My hip protested ever so slightly as he pressed the pads of his finger into it. I’d bruise. But I liked that. Because he was saying things that hit my heart. Battered it.
Then the bottom fell from under my feet because he was talking about pushing me out of his life, and the air was no longer breathable.
If Jay made the decision to end this, there was nothing I could do. I knew that much about him. He didn’t change his mind. Didn’t make choices lightly. I was powerless in all of this. It was terrifying, and I hated it, but I couldn’t have him any other way. And I needed him.
“Why is your cat called Voldemort?”
The question came out of the abyss that was life after Jay had finished fucking me. The longer that we were together, the longer it took for me to claw myself out of his grasp. Find myself again.
That was why it took a long time for me to answer him. Answer the second question about my life he’d ever asked me.
About my fucking cat.
“Because he’s an evil creature,” I answered, finding my words. “And I’m a huge Harry Potter fan. I believe that he is definitely some kind of dark wizard reincarnated as a cat. I knew it the second I picked him up at the shelter. He stared into my eyes, hissed in my face and then clawed my neck.”
I pointed to the area just above my collarbone where there was a faint scar.
Jay’s fingers brushed the puckered skin and my breath stuttered. There was a reverence to the way he touched that scar. A tenderness. I found myself jealous of him. Of the access I gave to him. I let him touch my scars freely, yet his were still forbidden to me.
“If you consider him so evil, then why did you take him home with you?” Jay asked his third question.
“Because even evil things need a home,” I whispered. “They need someone to accept them. Love them.” I swallowed, staring into Jay’s eyes. “And I can love wicked things.”
Jay stared at me for a long moment. One I wanted to live in.
“You need to go and clean up,” he instructed, ice in his voice.
The moment was over. Whatever that had been was over.
I was getting good at weathering these blows. At recovering from them quickly and without too much emotion. But they still hurt. Every time he dismissed me, every time he shut down from me, stole away the possibility that this was turning in to something more than an arrangement. It killed me.
But still, I stayed.
Still, I obeyed.
There was a box laying on my pillow when I emerged from the bathroom. Jay was standing at the window, staring at the ocean, his bare back to me. My eyes ran over the ridges of his muscles, over the scars that I could barely see in the dim light.
He didn’t turn when I entered the room. Though I ached to walk up behind him and wrap my arms around him, I didn’t do that. If Jay gave me his back that meant I shouldn’t touch him. Couldn’t touch him. One of the many things I’d learned. One of his many boundaries.
So instead of going to him, I went to the bed, grabbing the velvet box from my pillow. I was getting used to receiving gifts now. I still didn’t know how to feel about them. About the fact that I’d have to take them with me when this was over, that I’d have all of these physical reminders of this man. Maybe that’s why he gave them to me, because he wanted it to be impossible to forget him.
I sucked in a harsh inhale when I opened the box. A single ruby sat in the middle of the box, on a thin gold chain. It was simple. Striking. Extraordinary. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Turn around.” Jay had moved across the bedroom without me noticing. He took the box from my hands, and I turned.
Jay lifted my hair from the nape of my neck then fastened the necklace, his hand lingering on my neck for a moment before he turned me around.
I searched his eyes for something, anything, but they remained dark, impassive. Though that didn’t cut me as deeply somehow, not with the ruby at my throat. Something about it felt different. Like there’d been a shift. This wasn’t just a necklace.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, a lump forming at the back of my throat.
“Historically, rubies were believed to have mythical properties,” Jay explained, fingering the stone sitting at the hollow of my neck. “People thought that wearing the stone close to the heart would allow the wearer to live peacefully. That this stone would protect them from perils.” Jay’s eyes moved up to meet mine. “As long as I’m in your life, you will not have a peaceful life. Your life will be perilous. I cannot change that without leaving you. Yet I don’t want to leave you. I’m not going to leave you. So I’m giving you a chance to wear peace around your neck, because you’re always going to have chaos in your heart.”