Page 171 of Like Grim Death: Part One
What if I want to take it back?
I don’t speak, wanting this to be over. I don’t know why I feel this way. My thoughts are racing, and I’m thinking of him pushing his fingers into my mouth, even though I didn’t want it, and—
“Did you not like what we did?” he asks quietly, as if he’s reading my mind.
I take a deep breath, shifting a little, the hardwood floor uncomfortable against my spine. “No,” I tell him honestly. “I didn’t.”
His expression doesn’t change. For some reason, it pisses me off, and I find my voice again. “I wanted you to hold me. After everything, I just I just wanted to cuddle with you.” I feel stupid speaking those words to a devil, but I don’t stop. “You…you didn’t even give me a choice.”
He snorts. “You think you ever have one with me?”
Anger blooms hot in my veins but I try to keep it in check. “This is about tonight, isn’t it? What you did? Do you regret it or—”
“Shut up. Don’t talk to me about tonight.” His voice is low and calm.
The rage rises in my skin. “Don’t tell me to shut up. I want to get inside your head. I want toknowyou, Mavy—”
“You’ll know what the fuck I want you to know, Ella.” The words don’t even sound like him. They’re cruel and vile and I don’t know who he is right now.
I push against his chest with both hands, sitting up, but he holds me down with his palm on my collarbone. “Careful,” he says, his words quiet but full of rage. “I could break this if you keep fighting me.”
“Fighting you?” I whisper, my palms still against his chest, heaving beneath my hands. “I never fight you.” The truths come barreling out. “I always do everything you ask. Whenever you want.Always.”The emotion nearly chokes me, the tears spilling forward, but not quite leaving a trail down my cheeks. Not yet. “I…Everything is for you. All of me.It’s all for you.”
He doesn’t let go of me, or back off. He seems completely unaffected by my words. My confessions.
I bite my bottom lip, refusing to let myself cry in front of him.I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.
“And you think I do nothing for you in return?” he counters, his voice cold. “Because tonight, I’m pretty fucking sure I proved all the things I would do for you.”
He sits back, releasing me, and I scramble backwards on my elbows, sitting up. He swipes up my shirt—his shirt—and laughs, as if proving his own point before he throws it at me.
I cross my legs and hurriedly put the shirt on, tugging it down over my thighs. His eyes follow the movement.
“I’ve already seen all of you, Ella. I alreadyownall of you.” He nods toward me. “Look at your fucking hand.”
I don’t, because I know what he’s referring to. He doesn’t wait for me to obey. This time, done with me, he just stands, his back muscles shifting as he turns away from me, the enormous Unsainted tattoo stretching across his back, the skull with the U and the smoke in the eye socket.
“You have it too,” I call after him, grabbing for my shorts and standing too, the blood rushing from my head. I slip my feet in my shorts anyway, pulling them on, feeling sticky and messy and dirty, but I don’t run out of the room like I wanted to.
He stills, his body tense and his tattooed hands curled into fists.
“I know you havehername on the flip side,” I snarl, “butyou have it too.”
He barks a laugh, shaking his head, the muscles in his shoulders rolling. “You’re so fucking immature.” Those words pierce me, fuckinggut me,because I thought maybe heunderstood me.I thought maybe he… knew how I felt about him. The same way he claims he feels about me. “Get your shit together, Ella, then come back to bed.” Without another word, he storms out of the office, and down the hall when I hear our bedroom door slam shut.
Or is it even ours?
I don’t own this house. My name isn’t on it. We aren’t married. If he wanted to kick me out, he could, easily, without thinking twice. Nothing legal to work through, no financial mess. And yeah, he killed someone for me tonight, but I think he enjoys murder. Maybe it had nothing to do with me at all and he’s on the verge of ending things with me.
I’d be homeless and he’d be…fine.
What do the Xs on our palms even mean, at the end of the day? Clearly nothing, with everything else I’m sacrificing to stay with him. What is this scar? A cult ritual? They’d kill me without a conversation. They’d put a bullet through my brain and toss me into a lake, and I’d be dealt with,Coaguladecaying like my waterlogged skin.
My shoulders drop, my chest collapses, and I stumble backward, against the windowsill.
It’s only then I notice it, in the midst of an oncoming panic attack.
My phone lights up.
