“She called me ungrateful. And maybe I am. I’ve said that about myself often enough. I’m selfish, too. Look at what I’ve done with you. Used you for your body, even though you did some using, too. But we both got orgasms out of it, so I think the exchange rate was pretty fair there. But ungrateful with them? How? Tell me how. By trying to be the perfect daughter even when I wanted to run away to a circus. A literal fucking circus. I was ten, on a class trip, and I snuck behind the tent and was five minutes from sneaking into a clown’s trunk. Only fear of being the circus’s tigers’ next meal made me go back and find my class.”
Achilles choked. “Mycah—”
She gripped his thick wrists, clinging to them as if his solid body were the only thing anchoring her to the earth. “No, I’m serious. By getting straight As and graduating top of my class and going to the best college? Supporting them for years with the job they scorned? I’m not worthy because I don’t have a billionaire husband and head several charity committees and host social events of the year? My ring finger, vagina and womb are more important than my brain. Yet, without me, they would be out on the street. ButI’m ungrateful. They destroy me with their criticism. Their dismissal of my successes. Their derision of my perceived lack of femininity. Meanwhile, sometimes, I think I’m strangling from the responsibility of carrying this family and their expectations. And yet I do it. You asked me why I do it. Do you remember that?”
“Yes, baby, I remember,” he whispered.
“Because I want their love. I want them to accept me for who I am, to love me for me. But that means sacrificing my own dreams, my own desires, and conforming to theirs. Just like they’re already starting to do with Angelique. She said to excuse her for loving me. I can’t.” Mycah tightened her grip on him, tugging, closing her eyes. “I can’t excuse her. Because their love comes at too high a price. My identity. My peace. My...soul.”
When the last word left her, she wilted, as if the outpouring sapped the last of her strength. Achilles caught her, hauling her against his chest. He rose, holding her in his arms as if she weighed nothing, and took her place on the couch. And when the numbness cracked down the middle, and the hurt, anger and sorrow gushed in, drowning her, she didn’t fight it.
She sobbed her disappointment, her outrage, her pain, her fear. How long she curled on his lap, pressed against his chest, she didn’t know. But by the time she glanced up, the sky outside the bay windows had deepened from purple to black, casting dark shadows across Achilles’s face.
A chasm of emptiness yawned wide in her chest, but unlike the numbing from earlier, this was...cleansing. Sighing, she shifted, wincing at the weariness that weighed down her limbs. She should get up, move, say something. At least apologize to Achilles for losing her shit, then crying all over him.
Before she had a chance to decide which one to do first, he stood, still holding her in his arms. She gasped, wrapping her arms around his neck, and even that effort was almost beyond her at the moment.
“Bedroom?” he asked.
“Down the hall. Last room on the right.”
He didn’t speak again, just followed her instructions. In moments, he entered her room. Not bothering to turn on the lights, he set her on the bed and left, making his way to the en suite bathroom.
The light flicked on, and seconds later, the sound of running water reached her. Surprise whispered through her, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it because he returned, gently grasping her waist and bringing her back to her feet. With a quick efficiency that didn’t contain sensuality but only tenderness, he removed her clothes and once more lifted her against his chest.
No words were spoken as he settled her in the warm bath, removed the tie from his own hair, gathered her curls on top of her head and bathed her. In other circumstances, she would’ve objected. She’d always been the caretaker, the provider, the one in control. But now, as Achilles smoothed the bath cloth over her shoulders, arms and breasts, she handed that control over to him. Let him care for her. Wash her. Pick her up out of the tub and pat her dry.
When he carried her back to her bedroom, slipped her between the sheets and climbed in behind her, she didn’t protest. No, she welcomed his hard, protective body curled around her. This wasn’t about sex. It wasn’t about expectation.
And as she drifted to sleep, for the first time in longer than she could remember, peace filled her.
Thirteen
Achilles raised his arms above his head, stretching them toward the beautiful, vaulted ceiling of Mycah’s living room. Groaning at the burn in his muscles, he lowered his arms, exhaling and surveying the room he’d temporarily commandeered as his workspace.
As soon as Mycah had fallen into a deep sleep, he’d slid out of bed, retrieved his laptop bag from his car and set up just down the hall so if she needed him, he could hear her. After that meltdown, no way in hell he was leaving her alone tonight. She shouldn’t be alone. He had the feeling she was alone too often.
And yeah, he definitely caught the pot-calling-the-kettle-black hypocrisy of that.
Leaning back against the couch cushion, he took in the surprisingly warm, cozy apartment. If a person could call huge bay windows with ornate designs, a massive fireplace that nearly spanned one wall, beautiful hardwood walls, floor-to-ceiling fully packed bookshelves and gorgeous molding something as simple as an apartment. Still, he liked it much better than the penthouse where he stayed. Here, trees filled her view, and in her spacious bedroom with its exposed brick walls, he’d snagged a glimpse of a garden outside her window. Even her kitchen looked like an actual kitchen—homey, lived in, with a table, chairs, wood cabinets, windows—instead of something out of a futuristic sci-fi movie.
Mycah had even decorated it with furniture meant for comfort instead of appearance. The overstuffed couches and chairs, earth tones and jeweled pillows, throw rugs, standing lamps, Afrocentric art—they all invited a person to sit down, curl their feet underneath themselves, talk, stay. A far cry from her parents’ house that screamed “this is staged so you know how affluent, powerful and important we are.”
The apartment wasn’t the only surprising aspect he’d learned about Mycah.
Jesus.
Her pain.
So much of it, she’d cracked under the weight.
He propped his elbows on his thighs, digging his thumbs into his eyes, rubbing them. How could her parents not look at her and be proud of the woman she was? Not appreciate all that she sacrificed for them? Despite how they chose to show it, he didn’t doubt that Laurence and Cherise loved Mycah. But that love came with conditions. And those conditions were asphyxiating the relationship with their daughter as surely as weeds choking the life from flowers straining to reach the sun.
A muted sound came from the direction of Mycah’s bedroom, and he tilted his head toward it, frowning, listening. Several seconds passed, and just as his muscles loosened and he returned to his laptop to resume working, the sound reached him again. He recognized it.
Surging from the couch, he strode down the corridor, entered Mycah’s bedroom and headed for the bathroom. He spotted her, hunched over the toilet and clinging to it as she vomited into the porcelain bowl.
Kneeling next to her, he murmured her name, rubbing soothing circles on her back, feeling...helpless. Not an easy thing for a man to admit. As soon as she’d told him about the pregnancy, he’d read everything he could about it—especially that first trimester. So he knew morning sickness—a misnomer if he ever heard one—was normal for most women, but he hated to see her suffer like this and not be able to do anything to help her. He’d witnessed his fair share of people puking. Some of the men his mother had dated. In high school. In jail. College. But this was different. With them, he hadn’t wished he could trade places, take their misery on for himself.
