A disgrace.
“I...” I begin, not even sure what words could possibly make any of this better.
“Is it true?” Hunter asks.
His voice is deadly.
“Are you married to my father, Piper?”
I close my eyes for a brief second, then force them open again.
“Yes.”
The look of disgust he levels at me almost breaks me.
“I told you—you would hate me.”
He laughs, but it lacks any trace of humour.
“Well, you have that quite wrong. Hate is far too mild a word for what I really feel. Abhorrence, perhaps. Repugnance,disdainis more fitting.”
Each word sends me spiralling further, but somehow I keep myself together.
“I’m fucking done here,” Hunter says before turning and striding away.
“Now, now,” my husband says.
The amusement in his voice makes me feel sick.
“You really don’t learn, do you?”
He takes hold of my arm and steers me through a door at the back of the restaurant.
His grip is bruising.
But the agony that tears through my chest eclipses everything else.
The drive back, to my new home or my cage, depending on how one chooses to define it, passes in a haze.
I barely register anything beyond the violent rhythm of my own heartbeat and the image of his face, burned so deeply into my mind that I can’t seem to escape it.
God.
The way he looked at me.
All of it, the hurt, the anger, disbelief, but most of all, the disgust.
He left, and I don’t even know if I will ever see him again.
Though, in truth, I suppose that is unlikely.
At the end of the day, I am married to his father.
Our paths are bound to cross again, whether either of us wishes it or not.
But I imagine he will avoid me now.
And whatever chance there may have been to explain any of it, it’s gone.
