Page 85 of Blind Devotion
He sighed loudly as ifIwas inconveniencing him. “Listen. Once I finish, we’ll have this conversation.”
“Will we? Or are you going to find another runaround? This isn’t love, Adrien. This is control. I’m not one of your men. I’m not one of the gang members you oversee or one of your employees. I’m the woman you asked to marry. I’m the woman you say you love.”
“I do.”
“Then stop trying to decide what I get to know and what I don’t. You have to trust me. Talk to me. Let me contact my family.”
“We need more time.”
“For what?” Silence, of course. If he didn’t want to approach a topic, I got radio silence. If there was something I wished to avoid, he bulldozed me. The hypocrite. “Don’t do that. Don’t go quiet. I’ve respected your wishes up until now. Don’t make me go behind your back to get in touch with them.”
“You can try. I guarantee you’ll not find a single phone available to you.”
“I’m sorry, what?” The pressure was rising in my head. My heart pounded in my ears. “Run that by me again? I’m not your prisoner, Adrien. You lost that claim the instant you kissed me, then offered me freedom.”
“You chose to stay.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m trapped. If I want to walk out that door right now, I will.”
“No, you won’t.”
“You want to bet? Try and lock me in here. I dare you. See what it does to us.”
He seemed to mull over my words. “I’m asking for your patience.”
“I’ve given it. For weeks. But you keep drawing this out. Just give me something. Anything at this point.”
“Marry me first. I’ll postpone my meetings and arrange an appointment at the town hall tomorrow. Then whatever you want to know is yours.”
I shook my head. “Not good enough. I’m not getting married with these secrets between us.”
“But you will marry me.”
“I’m not giving an answer on that either.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
I grunted a cry of exasperation.
“Why are you doing this?” My hands razed everything off his desk. Papers swished into the air, crackling as they fell. “Why?” I knocked a metal sphere off its stand. It clanked as it rolled to the edge, then thudded to the ground. Pens clattered out of their holder. “Why? Why? Why!”
My chest heaved, and my eyes watered with frustration.
“You going to pick that up?”
My jaw clenched, and my limbs were shook. “You’re un-fucking-believable.” I couldn’t take much more of this. A lump was growing in my throat, so heavy it was getting hard to breathe, hard to think. A tear rolled down my face. “Please, Adrien, just give me something. I can’t keep wondering what happened. It’s tearing me up.”
As upset as I was, I didn’t hear him move until he was right beside me. His thumb brushed away the tear on my cheek. Then he held me close, my cheek against his chest, his chin on my head.
“When you speak to your brother,” he said carefully, “he’ll try to take you from me, or you’ll go willingly. I can’t allow that.”
I didn’t miss how he avoided speaking about my mother. My father, sure. Adrien always knew how much I hated him. I just wasn’t ready to address that, not when this was my first hint at whatever insecurity Adrien was hiding.
“If they need me, I’d go, but I’d come back.”
His fingers drummed against my spine, not adding another word.
“You don’t think I’d come back.”
