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He scoffs. “Did I? When?”
I grit my teeth. If he takes one step toward me, I’m going to do it. I’m going to pull the trigger and end this madness. Never mind that it makes me sick to think about. I hit the light switch. The overhead light comes on, and I lift my chin. I point to the scar.
“You’re going to make me believe you didn’t try to slit my throat?”
His jaw works.
“Come on, Henry. You can be honest for a second, I won’t hold it against you.” I laugh. It’s cold and harsh, a mirror of how I feel when I look at him. “I woke up with enough head trauma to give me retrograde amnesia. My throat was stitched back together by a plastic surgeon. I looked like I had gone through a meat grinder—and you think I’m going to believe it wasn’tyou?”
“It wasn’t.” He squints at me. “You were in Beacon Hill.”
“Where I grew up.”
His expression morphs into sympathy. I saw it so many times when I thought he was my cousin. It explains why he was being so obtuse with the details. I’d bet it was a combination of him not wanting me to remember and also having no idea about the small stuff.
“You sucked as a cousin,” I tell him. “But you were a monstrous husband.”
He smiles. “Don’t come crying to me when you figure out the real monster in your life, darling.”
I lift the gun.
I just want it to be over.
“Tell me.”
He steps forward.
My pulse skyrockets.I can’t let him touch me. I don’t know how to aim. I don’t know if I’d hit him if I fired from this distance. Ten feet away, if that.
“Stop,” I order.
He laughs. “You and I both know you’re not going to pull the trigger.”
He gets closer and closer, and I’m frozen. He’s right—I can’t. I can’t do it.
What’s wrong with me?
“You’re not a murderer, Mel. You don’t have that killer instinct.” He snatches the gun out of my hand.
One minute I’m holding the weapon that gavemepower, the next, I’m defenseless. And I hate it. I hate myself and I hate him for taking that from me. Stripping me down to nothing but fear.
The fear is familiar. It’s cold, and it locks its hands around my throat. The room tilts. I remind myself to keep breathing, but there’s another part of me that just wants to disappear. To slip away and avoid what comes next.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says in a soft voice. “You’re going to come away with me, and we’re never going to talk about JacobfuckingRhodes ever again.”
“No.” I back away.
I’m afraid. And I may be weak, defenseless, but… I can’t be as terrified as I used to be. The fear is there, but it hasn’t tightened its grip.
“No, Henry. If you make me go with you, I’m going to talk about JacobfuckingRhodes every day until I’m blue in the face.”
He glowers at me.
“I love him,” I say. “You don’t have a hold on me. I lovehim.”
“Melody…”
“No. Enough. Did you even like Natalie? Did you care about her at all?”
