Page 24 of The Marriage

And then another.

He let her have those few seconds before she peered up at him. Roman searched for Katina there, but didn’t see her staring back. This was all Karine. Stronger, even if she was mad. Still beautiful, all the same.

Despite her aggression towards him, Roman was proud of her. Of who she was, and who she could be. Who she wanted to be—he wanted her, too.

All of her.

“Actually, it’s time for me to speak and you to listen,” she finally replied, soft-spoken and calmer than he expected.

“I’m listening,” he replied.

She breathed in deeply, squaring her lungs like she could taste the air in the room.

“I trusted you, and you used that. You lied to me. Again,” she whispered.

Roman was fast to open his mouth, ready to correct her because he had only really lied by omission and that wasn’t quite the same, considering the circumstances. Then, she held her hand up to interrupt him, and he opted to say nothing at all.

This wasn’t about him.

Even if he was frustrated.

Even if she didn’t hear him.

“Please don’t talk, Roman, I just ...” Karine looked down at her hands, neatly folded in her lap but still trembling like they had been earlier. “I really need you to listen.”

As strong as she was being, he could hear evidence of her quivering voice. She’d been crying, clearly. He knew this was difficult for her.

Karine wasn’t accustomed to putting her foot down, and expressing her feelings. Not without suffering for it, anyway. She was still learning to handle the roadblocks put in front of her without defaulting to the way she coped before—through medication and a fractured mind.

He reminded himself of that.

This wasn’t easy for her, either.

Roman was not the kind of man who clung on to hope, but he did more times than he could count when it came to Karine. He had hope for her.

“You manipulated me into coming here. You’re having me admitted to this place that I haven’t even agreed to come to,” she said, apparently deciding to just say it and get it over with. Roman stayed silent as she continued. “They’re filling out paperwork for a seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold. Do you know what that means?”

“Only at first, to get the quick admission. It was just semantics, babe, that’s all.”

“Still. I’m not even a danger to myself. I haven’t been. This is bullshit.”

Roman let out a sigh. “Yeah, I know. But it gets you in the door at first. Fast, that’s all I can say.”

And no matter how many times he tried to explain all of those details were nothing more than surface steps to a grander plan, he didn’t think she would care to hear it.

“I thought we were going to have another great day together, but instead, you’re leaving me here. You’re abandoning me again. What do you think that is going to do to me? You can’t keep telling me you won’t do something, and then turn right around and do it. What is wrong with you?”

He’d never been asked that before.

Not quite like she asked it.

Roman stared at her, unsure of what to say, so he stayed silent.

“I don’t expect you to actually give me an answer,” Karine muttered, not looking away from her lap where she picked at the frayed knee of her skinny jeans. “I expect you to turn around and leave me here, like you planned to do, anyway. So do that, then. Leave.”

Roman didn’t.

He couldn’t just leave it at that.