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I fill my lungs with her.
I don’t shy away from the story she told; I replay it. I do my best to understand how she’s felt all these years. I listen to what she said she wanted.
And then I contemplate if there’s anything that’stoo farwhen it comes to making sure I can keep her.
There isn’t.
So if my wife wants a family, I’m going to give her one.
Carefully, I extricate myself from the bed and silently move into the bathroom. I shut the door to block the light, then go into the closet and open the safe I have hidden in the back wall.
I don’t hesitate. I just reach in and take out the three rectangular sheets of pills.
This is how I keep her.
And how I give her everything she craves.
I open the drawer where I know she keeps hers and replace the two backup sheets with two from my hand, and then I pick up the one she’s currently using and pop out a matching number of pills on the last sheet from my safe.
I let the water run, washing away the evidence, while I make sure to put the last packet down exactly how I found it.
Then, with a feeling of rightness filling my chest, I put Val’s real birth control pills into the safe. And lock it.
CHAPTER54
Val
“Oh hey,I keep forgetting to ask you!” Bri stops me before I hang up our call. “Are you coming tonight?”
“Uh, coming to what?”
“The Christmas party.”
I shift my position, crossing my feet where they are on my desk. “What Christmas party?”
Bri put this call on our work calendars, and I thought maybe we had a project that overlapped, but she just wanted to fill me in on some gossip about a guy from another branch who’s going through a messy divorce.
She groans into the phone. “Did you seriously not get an invite to the company party?”
“No, but maybe they only sent it to locals this year, and I just became a local.”
“No, it’s because Tosh in HR is a lazy bitch.”
I snort out a laugh. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Alright, well, it starts tonight at eight. It’s a whole building thing again, so it’s still in the atrium on the fourth floor. But I’ve heard there’s a decent buffet this year.”
“Oh, a buffet,” I say sarcastically.
“Yes, you rich twat, a buffet. The thing we peasants flock to because we like free food.”
“You’re not a peasant.” I laugh.
She ignores me. “Speaking of your life being better than mine, bring that handsome-as-fuck husband with you.”
I shake my head, having seen the photos she sent me from her elopement last week. “Don’t act like your new hubby isn’t attractive.” He really is. Just in a boy-next-door kind of way, not a tatted-gangster kind of way.
Movement at my open door startles me, and I let out a little scream.
