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He ground his teeth together so hard, the sound carried over to me. “Fine,” he snapped. He shoved his chair back from the table so he had room to move and slung his plate of food at the wall. I just calmly walked away, and the only reason I didn’t whistle a tune was that I knew it would make me seem too confident and too cocky.
The game I was playing was a dangerous one, and one wrong move could send everything to shit.
* * *
Ezra swung his legs back and forth, looking down at the river beneath us. It was flowing faster than usual today—angry. Volatile. It bashed at the rocks on the sides that contained it, as if it were furious that it couldn’t just go where it wanted, couldn’t be free to move as it pleased.
“Kind of reminds me of your girl,” Ezra mused.
I hummed, flicking another pebble down into it, watching as it slowly made its way down to the racing river. It was a long way down. What would it feel like to fall?
Or push someone over the edge?
“What makes you say that?”
He shrugged, lifting his soda to his lips. “She’s trapped with nowhere to go. Got a father keeping her in line, making her be a good little Christian girl.” A smirk pulled at my lips when I thought about her coming for the first time in her life on my hand without me touching a bit of her skin. She might have been a good little Christian girl once upon a time, but that time was before me and before I set my sights on her.
I planned to cover her in sin and darkness.
“And now she’s got you battering her into a corner in her mind until she’s got no choice but to snap.”
I grinned, flicking another pebble into the angry water. “And when she snaps, Ezra, it’s going to be beautiful as fuck.” Even I knew that. And I couldn’t wait to be the one to witness it. She was going to shatter into a million, beautiful shards. And sure, that explosion might cut me and maybe even possibly bleed me out, but fuck, it would be worth it.
He arched an eyebrow at me. I ignored his expectant look, flicking yet another pebble. “Am I missing something here?” he asked.
“I proposed.” He choked on the soda he’d just tried drinking before spewing it everywhere. I clenched my jaw before forcing it to loosen so I could comfortably speak. “She wears his bruises still, even while I’m dating her.”
Ezra ran a hand down his face. “Fuck,” he whispered. Then, he looked back at me, narrowing his eyes. “I don’t understand you, Amadeus. I thought you didn’t really give a damn what happened to her. This is fucking crazy, bro. Even for you.”
It was. Couldn’t deny that.
I sighed. “Trust me, I fucking know. Never thought I’d see the day I’m willingly engaged to a woman of the church, even if it is just temporary. But seeing the discoloration on her cheek, the fucking fear in her eyes—” I shook my head, looking over at him. “When I took her to the cornfield, I found out she has a huge fear of them. But she faced that cornfield because she thought me and whatever else might be lurking in it was a lesser evil than her fucking father.”
Ezra grimaced. “I wonder what in the hell he did to her to make her so afraid.”
I shrugged. “Probably beat her into submission numerous times. Seems to be a thing with the men around their ages,” I muttered. Father had tried that shit on me, but it only made me angrier. Didn’t do a single fucking thing to make me submit.
Ezra shook his head. “Do you have any idea the shit show you could start by doing all this, Amadeus? Is she worth it?”
I shrugged. “Fuck if I know she’s worth it.” And I really didn’t. But I couldn’t fucking stop myself. Especially not now that I was so deep in this fucking game I’d created with her.
“Then why?” he asked. “Why potentially fuck up everything you and I are trying to do for not just us, but Solomon, too?”
I didn’t have an answer—at least not one he was looking for. I doubted telling him that I was letting my dick lead me would be the kind of answer he was looking for. Fuck, it might even make him shove me into the river.
“I don’t know, man,” I just said instead, my voice low. “I’m not sure of anything when it comes to her, to be honest. All I know is I’ve got this drive to make sure no one else touches her.”
Ezra drummed his fingers on his thigh. I continued flicking pebbles into the river. Finally, he quietly said, “I think you’re denying something, and you’re not even sure what that something is yet.”
I looked over at him, narrowing my eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I growled, not liking his tone of voice.
He swung his legs back to the other side of the bridge, settling his feet on the concrete. I did the same. “It means, Amadeus, that I think when youwantthis to all be said and done with her, you won’t be able to walk away.”
He began to stride off to his car. I just stared after him.
Ezra never said shit he didn’t mean, and even more, he was hardly ever wrong. I could count on one hand the number of times his instincts led him astray.
I just hoped this was one of those times his instinct was wrong because if it wasn’t…
