It looks beautiful.
Of course, uttering those words wasn’t an option. I turned around toward the balcony, retreating from the garden and my wife. When I reached the glass doors, I stopped, stealing one last glance at her again. She was crouching back down, resuming her work.
“You won’t have to worry about them anymore,” I said.
“Them?” She blinked. The list was growing by the second. First, her father, then the Bandinis.
“Every asshole who ever had the faintest idea to hurt you.”
I went into my office and locked myself there for the rest of the night, not trusting myself to go to her room for my nightly feast on her without sleeping next to her. As it was, I had a control issue.
I lacked it.
She had all of it.
IT TOOK ME AN ENTIRE hour to unwind behind the wheel.
Not only did I worry about ruining Wolfe’s precious Jaguar—the flashbacks from Bandini’s guys slamming into the Cadillac from behind as they chased me—but I also didn’t feel overly comfortable around my husband. After spending the night with me, he hadn’t come to my room last night. We were going to his lake house. Was he planning on sleeping in different rooms there, too? Frankly, I wouldn’t put it past him. I had no one to advise me about our situation. Cosmo and Marie Claire, my only sources of relationship advice, didn’t exactly cover the subject of an arranged marriage with cruel, severely emotionally stunted senators in the twenty-first century.
Ms. Sterling was biased. She’d tell me anything I wanted to hear to ensure that I was happy with my husband. My mother was too busy trying to save her own marriage, and Clara was the closest thing to a grandmother I’d ever had, so, yeah, gross.
I could call Andrea, but I feared becoming a charity case at this point.
Always disoriented. Forever clueless.
That left me to stew in my thoughts all the way to the cabin on Lake Michigan. When Wolfe called it a cabin, I thought he meant somewhere quaint and modest. In practice, it was a luxurious estate, crafted from rock and glass, boasting an outdoor hot tub, a direct view of the lake, elevated, wooden balconies, and an architecturally mesmerizing rustic charm. It was tucked among cherry trees and lush, green hills, far enough from civilization without having that eerie air. My heart swelled at the prospects of spending time with my husband so far away from everyone. But mixed with the excitement was a dash of fear.
“I feel another string of Nemesis questions coming my way.” Wolfe was sitting cross-legged on the passenger seat, flipping my Zippo between his strong fingers. I munched on my lower lip, tapping my thumbs against the wheel.
“Have you ever been in love?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“One I’d like an answer to.”
He paused. “No. I’ve never been in love. Have you?”
I thought about Angelo. Then I thought about all the things I’d gone through because of my love for Angelo. I didn’t know how I felt about him anymore, but I knew that lying to my husband out of fear was going to put me squarely in the same place my mother was struggling with right now.
“Yes.”
“Hurts like hell, doesn’t it?” He smiled to the view outside his window.
“Yes,” I agreed.
“That’s why I refrain from the feeling,” he said.
“But it also felt good when it was requited.”
He turned around to face me. “No love is fully requited. No love is equal. No love is fair. There is always one side that loves more. And you better not be that side—because it suffers.”
Silence stretched until we parked the car outside of the so-called cabin.
“But you”—he turned to me, smirking—“you’re smarter than to yield to your love.”
I don’t love Angelo anymore, you fool, I wanted to scream. I love you.
“Which is why I respect you,” he added.
“You respect me?”
He got out, rounded the car, and opened my door for me. “If you’re into milking things, I’d love for it to be my cock and not simply for compliments. You know I respect you, Nem.”
The fridge in the cabin had been stocked with everything good and tasty. Freshly baked French buns sat on the counter. I wolfed down two, with local strawberry jam and chunky peanut butter. Wolfe hopped into the shower, and I did the same after him. Then he stuffed a six-pack of beer and a handful of individually wrapped brownies into my backpack and ordered me to join him for a walk. My forehead was still sore, my lip kept on opening every time I smiled, and I found out that my ribs must’ve bruised when I was put on the gurney, but I complied nonetheless.
I began to second-guess our mutual decision not to take a honeymoon together when he threw my girly bag over his shoulder and led me to a paved, concrete path surrounded by wild grass that whooshed in the cool breeze of the evening. The wind and the lake provided a sound more pleasurable than any symphony, and the view was a spectacular shade of purple and pink sunset diving into rolling hills. We walked for twenty minutes before I noticed another wooden cabin up the hill from where we were.