Chapter 36 Eliana
ELIANA
eighty-six /?ātē ?siks/: verb
The shower helps. A bit. It knocks me out, if nothing else. By the time I emerge wrapped in one of Zeke’s oversized hoodies and a pair of Yasmin’s sweatpants that barely stretch over my belly, I’m asleep on my feet.
But there are still a few obstacles between me and the sweet embrace of the duvet. I come out wearily braced for the inquisition that Yasmin and Zeke are no doubt going to launch—but to my surprise, the house is empty. Frowning, I go check my phone and see a voice memo from Yas.
“Hey, love. We went out to get groceries. Be back in a little while. Kisses!”
That’s a little bit of a sudden and inexplicable departure, even by Yasmin’s impulsive standards. It makes me wonder what Bastian said to them while I was showering. But I’m too tired to look this gift horse in the mouth. If the questions can wait until tomorrow, so much the better.
Thus, I find myself standing in front of the pullout couch, trying to convince my exhausted body to tackle the ordeal of actually yanking out the damn thing, when I hear footsteps in the doorway.
“Not there.”
I turn to face Bastian. “Huh?”
“You’re sleeping in my room tonight.”
I do a double-take. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Bastian, I’m too tired for this. Today was a lot, as I’m sure you can imagine, and I just want to go to sleep. Can you please just help me fix the sheets so I can do that?”
He does the exact opposite: He reaches out and plucks the fitted sheet from my hand. “Did I fucking stutter?” he growls.
That hot, familiar prickle of arousal-masquerading-as-irritation flares low in my belly. I spent a lot of time on the floor of the shower wondering who I’m turning into. One of the answers, it seems, is that I’m turning into someone who likes being bossed around.
“Bastian, we had a deal,” I remind him. “One night. That’s what we agreed to. And even though today was—” I swallow hard, trying to find words for the nightmare that was today. I settle on, “—a lot, I can’t just move into your room like we’re playing house.”
He is unmoved. “After what happened today, you really think I’m letting you sleep out here alone?”
“The living room isn’t exactly a war zone, Bastian! The house is secure. I don’t need a bodyguard while I’m unconscious and drooling.”
“You didn’t think you needed one at the clinic, either. Maybe you don’t know everything after all.”
My jaw tightens with hurt. “That’s a low blow and you know it.”
He hems in closer, near enough that I can smell the wintergreen on his breath and the faint bloody undertone that no amount of hand-washing has fully erased. “You almost died today, Eliana. You and our baby.”
“I was trying to establish boundaries,” I snap back. “Something you clearly have no concept of.”
“Boundaries don’t mean shit when you’re dead.”
“And control doesn’t mean shit when the person you’re controlling resents you for it!”
We’re both breathing hard now. My hands are balled into fists at my sides.
“I’m not trying to control you,” he growls. “I’m just trying to keep you alive long enough to resent me for another fifty years.”
“Then maybe start by trusting me to make my own decisions.”
“I did. Look where that got us. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“You’re unbelievable,” I finally manage to splutter. “You know that? Absolutely fucking unbelievable.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“I’m not sleeping in your room, Bastian. End of discussion.”
I lash out my hand, hunting for the fitted sheet he stole from me. My fingers find nothing but air. I hear his footsteps retreat—not toward the bedroom, but toward the kitchen.
Where’s he going now?
Drawers open. Metal clinks against metal. “What are you doing?” I call out, an uneasy tingle crawling up my spine.
His footsteps return, heavier now.
“… Bastian?”
The mattress dips as he kneels beside it. Then comes a sound that makes my blood freeze: the unmistakable shhhhiink of a blade puncturing fabric.
“What the—”
Tearing. Ripping. The wet, violent noise of foam being gutted like a fish.
He’s carving up the fucking mattress.
“Bastian, what the hell are you doing?!”
“I’m solving a problem,” he replies calmly.
I stand frozen, listening to him murder my mattress. A dozen emotions pop up their heads in my chest like a really bizarre game of Whack-A-Mole.
This is insane, says one.
This is manipulative, says another.
This is exactly the kind of high-handed bullshit you’ve been trying to set boundaries against for weeks, insists a third.
The whole rodent chorus is correct. But instead of anger, I succumb to something else entirely: a crazed laugh bubbling up in my throat and escaping before I can stop it.
It’s just so completely, absurdly Bastian to solve a problem by taking a damn knife to it. So predictable that I can’t even be mad.
Springs pop free with metallic twangs. Stuffing spills onto the floor in cottony clumps I can feel falling against my bare feet like snowflakes.
“There.” He settles back on his haunches. “Now, you have no choice.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
He rises to his feet and tosses the knife on the counter with a metallic clank. “The couch was an obstacle. Now, it’s not.”
The laughter keeps coming, ripping out of me in violent waves that leave me breathless and dizzy. It’s not even funny. Nothing about today has been funny. But my body apparently didn’t get that memo.
“So,” he asks with terrifying calmness, “are you going to keep arguing, or are you going to come to bed?”
Any therapist worth their salt would point at this moment and say that I cannot give in. If you yield an inch now, you’ll yield a mile later. It’s batshit behavior to literally carve your problems out of existence.
But I’m exhausted. Traumatized. And quite honestly… a bit relieved to have the decision taken out of my hands.
Is that fucked-up? Probably. Dr. Whoever-I-See-Someday will have a field day with that one. Tell me more about the time you let a murderer slice up your mattress and found it just oh-so-swoonworthy.
“You’re insane,” I tell him again, just in case he didn’t hear me the first time.
But maybe I’m insane, too.
Because I’m already moving toward his bedroom.
Bastian’s hand on my hip steers me down the hall. Violent one second, heart-wrenchingly tender the next—the enigmas contained within this man never fail to make my head spin.
The bedroom smells like him. The sheets, when I slip beneath them, do, too. When my head hits the pillow, my whole body releases knots I hadn’t noticed I was carrying and melts into the mattress.
But I can’t fall asleep quite yet. I listen to Bastian undress on the other side of the room. His zipper drags down and I picture it revealing the low cut of his abs. His shirt hits the floor with a soft whump and I imagine the swell of his biceps, the thatch of honey-colored hair on his chest.
My mind drifts back to this afternoon. A kiss on a curb, a ripped-up hospital gown and hands that couldn’t stop searching for more.
Be my good girl. Come for me.
He had blood on his fingertips, and yet I still did exactly what he wanted.
What is it about something being forbidden that makes it so tempting?
My whole life, I’ve played between the lines.
I’ve been a good girl—not in the way Bastian meant it, but in the way that the world expects girls to be good.
I followed rules and paid my bills and I always waited for the light to change before I crossed the street.
I was so busy taking care of Mama and myself that I never even thought about what I’d do if I had another choice.
Now, though, I have too many choices. The world is my oyster—and that oyster is in the hands of a man who’s feeding it to me, his eyes shining blue and black, blood smeared across the tattoos on his knuckles, and he’s saying, Taste this. Taste what you can have. Taste what I can give you.
“You better not be sleeping naked,” I warn as I feel the other side of the mattress dimple beneath Bastian’s weight.
“Boxer briefs, as promised,” he says. “But say the word and I can make those disappear.”
“In your dreams.” Even as I say that, though, my belly clutches in on itself with that damp, prickly heat again.
It’d be so easy to taste what he can give me. One word, like he said, and I’d have it all again. Are my morals really worth all this fighting?
I wish I had an answer.
Bastian slides beneath the covers, reaches out, and pulls me against his chest. His hand settles against the swell of my belly like it belongs there.
“Sleep,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’ve got you.”