curling into fists at my sides.
“She didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”
He scoffs. “I highly doubt that. Ginger is a cunt.”
He takes a step toward me, and I try to back away, but there’s nowhere to go. My shoulders hit the wall, and he closes the distance, his body crowding mine, his palms slamming against the plaster on either side of my head.
“What the fuck is going on, Jess?” His voice drops, and the anger starts to fade. I can handle a loud and abrasive Lucifer, but when he gets all soft on me, that fucking wrecks me. “I’ve been out of my mind, worrying?—”
“I think we need to get divorced.”
The words fall out of my mouth before I can stop them, and he goes completely still. Every muscle in his body locks, and his eyes widen just a fraction before narrowing into dangerous slits.
“The fuck you just say?”
I swallow hard. “I can’t do this anymore, Lucifer.” My voice trembles, but I force myself to keep going. “Not after what happened between us the other night. I’m not wired like those other women. I’m not my mother.”
His brows furrow. “Your mother? What the fuck does your mother have to do with this?”
A frustrated sound tears from my throat, and I press my palms flat against his chest, pushing him back as I step around him.
In all the months we’ve been doing this, we’ve never been very forthcoming with our pasts, but there’s no way to properly express what I’m feeling without giving him the truth.
“My mother was a whore,” I rasp. “And my father . . . he was her pimp. I ran away from home because I knew if I stayed, I’d wind up just like her.
” My eyes burn, and I blink hard, but it doesn’t help.
“That it was only a matter of time before my dad had a line of johns waiting outside my door like he had them wait outside hers.” A tear breaks free and rolls down my cheek.
I don’t wipe it away. Instead, I turn around and bare my pain to the man I so badly wanted to be mine.
“What happened between us . . .” My voice cracks, but I push through. “It wasn’t just an itch I needed to scratch. It wasn’t just sex for me.” I look up at him. “I . . . fucking love you, and I know that’s not what you want to hear. That you married me because you felt immense guilt but?—”
The rest of the sentence dies on my tongue as he closes the distance between us, and again I find myself backed against another wall.
“Shut the fuck up.”
I flinch, and my chin drops, my gaze falling to the floor between us. He lifts his hand, his fingers curling under my chin, and he tilts my face back up. His touch is rough, calloused, but there’s something almost gentle in the way he holds me, and that breaks my heart even more.
“You don’t know shit about what I want to hear,” he rasps.
His thumb traces along my jaw, and I can feel the tremor in his hand.
“I did marry you out of guilt. I put you in that bar because I was a man obsessed, and you almost died because of it. You weren’t fired from The Hideaway because you did something wrong.
I wanted you close. I wanted to be able to look at you whenever the fuck I wanted, so I had Max fire you and I gave you a job.
Watched you night after night, committed every fucking feature to my mind, everything from your walk to your fucking smile. ”
My breath catches, and I try to make sense of what he’s saying, but he doesn’t give me a chance to process anything before he dumps more truth on me.
“When I realized you were fucking trapped inside the bar, burning alive, something in my soul fucking died. I knew then that I was going to do whatever I had to do to make sure you survived. I would’ve paid anything, and did, but it wasn’t enough, and marrying you became a matter of life or death.
But staying married to you is a matter of life or death too because I’d rather die than watch you live the rest of your life as someone else’s woman. ”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. A sob builds in my throat, and I press my lips together to hold it back.