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“Sweetie,” says Marilla sternly. “You should never feel safe with a man who isn’t sure if he can even offer you anything.”
“I know,” I sigh, realizing how the walls I attempted to keep up around me erode further with every second I find myself locked into his possessive glare. Even the way he sends Stanley to drive me home, making me call him the second I get in to make sure I'm safe soothes me.
It’s all so seductive… and so dangerous. I know that and yet, the pull of this tide reaches deep inside me, its current so strong that I can’t swim away.
“If he really cared about you,” continues Marilla, “he wouldn’t be doing things to make you even more attached.”
“I don’t think he’s doing them to hurt me,” I respond as Rami reaches for some nuts on the large wooden coffee table. “He’s just protective, I guess. He wants me moving into this empty apartment he owns in the city. Says my place isn’t safe.”
Marilla shakes her head, throwing a pointed glance at Orpha. Orpha’s the gentler more easy-going of the two but even she looks concerned as I say it and Rami has already made her feelings on the matter very clear.
“I’m obviouslynotgonna do it,” I respond.
“Good,” replies Marilla quickly. “Because what if a month from now, you split up, and you get thrown out on the street?”
“I know,” I say.
In truth, I can’t deny that I’m tempted. The basement suite is kind of cold in winter which is approaching, even with a portable heater plugged in. It’s small, which is fine, but the thing that I hate about it the most is how exposed it is. Basically, anyone off the street can wander down the path to the house, open the rickety old gate and head to the side where my front door is.
There’s a window at the top, narrow but large enough to get through and frankly, the lock on that door has seen better days. Plus, the landlord had a bike stolen from his garden a few months ago and some tools from a shed a few weeks later, none of which settled my nerves.
At night, shadows wander across my walls and ceilings—animals, no doubt, but they make me jump each time, as I do every time one knocks something over outside. What’s worse is the cheapskate I pay rent to refuses to have cameras installed around the house even though it’ll probably only cost him a couple of thousand dollars, which I’ve paid for ten times over in the two years I’ve lived there. I would do it myself just outside my front door, but they have to be hardwired in and the landlord is perpetually dragging his feet whenever he has to actually provide the slightest improvement to his cash cow apartment.
I hate that a thin pane of glass is all that separates me from the outside world. Living in an apartment paid for by Grey would make me feel so much safer, but what kind of power would I have left? Now, at least, this space is all mine. I decide who comes in and decide when I need to be alone… and that’s good enough for me.
“No way in hell am I taking him up on the offer,” I add. “We nearly got into a fight about it.”
“That’s because those types of men need control,” counters Marilla. “I saw it from ten paces away.”
“Well, he’s not getting it with me,” I snipe. “He’ll just have to resort to one of the low-standard bubbleheads that throw themselves at him if he wants that.”
I grin creeps onto Rami’s tanned face as I out my jealous tendencies when it comes to him.
Well, at least my jealousy isn’t as bad as his, I think to myself, recalling the message he sent me when I told him I was spending the night at Marilla’s with Rami.
Just remember, Indigo. You flirt with another man and I’ll nail his ears to a wall so that he can watch me defile you before grinding him up and turning him into pâté.
I giggled for a while before responding:
I'm spending the night with three women, so I won’t be doing any flirting tonight.
Only to be met with:
Tonight? You won’t be flirting with anyone but me ever again. Do I need to make that any clearer?
My next message was designed simply to provoke, to allow that growly man who likes to discipline me to erupt from the civilized outer shell he displays to society:
Maybe.
He took a few minutes to respond.
I see you haven’t been punished enough recently. I’ll be correcting that tomorrow.
Marilla interrupts my rêverie about the endless sexually charged banter that goes on between Grey and me. “I’ll remind you you said that if I feel you’re losing control.”
“I won’t,” I reply, wishing I believed it. “Although…”
Marilla cocks a suspicious brow, stubbing out her cigarette in a glass ashtray before closing the window behind her. “What?”
