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The silence is getting on my nerves, and my brain seems adamant on getting a reaction out of his stoic behavior.
“Aren’t you jealous?” Not expecting anything, I keep going. “That I got Rose, and you didn’t.”
It’s like the glass is filling up in slow motion. When it’s full, he downs it and starts again. The humming of the fridge is the only sound between us.
“Don’t you hate me? Don’t you have questions for me? Like what sounds she makes when she moans? What she tastes like? How her body reacts when she comes undone on my fingers?”
The sound of the fridge pouring water stops.
The click of the glass as he stops pressing.
His footsteps as he turns around and walks closer to me.
And the beating of my heart against my ribcage.
“May I ask you a question, Rachel?” The politeness of his words contrasts with his appearance and the apparent fury in his eyes. The heat of his body clashes with mine and my arm twitches with a need to extend it and touch him. Just to check if he’s real.
As if I haven’t asked a hundred already, I reply, “Only if I can ask you one in return.” I raise an eyebrow at him, challenging him to talk some more.
He’s the one whose arm extends. His fingers touch my bare skin just above my breasts, and with a delicateness that doesn’t belong to such a rough man, his fingers gently separate my robe and bring one side over my shoulder. I cross my arms to prevent it from falling and exposing my boobs. He skims over the bruise on my collarbone, making me flinch. His brows furrow, his gaze looking at my bruise but lost somewhere else. Somewhere that isn’t the present, that isn’t the here and now.
His black orbs flick to me, and that’s when he asks his question.
“Why do you stay with your fiancé knowing he will never stop hitting you?”
My eyes are suddenly interested in an imaginary spot on my marble floor.
“Why do you stay with Lik when you’re hopelessly in love with Rose?”
Our eyes clash together, a dangerous black hole attempting to swallow my innocent blue. It takes a long minute for us to process our own version of ‘I said you could ask, not that I’d answer’, and with every second that passes, I’m falling deeper into a fascination, an infatuation I can hardly control. It translates into a physical need to get closer to him, bury myself in his arms and beg him to protect me from Conor. It’s not lust; it’s not love. It’s a need for companionship.
It’s like we’re two souls that shared the same traumatic event in another life. Now that we’ve been reborn into the here and now, we’re finding each other again.
“Because he scares me.” I give up my well-guarded secret under the enchantment of Sam’s power. He didn’t insist, and he didn’t force it out of me. He simply stayed silent and expectant. Like he was actively listening and waiting for my honest answer.
Saying the truth makes my heart tremble. Admitting fearing the piece of shit that is Conor McGill is embarrassing. I have countless dreams about how easy it would be to kill him. And yet, the pain and the fear keep me from ever acting on it. I don’t want to die at his hands, I don’t want to go to prison. I don’t want to lose all contact with my family, especially not my baby sister.
The only acknowledgment to my response is his hand lifting to his jaw and his tattooed fingers running back and forth against it for a few seconds. When his hand falls back down, he rasps an answer to my question.
“I can’t control my love for Rose. However, when I met Lik, I had a grasp on my love for him, and Ichoseto love him fully.”
I know the truth in his words a little too well.
“And now?”
“Now, I couldn’t stop loving Lik if I tried to. And my love for Rose is just as uncontainable as it’s always been.”
We share a moment of understanding. Then, he takes a step back, coming back to reality after a walk with me on the fantasy side of our lives.
“This is going to be a long night. What time is your fiancé coming home?”
“I don’t know, but you can’t be here when he does.”
As if his word count ran out for the day, he doesn’t reply. He finishes pouring water in his glass and walks back to my living room, settling on an armchair by the fireplace.
I don’t get another word for the rest of the night. I put a movie on, not even thinking of leaving him unattended. It’s not even that I think he’d rob me or turn my house upside down. I simply feel fine with him next to me. Sam doesn’t talk much, but I don’t think he needs to. His mere presence says everything. His imposing aura tells a thousand words. I can’t even follow the film over how loud his silence feels.
I put some gory horror films on, the kind I’ve watched since I was just a little girl. I like the blood, enthralled by it with a slight disappointment at knowing it’s fake. Some people hate blood, some are unfazed by it. I find it fascinating. Every few seconds, my eyes dart to him, refusing to focus on the screen. Sometimes he’s on his phone, and sometimes he’s staring back at me, emotionless yet focused. At one point, he stares at the blood on the screen and then at me. Something like recognition flashes in his obsidian eyes before a notification on his phone brings his gaze down.
