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“Not well,” I say. “Just through Maeve.”
“As far as you know.”
I pause and then give a reluctant nod. “Yes, as far as I know.”
The cops are reinterviewing Daisy.They’ve warned Tom that he’s up next, and he doesn’t seem the least bit surprised or alarmed. He says he’ll head back to his shop, and they can meet with him there.
I retreat to my office. I can still hear Daisy’s interview. The male half of it, at least. Daisy’s voice is a soft whisper.
I sit at my desk and stare into the swamp, and as the sun disappears behind clouds, I don’t see a sun-bright morning yard. I see a night-dark one. It’s Friday night, and I’ve just woken to Liam nudging me.
“Wake up, Elizabeth. We have a problem.”
“A problem,” I murmured.
Did Liam just call me Elizabeth?
I bolted upright. He put a hand on each shoulder and held me in place. “Shh, shh. We don’t want to wake Miss Daisy.”
“What did you call—?”
“Elizabeth. That is your name, isn’t it? Not Celeste. We both know that.”
“You aren’t supposed to call—”
He pressed his finger to my lips. “Take a moment to compose yourself, Lizzy. Nothing wrong with wide-eyed and breathy, but I’ve come to appreciate cool and savage so much more.”
Savage? I flinched at the word. I didn’t want to flinch. I longed to own it. Hell, yes, I’m savage. Liam didn’t mean it to be flattering, though.
Savage. Wild. Feral.
Not who I wanted to be at all.
Cool, yes. But cool, composed, collected. Dangerous. I’d take dangerous.
He’d chosen the word well. It threw me off-balance and ensured, no matter what he claimed to want, that I’d remain just a little wide-eyed and breathy, out of my element.
I tried to gather my pride like a cloak. It was lopsided, barely covering one shoulder, leaving me feeling more exposed than if I’d abandoned it altogether.
I brushed his hands away, as regally as I could, and I looked at him and waited.
“You’re wondering what’s wrong,” he said, conversationally.
I didn’t ask for answers. He would have his moment. I must understand that; he was in charge.
I looked at him, and I saw Aaron, sitting in that same spot on a bed so long ago, when I’d been a seventeen-year-old girl, crying for my family. He’d caught me trying to escape, and he’d beaten me.
A savage beating.
Wasn’t that the phrase? Let’s talk about savage, shall we, Liam? Savage is a beating that leaves you unable to move for days. Savage is a man who delivers that beating as casually as he’d waggle his finger and lecture you for being a naughty girl. Not cold fury, not white-hot anger, just simple annoyance that he has to expend the effort, which is very inconvenient, and shit, would you look at my knuckles? That’s going to leave a mark.
Aaron, sitting on our bed afterward, telling me how stupid I was, how silly and childish to want to go back to a family that didn’t want me.
You made your bed. You lie in it.
Aaron telling me he was my family now. My husband, at least in spirit, and if I was a very good girl, maybe he’d make that a reality someday. For now, I must treat him like a husband. Love, honor and obey. Especially obey. That’s the one girls like me never understood. We heard the word, and we balked like pretty poodles expected to accept a leash. But that leash kept us safe. Dogs obeyed because they knew they had it good. They were cared for, pampered even, and in return, they granted obedience to a master.
Did I understand what he was saying?
