Chapter 17 #2
A dark, incandescent fury begins to spill over Elodie’s vision. Her hands shake around Jude, her grip tightening until he squeaks in protest. Everything narrows to this: the flush creeping over Bren’s ears as he awkwardly rubs the back of his neck, looking anywhere but at her.
“What the fuck,” she says.
Bren closes his eyes for a second. “Elodie…”
“Did you take him to a doctor?” she snarls. “Without telling me?”
Jude cups his hands over his ears.
“That’s illegal. You can’t do that,” she shouts. “He’s my child—”
“Well, I did.” Something snaps in Bren’s eyes. “Because you won’t. You can count your son’s rib bones, but that doesn’t freak you out. It sure as hell freaks me out. Oliver took me aside at Thanksgiving—”
“Who the hell is—”
“Ava’s husband!” He yells it now. “I don’t know where you were, but Jude tripped, and Oliver picked him up, and he told me he’s shocked at how light he is.
He said to bring Jude into the clinic and he’d do a general checkup, just to see what’s going on.
I’ve got a reference to a psychologist and an eating disorder specialist, because this kid is fucking malnourished. ”
Elodie shoves him.
He is immovable, built of steady oak and iron and corded muscle, and all he does is grab her wrist in response, yanking her close while she struggles to keep hold of Jude with one arm. Jude has begun to cry, his fright genuine and unsure.
She tries to pull free, but Bren holds on. “You have no goddamn right to take him anywhere without me.” Her voice tips into a scream. “You kidnapped my son.”
“Jesus Christ, can you even hear yourself? Why wouldn’t you want your fucking husband to look out for our kid?”
Jude’s whimpering turns to full-out wails and she has to raise her voice over him. “He doesn’t need your help! He needs me. He only needs me.”
“The last thing he needs is you right now.”
“Don’t you ever say that!”
Jude’s cries spiral louder.
Bren reaches for him, but Elodie whips away, stumbling into the table with a crash. Jude sags in her arms, and she tries to heft him higher on her hip, but then Bren is there, arms sliding around Jude as he yanks him from Elodie.
“You’re hurting him!” Bren roars.
It happens so swiftly. Jude in her arms, then gone. The coldness where he was once fused to her side like a wound, open and hot and throbbing.
For a minute, there is perfect silence, both of them breathing hard as they stare at each other.
Jude buries his face in Bren’s neck, his crying sliding into silent, heaving sobs.
There is war in her eyes, matched in Bren’s glare, and the vicious bitterness lingering in the air between them sits on their tongues like pepper.
When she doesn’t move, Bren very carefully sits Jude back in his seat.
“Stay there for a sec, little buddy.” He thumbs tears from Jude’s face. “I’m just going to talk to Mommy.” Then he stands, grabs Elodie’s arm, and drags her out of the kitchen.
She fights, her rage turning to a fierce shriek as she hits at his arm, but he doesn’t release her, instead pushing her into the darkened hall and pressing her to the wall.
It is the full weight of him against her that terrifies her.
It doesn’t matter if he’s being gentle; he is taller, stronger; he is the one in control of their bodies right now.
Her shoulder blades scrape wallpaper as he leans into her, and she thinks this is his plan: to flatten her so hard against the house, it will simply open up and swallow her whole.
His lips hover only inches from hers and she thinks about crashing her mouth into his, of biting until flesh rips open like a soft, fresh plum.
“Let me go.” Her voice is deadly cold. “Or I will call the police and say my husband is abusing me.”
“You won’t.” His calm is flat, low, but without malice. “People like you are terrified of the law. You’d never willingly ask them to look at you, look into you, right, Elodie?”
She can’t breathe. Her fingers slide into his sweater and twist until he presses even closer to her, hip bone ground against hers.
“But you’d never lie to me about anything,” Bren goes on. “Surely, I have nothing to worry about. So why don’t we have a rational conversation about Jude, and you tell me why you’re purposefully starving him.”
“You have no idea what you’re saying,” she hisses.
“You can’t stop him growing up.”
“He isn’t growing up.” Her voice hardly sounds like her own, rather something ripped out of guttural, feral places, her teeth lengthening to wicked points as she digs her fingernails into the flesh of Bren’s side. He doesn’t flinch.
Silence grows between them, bleeds.
Her eyes flutter closed, and she holds her breath, forcing the volcanic anger back down to a simmer in the pit of her gut.
Control yourself. She can’t be this venomous, untamed creature.
She must be sweet and tentative, a girl who loves ballet and pretty things and her little boy and her beautiful husband.
Mitigate the damage of this monster she’s let show. And do it fast.
“Bren.” She pulls his name from her mouth, strained and wretched. “Please…”
“Nice,” Bren says, calm and quiet. “You figured out how deranged you sound.”
She lets out a long, shuddering breath and her body softens into his hard, unforgiving chest. He is still pressing her hard to the wall, but she molds to him, taking a box cutter to her anger and draining the abscess.
“I’m doing my best.” Tears fill her voice.
He says nothing.
“You drugged me.” It comes out barely above a whisper. “I’m pregnant.”
Discomfort flashes in his eyes, but then his jaw sets. “I checked that it wouldn’t hurt the baby.”
“So you planned this ahead of time? And what about me?” As much as she wants to roar, she forces her voice into a tearful whimper. “Or am I just an incubator for your child?”
“Elodie, stop it. I wouldn’t have had to if you weren’t being like this.
” A muscle in his jaw flexes and he sighs.
“Look, I know you’ve been unwell. That news about your parents shook you up, I get that.
But I’m going to help you and you are going to let me.
” He pauses. “I’m adopting Jude. I started the paperwork. ”
She could strike him.
“No,” she snaps.
Frustration laces his voice. “This is insane. We’re starting a family together, we should all have one name. Plus, this fixes any future visa issues we might have. It makes sense.”
Cold plummets through her chest, a scream of rage trapped behind her teeth. “You’ll need my signature and I won’t sign.”
The way he looks at her is peeling, eviscerating, and when he puts his thumb to the corner of her mouth, there is such tenderness in his touch. “Why?”
She tries to smooth her emotions, to make herself blank, but every word shakes with inverted venom as it spills from her mouth. “Because I said no.”
“You know that day there was glass in his food? I checked the leftovers in the can. No glass there. I checked the trash. Broken glass. Do you want to explain that to me? Or explain what happened today in the nursery? There’s nothing wrong with the floor, Elodie. You are trying to scare him.”
“I love my son more than life.” But she sounds hoarse. “I told you it’s this house. There’s blood inside the walls and something is breathing in there. Ask Jude. It’s terrifying him. He’ll tell you.”
He looks at her with overwhelming pity.
“I want to ask Jude a lot of things. Maybe I will.” He rests his forehead against hers, his voice barely more than a whisper in the dark.
But there is a rich menace to his words that chills her down to her bones.
“Maybe I should ask him if he’s really scared of this house—or if he’s just scared of you. ”
Air seizes in her lungs. She knots her fingers in his sweater, but she wishes her hands were at his throat.
It occurs to her now how quiet Jude has gone in the kitchen, how someone needs to check on him, comfort him, how she is terrified if she goes to him right now, he will cry out for Bren instead.
She is a barely repressed explosion as she says through gritted teeth, “Get off me. I don’t even know you right now.”
“But I know you, Elodie.” Bren’s voice is low and rusted and hard.
She wants to claw his eyes out. “No, you don’t. I need to get Jude. I need—I need to get him away from this fucking house.”
He leans in, his mouth is at her ear, his breath hot with tightly coiled anger. “I know way more than you think I do. And no, you’re not leaving my house.”