Sparrow

I darted up after him, knowing I was about to pick another fight. How dare he speak to me like that! “I’m not the one who insisted we get married. So save the attitude, Mr. I-Deserve-Anything-I-Want.”

“It’s not what you did, it’s what they did to us, Miss Annoying-As-Fuck.” He untied his tie, throwing it on the sofa. “We’re done here. You can go back to pretending you’re asleep.”

Was he kidding me?

“Who are they?” I roared. “What did they do to us? Did someone force you to do something against your will? You can’t just drop a bomb and pretend it’s nothing.” I followed him around the room, trying to get him to look me in the eye.

The idea that Troy was caged in this situation just as much as I was never occurred to me before. But it made sense.

It made a lot of sense.

He looked at me like I was a cockroach, his expression turning from furious back to his usual default of cold and vacant. “Don’t make me laugh.” He turned his back on me, pouring himself another drink. “I would never do anything —or anyone—who isn’t worth my time. Of course it was my choice to marry you.”

“Bullshit.” I smiled bitterly, knowing that I’d hit a nerve. He was as chained as me. Something drew us together, and it wasn’t love. Wasn’t lust either. “You’re just as miserable about this as I am.”

A brief silence filled the room while he took a sip of his drink, brushing his fingers over the neat row of expensive whiskey bottles in his bar.

“You probably don’t remember, Red, but when you were a kid, you sat two rows in front of me in Trinity Chapel every Sunday at mass. Your dad used to fall asleep on your little shoulder because he was drunk, but you would stroke his gray hair, like the loving daughter that you were, and help him walk all the way back home afterwards. You were always giving hugs to all the kids your age and younger. You even used to make fucking lopsided cupcakes when someone had a birthday. You were all fucking heart despite your shitty upbringing—the no-mother part and the drunk-father reality. And you didn’t drop out of school, didn’t do drugs, didn’t become a slutty biker chick. You finished high school, worked your ass off in a shitty diner and took night classes to become a chef.

“You…” He pivoted, shoving an accusing finger to my chest with the hand that still held the whiskey glass. “You’re so good, too fucking good. And whenever I looked at you—from afar, of course, because my family didn’t mix with your nobody father—I thought to myself one day, my children will have a mother this noble. A mother whose goodness would rub off on them, because their dad is bad. Really. Fucking. Bad.”

I was shocked, confused, and underneath it all, maybe even touched. I fiddled with my hair. “You know stuff about me? I didn’t realize…”

“That I noticed you? Yeah, I’m not exactly the flowers and chocolate type of guy.” He loosened his collar, and my gaze dropped to catch the sliver of skin he exposed. “You better get used to it, or you’re in for a miserable-ass life. Now what the fuck is it that you want, Sparrow? Why did you wait up for me? It wasn’t to ask how my day was or what I do for a living.”

I caught my bottom lip between my teeth, rubbing the back of my neck. Somehow, it seemed difficult to ask him for a favor when he’d shown me a glimpse of honesty. Of romance. Even if this favor was only a request to let me out of his house to work at his restaurant, the first part of which he’d already agreed to on our wedding day.

I forced a patient smile, despite the impatient need whirring in me to break free. “It can wait. Can we talk about it tomorrow? You obviously had a shitty day, and it’s three a.m. and...I don’t know, maybe in the light of day, we’ll be able to communicate like two grown-ups and not like dogs in heat.”

He brushed my shoulder as he walked past me, not sparing me even a second glance. “Go buy yourself something half-decent tomorrow. I’ll take you out to dinner and we can discuss whatever it is you have in mind. And Sparrow, I’m not a nice guy.” He emphasized every word. “So if you’re looking for favors, you better start reciprocating. Start acting like a goddamned wife and not like a prisoner. Oh, and a few more days of that magical period of yours and I’m sending you for a checkup in the ER. Don’t want you to bleed out, huh?”

With that, he disappeared up the stairs, leaving me high and dry.