Page 19 of Phobia
“Nothing,” Katrina faltered, paling a little.
“No,” I urged, grit lining my throat. “Say.It.”
“Youheardme,” she accused, already sounding contrite despite her frown. “Why bother repeating myself?”
“‘Cause I want you to look me in the eye,” I charged, my voice growing raspy, my stare boring into hers. “And tell me you’d rather be anywhere else but with me.”
I wanted to hear her say that her life was so much better without me in it so I could call bullshit.
I loomed over her, forcing her spine to straighten. Pink stained her cheeks, but she refused to cow to me. Just how I liked her. Defiant.Mine.
“Adam, there are people watching.”
“I don’t give a fuck.” Let them watch. Let them see how much I loved this pipsqueak that I’d sooner burn this whole place to the fucking ground with these people trapped inside than entertain any kind of thought where she wasn’t my fucking everything. I’d kneel on glass for her, bleed all over the place to prove it, rip my heart out and hand it to her still beating if it made her smile.
If she hadn’t wanted that, too, she should have stayed the fuck out of Elara Park.
“I was kidding,” she offered, her resolve weakening. When I didn’t reply, she wiggled her mouth from side to side, watching me from under her long false lashes. The band was lifting in the corner. “Okay?”
No. Not okay. I didn’t like her hypotheticals where our relationship was called into question. She could come at me about anything else and I’d take it on the chin, but when it came to her or us—it was a no-fly zone.
“No. Not okay.” My free hand bolted around her jaw, tipping her chin upward, her puffy lips parting. The base of my fist leaned against her urgent pulse, its beats resonating through my whole body like it was my own life force. Like my survival entirely depended on hers. The truth of the matter was, it did. I hadn’t been living up until I found her again. I was existing. Balancing on the precipice of life and death because I didn’t see the fucking point anymore.
She had given me a reason to breathe again, to wake up. “I don’t like your jokes. I like mine better.”
“Oh?” I released both her jaw and wrist, but before she got comfortable being out of my reach, I spooled an arm around her slender waist, forcing her feet on top of mine just like we always did at home.
Our home.
Where her things existed. Where we built our life together. Paid bills and made meals and argued over stupid shit like her collection of empty shampoo bottles on the shower ledge that always fell over when I got into the shower or the fact that I ate her string cheese. I didn’t even like string cheese, but I liked getting her riled up. I loved her in our parlor where she wove Saoirse’s hair into thick French braids every night while my kid sister sat on the floor between my wife’s legs and they watched an episode ofTrue Bloodtogether and I hollered at Katrina to close her mouth every time Eric Northman was on the screen.
Not that I blamed her entirely. I’d probably simp for that pale, muscular fuck if dicks did it for me.
She always offered me a flirty little smile in response, reminding me with her eyes alone that even if he appeared right in front of her, she’d still choose me. ’Cause he wasn’t the one who made her a custom kitchen table with a pile of wood sourced from an old house she’d worked on restoring. Wood no one saw any beauty in but her. He wasn’t the one who sat in a closet with her during a panic attack and opened his arms to her when she was ready. And it sure as shit wasn’t his calves dealing with the frigidness of her frozen feet every night.
It was me.
She belonged with me. In our bed, at our table, in our home.
Not back in Fall River, closer to her family, far away from me and the life we were building together. Our empire. Our fucking legacy.
We were raising our kids in Rockchapel. They were going to the same schools I’d gone to. They were going to drive across the Runnins River bridge, flash their lights three times and tell some bullshit story at school the next day about how they’d seen the Rose of Rockchapel. Then I was going to ground the fuck out of them for burning the gas in our car over something so stupid.
“You wanna be an adrenaline junky? I’ll show you.”
She didn’t get to run back to her hometown or imply she would when she got upset with me.I’d hunt her down and drag her back kicking and screaming.
“I don’t like it when you deny my reality,” she said, her palms flattening against my chest. She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “It just…” she blew an exhale up into her bangs, her warm breath wafting over my face. “It makes me feel like shit… like I’m...” she didn’t complete her sentence.
She didn’t have to.
That was the last thing I wanted.
“I’m not trying to make you feel like shit,” I began, looping her hair behind her ear. “Or deny your reality.” Whatever the hell that meant. “I’m trying to get you to focus.”
Focus on what mattered. Not on Rhys Wagner’s creepy fucking form of art. On me, on us, on spending our first night out together in months. We spent so much time at home or out with my brothers that we missed out on actual date nights where I got to show her off to the rest of the world.
I didn’t want her spending tonight inside her head, worrying about shit she didn’t need to worry about.
