“She didn’t really want to leave,” Mateo states, sounding vaguely irritated. “Vince wasn’t letting go. I don’t know what he said, she won’t tell me and I didn’t have—they were in the wrong room. But I’m confident he threatened her. Maybe threatened me. Mia wouldn’t have changed her mind on me like that without strong incentive.”
“Well, what if I did?”
His grip lets up and he spins me over to look at him, frowning at me. “I don’t want you to leave, Meg.”
He still isn’t answering me. “But if I wanted to, would you let me?”
I watch him work through this, piecing together a response for me. “If you wanted to leave me, I would try to convince you not to. But I would really hope you wouldn’t do that while I’m dealing with Mia in the same mindset, because trying to convince two women not to flee at the same time… well, that would be a lot to manage, even for me.”
“This isn’t what I wanted. I thought we’d all be happy,” I tell him, looking into his eyes. “I didn’t think you’d do this to her.”
“We would’ve been,” he says, a bit regretfully. “If Vince would’ve let go. We still will, she just needs time. I’ll get her back where we want her to be, she just needs time to mourn him.”
“What if you’re wrong?” I ask.
“I’ve bet literally everything that I’m not.”
I search his handsome face, wishing I could get inside his brain. “What if you made a bad bet?”
Something that’s not quite a smile plays around his lips, tinged with sadness. “Well, then maybe I lose it all.”
I shake my head, subtly moving out of his embrace. “Why make a bet with odds like that, Mateo? You had so much already.”
I hate the realization that maybe I got rid of one gambler and replaced him with another. Mateo doesn’t just bet with money and play with cards; he bets with hearts and plays with lives.
“Because I had to. I have to know,” he answers.
“Know what?”
He sighs heavily, as if burdened by his own bullshit. “If I can rebuild the good things I will inevitably break.”
Chapter Seventeen
Mia
I don’t know what day it is.
Counting down how many nights Mateo has spent with me, I think it’s been a week.
A whole week without Vince. A whole week locked away in Mateo’s house, enduring instead of enjoying him. This wasn’t what I thought this week would be like. I don’t even know why he keeps coming back. Mateo isn’t like Vince; he’s not someone I expect to keep coming back for more rejection. I expected him to give up on me and return to Meg’s bed half a week ago. Or at least make me give him something.
But he hasn’t. He still holds me every night—I guess he makes me give him that. But that’s not much, especially for him. He doesn’t even make me talk to him. He tries to make conversation with me, like he used to when he first took Vince from me, when I was locked in his bedroom instead of my own, when he came to bed to fuck me, to hurt me, twice a day and left me alone otherwise. But when I don’t talk back, he doesn’t push. I don’t know if he’s being gentle with me because of what I said to him that first night about me dying, or if he has his own reasons. I try not to think about why, because I want to keep him in his evil box this time. And he makes it a little bit harder every night he comes to my room and takes nothing from me. Every night he goes to bed essentially alone, when he could go to bed with someone who actually wants him. Every night he does that for me.
When darkness falls and he’s finished terrorizing whomever he terrorized today, he comes to my room again. He undresses and climbs into bed, reaching for me, pulling me close. It makes me ache. It feels horrifyingly like I’m getting used to this, learning to look forward to it, and I can’t do that. I can’t let him back in. I have to keep him out this time. If I give him even a piece of my heart back, he’ll shatter it.
Plus, he just doesn’t deserve it. Not after what he’s done.
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he tells me, after a minute.
“So?”
“It’s time to come back to family dinner,” he states.
“It’s not family dinner without Vince,” I tell him.
“It is now.”
I try to shrug out of his hold, but his grip only tightens.
“Don’t do that,” he says, holding onto me, bending to drop a kiss on the ball of my shoulder. “Don’t pull away from me.”
“I don’t want you touching me,” I tell him, still twisting my body, trying to get him to let go. “You’re a monster.”