I draw a breath, smoothing my palms over my thighs before I speak.
“I was thinking,” I say, keeping my voice light and careful. “Maybe I should head back to Ruby Ridge for a bit.”
He continues scrolling, not paying an ounce of attention to me.
“For what,” he says, not looking at me.
I hesitate, angling my body toward him anyway. “I miss the girls. Catalina, Amelia. It’s been a while.”
That part is true. It’s just not the part that hurts.
He exhales through his nose, finally glancing over. “You were just fucking there,” he replies.
“I know,” I reply quickly, filling the silence before it stretches. “I just—there’s a lot going on, and?—”
“Fine.”
I blink. “Fine?”
He places his phone on the coffee table with a deliberate tap and leans back, spreading his arm across the couch.
“If you’re going,” he says evenly, “I’m coming with you.”
My stomach drops.
“Oh,” I say softly, shaking my head. “You don’t have to do that. I was just thinking it’d be nice to have some girl time, you know?”
He shifts closer, angling his knee toward mine, crowding my space without touching me.
“No,” he says, reaching out to grip my throat, squeezing. “That’s not fucking happening.”
I gasp for air, raking my nails down his forearm, trying to escape. “Brian?—”
He squeezes harder. “No ifs, ands, or buts,” he says. “If you go, I go.”
“I just thought—” I try to get the words out, but he keeps squeezing harder, cutting off my air.
He releases his grasp. “You don’t need to think about it,” he says. “I’ll handle it.”
I nod automatically as I rub my throat, coughing. “Ok—Okay.”
He relaxes back into the couch like the conversation never mattered, reaching for the remote.
“Good,” he says, his eyes back on the screen. “I’ll book something later. And, baby?”
“Y-Yes?”
He smirks, caressing his hand across my thigh, causing me to flinch. “You can take me to that freak’s bar.”
No.No.NO.
I stare ahead, nodding in agreement as the TV light washes over the room, and tell myself to breathe normally. To stay calm. To not let the ache show on my face.
All I was trying to do was go back to myself and to someone who never once told me what I was allowed to want.
reed
. . .
