Rose stares at me, trembling. “Please,” she begs. It kills me seeing my warrior so exposed and desperate, knowing I’m the cause.
I shake my head, denying her. “We leave next week.” I turn and walk away, out of the firing line, but also because I can’t bear the distress on her face any longer. I take the handle of the door, set to go find some solace in a few Scotches, pull it open, and jump out of my fucking skin when something collides with the wall beside me, the crash deafening, glass spraying everywhere. “What the actual loving fuck, Rose?” I murmur, turning around, finding her heaving, her face red. I look down at the crystal glass bowl that weighs a fucking ton. Or did. It’s a lethal weapon, and my wife just threw it at my fucking head.
I glance up, my blood heating. “I’m walking away now before we do some real damage to each other,” I say, backing out of the room, keeping a close eye on her. Fuck knows what she’ll launch at my head next. “Calm the fuck down, then come talk to me like the reasonable woman I know you can be.”
She snorts, looking away, her hand going to her forehead and rubbing.
“Vera,” I call, my eyes unmoving from Rose. Our housekeeper appears from nowhere, eyeing the mess of glass on the floor. “Clean it up, please.” I rip my eyes away from my wife and walk away, taking a moment to gather myself. My Rose isn’t a drama queen. She doesn’t throw hissy fits over nothing, and she’s not cracked me in the face for a long, long time.
This definitely isn’t nothing, and she has every right to hate on me right now.
It hurts like hell, but I understand.
I need to sort this shit out and hope my marriage is still intact when I’m done.
2
ROSE
* * *
We’ve had some heated arguments in our time. We’ve fought, verbally and physically. It’s how we’re wired. Twisted? Probably. Unhealthy? Undeniably. But after what we’ve both been through, alone and together, it’s no wonder. It’s molded us into the people we are. The couple we are. Blackness like ours doesn’t disappear. It fades, but it never truly vanishes. I’ve long accepted that the physical aspect of our clashes is our own fucked-up way of maintaining the proof we both need that we can hurt. Feel pain. But only we can inflict that pain on each other.
I leave Vera clearing the glass and lock myself in the bathroom, turning into the door and dropping my forehead to the wood, forcing my stressed breathing to calm. My body to settle. My heart to quieten. “Fuck,” I whisper, clenching my fists and my eyes. We went through absolute hell to be free of our pasts. Today is just a reminder, a confirmation of my fears that we can never be free. Someone wants to kill my husband, and since he’s already supposed to be dead, that’s a bigger problem than a mere threat. The second he took a call from Brad last week and left the bedroom, I knew something was going down. I saw the flash of evil in Danny Black that drew me to him in the first place. The scar on his face seemed to glow. His icy eyes turned colder. The Angel-faced Assassin was back in that moment, and that scared the shit out of me. Not because he actually scares me. He doesn’t. But what he’s capable of does.
Who could be so stupid to poke a sleeping rattlesnake?
I hear the sound of the handheld vac start whirling and push away from the door. God, I missed him so much. In the three years we’ve been hiding out here in our own little paradise, we’ve barely spent three minutes apart. The past few days have been torturous. And now we’re not talking.
I sigh and go to the sink, wetting a cloth and wiping between my thighs, wincing a little at the soreness he meant to leave behind. Then I set about cleaning the smears of blood from my face and chest. I tie up my hair, unhook my little white sundress off the back of the door, and pull it on before I leave the bathroom. “Thank you, Vera,” I say, smiling, feeling shame grab me.
She gets to her feet and nods, leaving me, and I follow. “Fuck,” I hiss, grabbing the wall and pulling up my foot. “God damn it.” I clench my heel. It doesn’t hurt. But the reason behind my injury does.
“Oh, Miss Rose!” Vera cries, dropping the vac and rushing over, her face full of apologies as she scans the floor, looking for the shard she missed. “I thought I’d got it all, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry.” I take her arm and smile my assurance. It’s my own damn fault for being so hotheaded and reckless. “Go, I’m fine.”