by Selena
Until he fucking left, that is, leaving me to hold it all on my own. Only now do I realize how heavy it was all those years, that I was weakening, slowly crumbling under the weight of it.
And now… Now I have everything I’ve ever wanted. He gave me a way out. I’m standing on the edge of freedom, but it no longer looks like the end goal. It looks terrifying and isolating. That isn’t what I want anymore.
Love is.
“Yeah, I fucked up,” I say to Bianca. I don’t add the rest of it, that I should never have told King, that I should have just sucked it up and lain there and let him fuck me. Not that he would have let that pass. He’s the kind of guy who would notice if something was wrong, if I wasn’t into it, and he’d stop and ask why, and then we’d end up right back where we are. If I’d never told, never let him take part of that weight off me, I’d never have realized it was crushing me. I’d have gone on forever without thinking about any of it too closely.
But then what?
“What’d you do?” Bianca asks. She looks different, though, not as eager and more… Guarded. And this is why I can’t trust her with anything. I never know when she’s a friend and when she’s going to use something against me.
“I said something stupid and hurt his pride,” I say. “We’re just so different. We don’t really get along.”
“You might have more in common than you know,” Bianca says, plopping down on the couch.
That makes me snort. “Like what?”
“For starters, you both have a dead sibling,” she says. Some people might call a comment like that insensitive, but when you’ve grown up the way we have, it’s just the way things are. There’s no point tiptoeing around the truth. We’ve all lost people we cared about, and plenty of us have lost family. Which means it’s hardly something to bond with my new husband over.
Still, jealousy lifts its ugly head when I think about him telling her something painful from his past. When did they talk about this? And why didn’t he talk to me about it?
“Did he tell you that?” I ask.
Bianca shrugs. “You’d be surprised what you can learn by reading the news.”
I don’t want to be interested, but I’m way past that. I want to know everything about my infuriatingly proud, stubborn husband. I just wish he’d tell me. Not that I’ve made it super easy for him to talk to me. I spent our whole honeymoon avoiding him like the messed up coward I am.
“How’d she die?” I ask Bianca, because it’s easier than asking him.
“I guess she drowned in a flood,” Bianca says, popping open her compact and examining her lipstick. “They never found her body.”
“When was that?”
“Like, this year,” she says. “I don’t remember when. I can’t believe he hasn’t told you.”
She snaps her mirror closed, looking smug, as if he’s the one who told her and she wasn’t internet stalking my husband. I want to smack the sloppy lip gloss right off her face, but I’m too preoccupied with thoughts of King. I remember how I felt after my brother died. How numb I was, like I was in shock for months. Which means King is still probably in the grieving period, and instead of being there for him, I’ve been a total brat. And not just a brat, but so hateful that he actually thinks I’m capable of arranging a hit on him.
“Listen, I think I’d better skip lunch,” I say. “I need to get this shit picked up before King comes back, and I need to interview for a maid…”
“Can’t she pick this up?” Bianca asks, making a face and gesturing around.
“I don’t think I want her first impression to be a bunch of broken dishes.”
She sighs. “Seriously? I came all the way to the Bronx to see you.”
“Sorry,” I say, though I’m not. I was getting tired of the parties and gossip anyway, but now it’s lost all appeal. I’m too worried about my husband leaving me to think about the most exclusive new lunch spot we need to hit to stay relevant. I don’t give two shits about being relevant. I want my husband back. The realization shakes me a bit. Am I turning into one of those pathetic women we hate? The ones who serve their husbands like slaves?
The truth is, I don’t even care. I love King. I’d rather spend an evening doing nothing with him than an evening clubbing with anyone else. Hell, I’d rather stay home stitching up his wounds than doing anything else, no matter who it was with. Instead of showing him that, I let him walk out the door thinking he was somehow undeserving of my love. He’s more than deserving of my love, respect, and my time.
“We’ll do it another day, okay?” I say.
“Fine,” Bianca says with a huff. “I need to pick up something for my dad, anyway. But if you turn into one of those boring old housewives who never goes out, I’m telling everyone you’re hiding because you got fat and have stretchmarks all over your ass.”
Best frenemies to the end.
When she’s gone, I clean up, call Sylvia to get some recommendations for discrete maids. Then I just sit there for a few minutes, working on not going to pieces. I want to go in the bedroom to get my bags, but I can’t stop seeing King taking off his ring, laying it so carefully on the dresser, and walking out.
Finally, I give in to the tears. There’s no one to hold me this time. No one but me, and the little monster inside me who says we knew this was coming, I can’t count on anyone to stay. It’s just us, just me and the demons inside.
At last, I get up and wash my face, grab my bags, and walk out. I don’t look over at the dresser the whole time. Maybe King was right. Maybe this is for the best. Not for me—I’m well beyond the point of no return in my feelings for King. But for him it’s best. He deserves more than a broken wife who wastes his youth, his prime, his beauty. His heart.
I call the driver and take the elevator to the lobby. There are no more tears inside me. I’m empty. I think about King coming home, walking into the empty apartment. Will he think for a fraction of a second, before it sinks in, that I’m just out with my friends like usual? I’ve been purposely selfish. I don’t blame him for wanting me gone. But I know how it feels to open a drawer that used to be filled with the clothes of someone who said they loved you, only to find it empty. To stare into it, even knowing they’re gone, and not quite believe it.
