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The mark would tell any Five Pointer that I belonged to one of them.
And the lack of a wedding ring?
Declared I was a girlfriend. A mistress.
My jaw clenched at that, and I knew he saw the tears in my eyes because he rasped, “Aela, I love you.”
I jerked my head to the side, looking away from him.
I got it. I did.
Some women were for marrying, others were for—
What?
Fucking?
I couldn’t label what we had as simply that. I doubted he could either.
I was the only person who knew him. Knew therealhim.
“Let’s get it over with,” I whispered, my misery in my tone.
He hesitated for a second, then murmured, “Thank you.”
Two words. Not the ones I needed to hear.
Because what hurt the most was the fact that I’d just left my mom, had just promised myself that I wouldn’t live for a man, yet here I was, allowing him this power over me.
But Mom and Dad’s marriage was proof that being tied together meant nothing. If Dad had a mistress, which I figured he did with how absent he was from the apartment, I knew she got more of him than we ever did.
Somehow, that didn’t make me feel better.
As his engine roared to life and we headed to whichever ink parlor he was taking me to, I didn’t utter a word.
And neither did he.
