“I’m not going to hurt myself.”
The words come out louder than I intended, but I don’t care.
“I’m healing, Elijah. My body is healing. You need to stop treating me like I’m made of glass.”
Something changes in his face. Not irritation. Pain. Deep and immediate and ugly enough that it makes my own anger falter for half a second.
“But you did break.”
The words come out like he hates them. Like they’re cutting him on the way out.
“And I wasn’t there.”
My chest tightens.
“I couldn’t keep you safe.”
“I’m here now,” I say, stepping closer. “I’m right here now.”
But he shakes his head once, like it doesn’t matter, like the fact that I survived somehow doesn’t erase the image he’s carrying.
And maybe it doesn’t. But I’m carrying something too. I’m carrying this distance. I’m carrying the way he looks at me and then looks away. I’m carrying the need for him so fiercely that it feels like grief.
“I’m your wife,” I say, and my voice drops because this is the truth of it, the core of it, the thing I can’t soften anymore. “You married me. You say you love me. But you treat me like I’m porcelain, and I can’t live like that.”
He doesn’t move.
His whole body looks tense enough to splinter.
“There is no point in you being here with me if you’re not actually with me,” I whisper.
His mouth tightens.
“I miss you.”
That lands. I see it. It flickers through him so sharply I almost reach for him then, almost close the distance myself, but I stop because I need him to hear me first.
“I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”
The confession comes low. Raw. Not loud, not dramatic, but honest in a way he hasn’t been with me in days.
“You won’t.”
He lets out something halfway between a laugh and a broken breath.
“You know what I’m like with you, Lia.”
And I do.
God, I do.
I know the weight of his hand on my throat, the way he takes space without apology, the way he pins me under him and makes me feel like the centre of his world and the object of his hunger in the same breath.
I know exactly what he means. And it doesn’t scare me. It makes my body ache with need so deep it almost hurts.
“That’s what I’m craving,” I say, and my voice shakes because I’m so tired of trying to make this sound softer than it is. “That’s what I need.”
His eyes flare.
