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So I kept talking, hoping as I laid my heart at her feet that at least one confession would stick out enough to make her believe me.
“I had seen you for the first time the night before, barely twelve hours before the break-in, and I was already attached. I imagined getting a call from Bex, hearing you’d been attacked and she hadn’t gotten to you in time. Imagined your freckles splattered with blood, pale throat covered in bruises, and I just couldn’t do it. I had to be the one keeping you safe, making sure no one touched you. I had only seen you once, and already you weremine.”
Chapter 23
Rory
I woke up alone.It was a familiar occurrence since our wedding, Dev usually getting up early to make breakfast for us both while I preferred to sleep in. It hadn’t bothered me before, but this morning the empty bed had felt all too much like the night before. Me, standing alone on the sidewalk while everyone else followed Dev and Wren. How easily I faded into the background.
The absence of Dev to reassure me of his feelings with his tongue and teeth and body gave my brain too much time to remind me of my concerns the night before. The concerns that - the asshole-ish, anxiety-ridden part of my brain was quick to remind me - Dev had never truly addressed.
Sure, he’d said my presence wasn’t painful to him, but that reassurance alone didn’t inspire much confidence in terms of his affection. He’d told me the only thing he was holding back was how much he wanted me. But he didn’t actually say the words I’d been looking for.
Iwantto be married to you. I’ll take care of you, the bargain with your father be damned. I love you.
Instead, he’d fucked me the exact way he’d promised: without holding back, taking everything he wanted and givingme no choice but to take it. In the moment, it was exactly what I needed: proof that Dev wanted me as much as I wanted him. That he burned for me the way I did for him.
But in the light of day, now that the haze of my orgasms had faded, all I could wonder was why exactly he’d been hiding that part of him in the first place. Did he not trust me? Was he just looking for a way to avoid the conversation we were ramping up to have?
The thoughts followed me as I pulled on some clothes, replaying every moment we’d spent together over the last few weeks. I tried - and failed - not to think of how Callan spoke of the transfer student he’d decided was his, the obsession and devotion clear in his voice when he spoke of her over the phone. The way Dev only spoke of me in mild affection and amusement.
Only now Dev stood in front of me, telling me everything I wanted to hear.
“I had to be the one keeping you safe, making sure no one touched you. I had only seen you once, and already you weremine.”
The words were ripe with possessiveness and anger, clear that if anyone else attempted to take care of me, it would be a mistake on their part.
“And when your father showed up,Iwas the one who insisted we keep you. I wanted to have you close to me, wouldn’t even consider giving you up.Iwas the one who proposed the marriage idea, to convince your father how serious I was about your safety. Except it wasn’t just about your safety; it was never about your safety. Hell, it wasn’t even about Ames’s and Wren’s safety, even if using your safety as a bargaining chip for theirs had been the idea when we first started the job. After a while, it wasn’t about them anymore. It was about you. I would’ve done whatever it took to keep you.”
He stood there, waiting for me to respond, but my brain was too busy processing the words I’d been hoping and waiting for these past few weeks. The idea of Dev somehow falling for me before we’d even met? The fact that the marriage was his idea, something he’d thought up to keep me close, rather than some kind of old-fashioned mental breakdown my father had while trying to bargain for my safety?
None of it made any sense. It was too good, too close to exactly what I’d been hoping for all along. I was speechless, unsure how to respond to the words I couldn’t quite believe.
But Dev must have taken my silence as hesitation, asking, “You don’t believe me, do you? Why is it you constantly think the worst of me, when everything I do is for you?”
I watched as he found a piece of paper in his nightstand, scribbling down a couple words before throwing the pen back in the drawer. He threw what he wrote in my direction, the paper fluttering to the ground between us.
“Look it up,” he said, the anger in his voice becoming overwhelmed by the disappointment I watched spread over his face.
I couldn’t make my limbs move until the familiar sound of the garage door opening jarred me from my frozen disbelief. The plate of beautifully arranged crepes sat on the dresser, lying next to my morning chai, which slowly grew cold as I thawed.
Dev’s disappointment and the gutted look on his face haunted me as I reached toward the piece of paper laying in front of me.
Meri jaan
It was a spelling variation I’d never tried when looking up the nickname before, and it took multiple attempts to type it into myphone, my fingers shaking as tears dropped onto the screen. And even as my sobs picked up, I could still make out the translation through the distortion of my tears:my life.
The translation only made me cry harder, the sentiment behind the nickname so much better and worse than I expected.
The knowledge of what the nickname meant had me rifling through my memories, trying to backtrack to where I’d first heard it from his lips. Through my alcohol-hazed memory, I finally recalled him laughing at my drunkenness, calling memeri jaanin a soft voice as he tucked me into bed the night before our wedding.
With the sudden resurgence of those memories, I also finally remembered the words I whispered to him before I passed out. The words of quiet desperation that escaped my mouth after dancing against him all night and with Wren’s question of my plans for our wedding night drifting through my head.Don’t sleep with anyone else when we’re married. Just me.
And then, a response, one I’d been too drunk to hear at the time, whispered in my ear as Dev kissed my cheek goodnight. “I don’t want anyone but you.”
My legs carried me as fast as they could out of our bedroom and down the stairs, through the short hallway until I reached the door that led to the garage. I grabbed the keys to Dev’s truck off the hook, planning to track him to wherever he ended up. There were only so many places I could imagine him going to get away from me, but I’d track him across the city if I needed to.
So I could say I believed him, that it wasn’t him that caused the doubt that constantly extinguished the happiness he’d given me these past weeks. That it was all my own baggage, my own faults that kept me pulling away even as he chased after me.
