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“What?” I snapped. “Shouldn’t have believed me when I told you I was okay?” Because I knew it was what he’d been about to say. I also knew he was right.
“Look, I appreciate that you respect my tour schedule—”
“I was fine, really.”
Rhys’s eyes flashed.
“I know, I know, you never want me to go to any effort because of you, right? It’s only okay if I do things because I want them. Why can’t you understand that what I want is to do things because of you? It’s not a hardship, it’s not a fucking inconvenience. I’m your goddamned husband. This is what being married means!”
Husband. Married. Usually the words filled me with such pleasure. Husband meant I belonged to someone. Married identified me as being part of something. They were official and legal and ours. Now it sounded like a prison sentence to him.
My head felt like a balloon, and I didn’t know where all this sweat was coming from.
“I didn’t force you to be!” I yelled and watched Rhys freeze. Shit. I didn’t even know where that came from.
Rhys was looking at me like he hardly recognized me.
“No,” he said fiercely. “I was so damned in love with you that I basically begged you to marry me after two months. What is going on with you? Where the hell are you right now?”
I blinked to keep the room in focus.
Where was I?
“I don’t know.”
My voice sounded alien in my ears.
“Baby, please talk to me.”
Rhys’s eyes were too much. His scared voice was too much.
I felt a gulf between me and Rhys that made talking feel impossible. Every time I grasped for words, they were harder to find, like squeezing in my fist the thorny stem of the rose Sid had brought me once from the flower shop. The harder I held on to it, the deeper it cut me.
“I–I–I think . . .” I choked out. But nothing else came.
Rhys’s pinched expression turned to concern.
Help me, I wanted to say. Please help me, I don’t know what to do. I opened my mouth again and nothing came out.
I was choking on all the nothing that was coming out.
“You think what?” Rhys encouraged.
“I think . . . I think your house is haunted.”
Not that, idiot.
“What do you mean?” Rhys asked.
I shook my head, sweat sliding down my temples. “Just, uh. I . . . when you’re not here, there are sounds, like things trying to get in. And the light’s all wrong.”
I looked up at the corner of the ceiling where the uneven plastering had stared down at me accusingly every night I spent on the couch, but now it just looked like a faint shadow. Hardly anything. Barely even noticeable at all.
Rhys narrowed his eyes at me like he couldn’t tell if I was being serious.
“Never mind,” I said. “I just meant . . . I, uh.”
Rhys was staring at me like he’d never seen me before, and I really wanted to end this conversation.
“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, I was bad while you were gone. I’m gonna be better. Okay?”
I made my eyes heated and leaned in to kiss him, but he caught my shoulders and made me look at him. He looked . . . shocked?
“Matty, you weren’t . . . you weren’t bad. I’m trying to tell you that I’m here for you. That I want to know what goes on with you, and how you’re feeling, even if you’re feeling shitty. I’ve . . . I’ve fucking begged you to talk to me. I’ve told you a thousand times how much I want to know everything about you.”
My chest was so tight I couldn’t breathe. He had told me that. He had. But then every time I’d told him just a piece, shown him just the corners, the look on his face . . . the fucking pain he felt for me. It was like he was asking me to touch a red-hot poker to his gut. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand to inflict such pain on him. He loved me so much. I couldn’t bear to tell him things that would hurt him.
“We’ve built our life together,” he said, like it was already past. “I want it to be what you want! We’re partners. I want to share everything with you, even the bad stuff.”
I pushed off the couch, shaking my head.
“No?” Rhys demanded, also standing. “No, to what part?”
He was so big.
“I can’t share everything with you because it’s disgusting!”
I’d never said anything like it to him before. Not out loud. Maybe, in the depths of the night, in the shelter of our bed, my grasping hands and needy arms had held on to him in a way that spoke of it. But always, I’d kept it locked away because Rhys gave me hope.
