Page 75 of Inconvenient Marriage
His jaw flexes. “If you’re going to tell me that you’re trying to give me an out, let me save you the trouble. I’m not going anywhere. I told you from the beginning. If I married you, I was playing for keeps. There is no year-term. No contract. There is no ‘renegotiating’ because this? This is ‘til death do you part. And I don’t mean like how the Order does it, where you live your life and I live mine. I love you. You understand me? And I’m done with pretending that I’ll let you get away from me.”
A nervous twinge has me jerking in place. “Sebastien, I don’t know?—”
He’s not done.
“Love isn’t gentle for people like me, Annaliese. It’s sharp. It cuts. And I’ll bleed for you every time. Because you? You’re my wife, and you have been since the first time you let me in. It just took us both a minute to catch up, but if you think I’m letting you go, you better grab a knife. ‘Cause the only way my heart will stop beating for you is if you carve it out of my fucking chest.”
“Sebastien—”
He moves closer to me, digging in his pocket as he closes the slight gap I put between us. When only a few feet separating my husband and me, he yanks his hand out, showing me the folded pocket knife he was carrying with him.
“Connor gave us… the five of us… these when we graduated middle school.” He twirls it. “I want you to have it.”
Middle school… he’s had to have owned that for at least fifteen years. And he wants to give it to me?
I hold up my hand, warding him. “That’s okay. You keep it.”
“I insist.” Sebastien moves into me, pressing the cool metal against my palm, folding my fingers over it. “Now you have the tool you need to stop me loving you.” With his now-free hand, he tilts my chin up, forcing me to look at him. “Carve out my heart. Slit my throat… because, I’m telling you, that’s the only way you’ll get me to stop.”
“Sebastien…”
He looks down at me, waiting for me to finish speaking.
But how?
The weight of the pocket knife he gave me is almost as bad as the necklace. Suddenly, the room is spinning. Suddenly, I really need that air. That space.
“I’ll be back,” I blurt out.
He furrows his brow. “Love?”
No. Not ‘love’. Not now.
I flash him a thin-lipped smile, then turn. The door is unlocked. I don’t even bother to grab a light jacket. Just me, one of Sebastien’s oversized button-down shirts that he lets me use as pajamas because he rarely wears them, my comfy leggings, and my sneakers… phone? Nope. I even place the pocket knife down on the stand by the door before I grope for the knob, turning it roughly, then bolting out the front door.
I have to. I have to run, even if I don’t understand why.
I need togo.
Suddenly, the woods are too quiet. The cabin is too small. And Sebastien… he’s tooeverything. Sexy and kind, possessive and perplexing. Demanding and so broken if only because he believes he is… but who can blame him? When the Order’s bad boy finally tried to settle down, he chose an unavailable woman and has to live with the regret that he inadvertently caused her death. Then, by the time I came along, he agreed to a year—only to decide to ask for forever.
If I was him, I’d never fall in love again. I was led on by Eric and Ididvow to keep my heart out of this ‘relationship’. I tried. I swear, I did. This was supposed to be a fake marriage—but somewhere along the lines, it stopped being fake to me.
And Sebastien? If I can believe him, it wasneverfake.
Oh, he said that before. I never believed him. Tonight, though? There’s something different about him. And I don’t justmean because he opened up to me. I opened up to him, too, and I feel like a huge weight’s been lifted off my shoulders. I thought… I thought that, if he found out about Eric, he would invoke the termination clause in the marriage agreement.
Only he didn’t. Instead, he gave me a piece of jewelry made from theashesof said agreement.
The same piece of jewelry that is bouncing up and down, hitting my chin, hitting my chest as I race through the trees.
Branches whip at my arms as I sprint through them, my breath catching, my heart thundering in my chest.
I know it’s stupid. Running… I know that I can’t outrun Sebastien. I can’t outrun his feelings or mine. Even more importantly, if I keep it up, a tiny part of me is convinced that he’ll follow like he said.
I wasn’t kidding, though. I just need space. A minute where I can make sense of all of this. I feel like I’ve been running since Alexandre’s party last night when Eric found me and Sebastien threatened him. Sure, my legs weren’t moving like they are now, but I’ve barely taken a deep breath until this moment.
Shit. That’s not even a deep breath. That’s gasping as I struggle to get in enough air. Running, Annaliese? Really? I don’t know what I was thinking.