I’ve never said I loved King, but maybe I do. He’s made it clear he can’t love me, that he won’t, but that doesn’t mean I can’t. I don’t know how I’d even go about finding out. What do I know about love?
“Ready, Miss?” the driver asks, climbing out of the car. He puts my bags in the trunk. I watch, numb. I wonder if this is how my mother felt when she left us.
I’m in the car, but I don’t remember climbing in. I told the driver to just drive. I have nowhere to go, no direction, just like I have no idea what to do with my freedom now that I’ve gotten it. The last thing on earth I feel like doing is partying. I just want to be home, curled up with King on the couch. I always imagined Mom was happy, full of hopes and dreams, a lifetime of promise ahead as she drove away, waving and smiling, to her new shiny life of fame and excitement. How could she do it? And not just to her husband, but her daughter?
“Where to, Miss?” the driver asks. His eyes in the mirror are sympathetic. We’ve been driving around for a while, I don’t know how long. I only know that I’m never going to do what my mother did. Not to anyone.
This is what I choose to do with my freedom.
I meet the driver’s eyes in the mirror. “Take me home.”
*
When I hear the jangling of keys in the door, I don’t know what to do with myself. I have the ridiculous notion to pose somewhere, like he’s going to walk in and forget everything if the house looks good. I shove the thought away just as the door opens and my husband walks in. He stops short, blinking at me like I must be a mirage.
“I thought I told you to leave,” he says, turning to push the door closed behind him.
Suddenly I wish I had posed somewhere. Better than standing awkwardly in the mid
dle of the room, clasping my hands in front of me like I’m waiting for his fucking approval.
“I did,” I say. “But I guess you were right. I always come back to you.”
He sighs and sets down his leather bag, the one that looks professional, but if I had to guess, probably contains a Glock, a few extra magazines, some rope for tying up uncooperative suspects, and maybe a handful of instruments of torture thrown in for good measure.
“I’m going to clean up,” he says, snagging his bag and heading to the bedroom. A minute later, I hear the shower running. He always showers when he gets home, even when I can’t see blood on him. It must suck for a guy like him to have to hurt people all day. He’s not like Dad’s men, who joke about it over dinner. He’ll get there, but he’s not desensitized to violence yet. I’m probably more callous than he is, for fuck’s sake.
Dinner’s not supposed to arrive for an hour, so I go into the bedroom and sit on my side of the bed and lean back on the pillows, waiting for him to come out. A few minutes later, he emerges trailing wisps of steam, wearing nothing but the water droplets clinging to his skin and a towel wrapped around his hips, hanging low enough that I can see the V of muscle leading downward.
I swallow hard, trying not to ogle him. But god, he’s so beautiful. I’m not even an artist, and he makes me want to draw him. All those angles and long lines. Was Michelangelo gay? Because it would be a damn shame to look at something like that and not see how sexy it is. Or maybe that would be a good thing. I don’t know how long it took him to carve David, but it would probably be the longest hard-on in history.
King goes to the dresser and opens the drawer to get his boxers. He pauses, staring down at the ring he left there this morning.
“I know what it’s like to be left,” I say. “I know what it does to a person. If you want out of this, you’re going to have to be the one who leaves. I’m not going to do that to you.”
He turns back, his hand on the knot in his towel. I watch a drop of water slowly rolling down his abs, down the chiseled muscles that make up the V between his hips, toward the edge of the towel. I gulp and drag my eyes up to his. “I wasn’t leaving you,” he says quietly, a frown knitting his brow. “I was protecting you.”
“I know all about people leaving to protect me, too,” I say. “That doesn’t make it easier.”
He just watches me a second, his expression inscrutable. “I didn’t think of it that way,” he says at last. “I wasn’t trying to be just another person who left you. I just thought it was better for you to have someone more… Self-disciplined.”
I snort. “More than you?”
“I’ve been a terrible husband to you.”
“I probably deserved it,” I say. “I was a total bitch to you. Maybe I do that because people don’t stick around, y’know? Like, I push them away, testing them, because I know eventually they’ll leave. No one stays.”
King’s expression turns pained, and he picks up the ring and comes over to sink onto the other side of the bed. “Eliza… Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
He reaches for me, pulling me to him. I curl against him, relieved for the contact. That surprises me. I’ve gotten used to his touch in such a short time. But last night, when he didn’t hold me, I missed him all night.
“It’s not okay,” he says quietly. “If this is what you really want, I’ll stay. But I want you to make sure it is. Am I really good enough, or is this just another one of your self-destructive tendencies, like the drinking?”
“No,” I say, opening his hand and taking out the ring. I slide it back onto his finger, where it belongs. He pulls me into his arms again, and I hold onto him, feeling the damp cool of his skin above the delicious heat of his body underneath. “I think it’s the exact opposite of that.”
He’s wrong about not being good for me. This is exactly what I need. Someone who makes me want to be better, to get better. Someone who makes me feel scary things and still want to go on, for him and for me, too. I deserve to feel good. I deserve to enjoy my own body. I deserve the same pleasure other people feel when touched.
