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“Come on,” he urges, guiding me to the front door where an idling car waits, haphazardly parked near the steps. He opens the back door for me and I pile inside, my pulse hammering. He slings himself into the driver’s seat.
“How bad is it?” I ask him.
“We just need to go,” he says, refusing to answer me as he throws the car into gear. In the backseat, I don’t know what to do with myself. Every ugly scenario plays itself through my head.
What if the last thing I ever did to Salvatore was give back his engagement ring and call him unworthy?
“Noctus, fucking talk to me! Tell me what happened!”
“What do you think happened?” He asks, his teeth clenched. Now that we’re on the main roads, he’s doing close to 90, weaving in and out of the 3 A.M. traffic, with his phone in one hand. He makes a call. I hold my breath, just to hear the soft ring on the other end of the line.
No one answers.
The tears start falling hard at the thought of Salvatore not being able to answer. Fear has a fist around my throat. I can barely breathe.
I have to keep it together. I have to. I’m no use to him if I’m hysterical.
“Let me try.” I reach for the phone, desperate to get in contact with him. Noctus ignores me, his attention on the road. “Noctus, please.”
He tosses the phone into the passenger’s seat, out of my reach.
We’ve slowed too much, joining with the leisurely city traffic even with the roads sparse at this hour. I itch for us to cut around the cars, to drive the way he had been before. The city crawls by.
“Noctus, come on—” I beg, scooting up.
“Sit back,” he tells me sharply. The tension in his voice makes me jump. He sniffs sharply, clenching and unclenching his hands on the wheel.
“I knew he had you all fucked up in the head, but I didn’t know he’d done this much work on you.”
“What are you talking about—”
“What is he to you? Sal? Like, what do you actually think your relationship with him is?”
The question doesn’t make sense. I blink through the tears, trying to understand what he’s asking.
“He’s—” my thoughts skip, hit the word fiancé for a second, but I don’t want to give him that label. It’s not enough. “He’s my husband.”
Noctus shakes his head.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathes. It breaks into a laugh. “You know, he had you slung over his shoulder like a bag of trash the first time I saw you. And now you’re crying like a baby for him.”
“Because I care about him—”
“Because he trained you like a fucking dog.” The words clap through my thoughts, sending me reeling. I stare at his profile, trying to make sense of what he’s saying, the sudden switch in his attitude. We wait at an eternal red light, like purgatory.
“Guess that’s not your fault, though. He’ll only show you what you wanna see. That’s how he works. He’ll feed you anything you want as long as you do what he asks. Guess I shouldn’t blame you too much. Hell, I fell for his bullshit, too.” His hand knocks angrily against the steering wheel. “But not anymore. Not either of us.”
The silence rocks the car as I try to piece together what he’s talking about.
“Noctus, where is he?” I ask, on the verge of breaking down in a panic.
He rolls his eyes and curses under his breath.
“Well, let’s see. It’s almost 3, so if I had to guess, right now, your husband is probably balls deep in some plastic-tittied stripper. He likes Violet, but he’ll settle for one of the others if she’s not working.
You know, she kind of looks like you. Between me and you, princess, I think he has a type.”
The words whip against my expectations. For a few seconds, I’m too stunned and confused to even be hurt by them.
