Control is a reflex, not a choice. He thinks he’ll get that through distance. But that’s not what I want. I want him. All of him. He’s staying with me, and he’s slipping away at the same time. My insides panic, brain searching for some way to keep him with me.
“What I did was fucking stupid, I see that now. Don’t do this, Tate.” My voice is all strangled and frayed, stretched tight with desperation.
Tate stands to full height, putting distance between us anyway. “I’m not doing anything,” he says in that voice I hate. The fake one. The act he puts on for everyone else. The one he never does with me. “I got carried away, and I’m rectifying that.”
Why’s the air so stale in here? Like it’s depleted of oxygen. One breath isn’t enough. Two isn’t either.
“Don’t I get a say in this? Or am I just meant to be your dutiful husband?”
“That was the deal,” his voice thunders. “My protection, your obedience. You weren’t very obedient tonight, were you?”
My face burns. God, I’m so fucking stupid. I thought I wasmoreto him. Sure, I tried to talk myself out of thinking like that, but I did. I thought like that. He’s not fucking blameless, though. All his flirting and swoon-worthy gazes. Counting my heartbeats, watching me breathe. He abducted the man who touched me wrong and tortured him.
But Tate is a narcissist, and that’s what narcissists do—hoover you in. Love bomb you. Make you love them. Gaslight. Distance. I should know. I’ve been surrounded by them my whole life.
Fuck him.
If he thinks I’m letting him out of this, he’s fucking wrong. I’m staying with him. No matter what. Even if we hate each other.
“Fine, what happens to me now? Do bad husbands get punished? Do your worst, Tate. I’m used to it.” Nothing can hurt as badly as the cavern hollowing my chest.
He clenches his fist until blood drips from it like it’s a lemon. “I wish it were that simple.”
“Why can’t it be? Don’t you believe me? My friends needed my help—itwasthat simple. That’s all I was fucking doing.” There’s a plea in my voice, but I’m not sure he hears it. His body might be here, but his mind is somewhere else.
“I believe you,” he says. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
While I was down there playing hockey, he was imagining a betrayal far beyond playing a little hockey. He was vulnerable with me; he thought I was using it against him. Maybe something his uncle or Clarence would have done.
I didn’t do the thing, but it reminded him why he keeps careful controls in place. I can only imagine how twisted the roads of Tate’s mind are. Brambles bury him, thorns latched so deep that fighting his way out means ripping off his skin.
It’s easier to have control than free himself.
“What’s mine obeys. Do you understand?”
If he expects ayes, sirout of me, he shouldn’t hold his breath. But I nod, flushing with heat the whole time. “Understood.”
He squeezes his hand again. Does he want the pain? The blood? Maybe both. I need the glass shards out. Want to pick them out. Would he let me help him? That’s gotta be some kind of husbandly duty.
“Your friends are disqualified from tonight’s game. They don’t get a payout if they win.”
“What the fuck, Tate?”
“They knew you weren’t supposed to play; they’re just as guilty as you are. Maybe they won’t do it again. Get cleaned up and changed, and maybe I’ll have calmed down enough by then not to ban them completely.”
My brain fills with a flood of what I could say to him, but he really does look ready to pull them all off the ice.
“You don’t get to be here when I’m not, since you can’t be trusted,” he continues. “Every member of security will be notified about this rule upon penalty of death.”
That is so over the fucking top, but I don’t dare say that out loud. “You can trust me.”
“Trust is for idiots,” he snarls.
I broke the only place he ever let himself be vulnerable.
I wipe at the tears threatening to well over my bottom lids.
“Can I at least … your hands, Tate.” I move to touch him, something he would have allowed before, but it looks like I’ve lost that privilege, too. He flinches, backing away. No. No, no, no. Okay. It’s okay. He needs a little security.