I’ve tried for so long to push those feelings down, to shut off the sensations of my body. But now I’m mad. I’m mad that the chance to feel uncomplicated pleasure was taken from me. Yes, I want to give myself to King, but more than that, I want it for myself. It’s not fair that the most basic, simple pleasures fill me with terror. I’m ready to change that.
I twist around in King’s arms, throwing my leg over him and straddling his hips so he has to brace himself to stay sitting, his palms flat on the mattress and his legs extended along the side of the bed where he sleeps. He looks up at me, his expression guarded, but I don’t hesitate. I take his face between my hands and kiss him hard. He reacts, but his kiss is tentative, careful. He keeps his hands on the bed instead of touching me. But I touch him. I run my hands over the hard, knotted muscles of his shoulders, careful to avoid the bandaged area, and down the lean, taut muscles of his biceps, his forearms, and onto his sides. His skin is hot and damp, and his body shivers against my cool hands as they run over his skin.
I delight in the sensation of his body responding to my inexperienced touch, the little shiver that goes through him, the hardness growing in his lap as I press against him. A shiver goes through me, too, half fear and half arousal. He’s pressed up against me, but through a towel and my jeans, it’s not too much.
It’s not enough.
I slide my hand down over his abs, still running with a few little drops from the shower. When I reach the knot in his towel, King grabs my hand, breaking the kiss.
“I can’t,” he says, gripping my thighs and scooting me back on his lap. He’s breathing hard, but he looks miserable. “I want to be respectful, but I can’t help myself. You turn me on so fucking much, Eliza.”
“I know,” I say, linking my fingers through his and leaning forward to kiss him through the smile on my lips. “I love it.”
“You do?”
“I’m not scared of your dick, King,” I say. “I wasn’t upset about it this morning. I just didn’t think you found me… Desirable anymore. I told you, I was just surprised.”
“You shouldn’t be,” he says. “You drive me out of my fucking mind.”
He turns sideways, cradling my body and sliding me off him, then adjusting the pillows so we’re lying face to face. He runs a hand up the side of my thigh from my knee to my hip, his thumb pressing into the crease in my jeans at the top of my thigh. Nervous excitement vibrates through my body.
I reach for the knot on the towel again. “Can I touch you?”
He nods slowly. “How does this work? You can please me, but I can’t even touch you?”
“You can try,” I say, my voice sounding so stupid and scared I want to bite my tongue and take it back.
“What if... ?” He breaks off, his brow furrowed with concern.
“I freak out again?” I ask. “I might. I’m sorry. But I want to try. That’s something, right? And hey, maybe it’s a good thing. You won’t have to wonder if I want to or not.”
He scoffs quietly and adjusts his head, folding his arm under it. “You can say that again.”
Suddenly, I’m so nervous my fingers are shaking again, and I want to call the whole thing off. “Is that okay?” I whisper. “You said you wanted to try, but if you don’t anymore…”
He tips my chin up gently, his troubled gaze meeting mine. “I want to help you if I can. Anything you need.”
I nod, dropping my gaze. “You said we could work through it together,” I whisper, laying a hand on his hip, on the damp towel still wrapped around him.
“And you said you didn’t want to,” he reminds me.
“Now I do,” I admit, searching his eyes, begging him for understanding.
“What changed your mind?”
“You did,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “What you said this morning, that I don’t deserve you. You’re right, but no
t in the way you meant. You’re so good to me, and I want to be good for you, too. It takes a lot for me to trust, but I want to trust you, and I want you to trust me. I want to know you, King. And I want you to know me—all of me.”
“I want that, too,” he says quietly. “So much.”
“And… Maybe because you said it was okay if I didn’t want to. I thought about that a lot today. About going on like this for the rest of my life, being too scared to move past it. I don’t want to live my whole life controlled by something that happened to me when I had no choice. Moving past it is my choice.”
“That’s… Really fucking brave,” he says quietly, sliding a hand over the side of my neck, cradling the back of my head in his big hand.
“Will you help me?” I ask. “Please?”
He swallows, his eyes so deep I could drown in their darkness. “Yes,” he answers. “Whatever you need. Just say the word when you’ve had enough.”
“I will.” I take a deep breath. “And King?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not like them. I’m not a child and you’re not forcing me. I want this. I want you. I just didn’t think you wanted me.”
“How could I not want you?” he asks, his voice almost choked. “You’re so fucking beautiful I’m scared to touch you. I don’t want to break you.”
“You won’t,” I whisper. “I’m not fragile. You won’t hurt me. You can only heal me.”
nineteen
King
“I’ve been researching the attack at Jean-Jean,” Eliza says to me over dinner a week after the shooting. “I think I found something.”
“I talked to Little Al about it already,” I say, not liking her getting involved in the business side of things. “He’s looking into it, asking around.”
“Well, I have connections, too,” Eliza says, setting down her fork and lifting her chin to give me that stubborn look of hers that makes me want to fuck her into submission. Of course, pretty much everything makes me want to fuck her. She’s trying, but we haven’t progressed past making out yet.
