Thoughts of Beth sour my mood, so I turn them back to the new woman in my bed—the one who didn’t even bother grabbing the gun, let alone pointing it at me. Instead of doing the justifiable but ultimately foolish thing, she remained in my bed like a good girl, curled up against my naked body.
I really like her. I wasn’t supposed to like her. I almost wish she had tried something stupid, that way she could cure me of this bullshit. It feels like it’s spreading.
If she were to try something, I figured this would be an ideal time. I wasn’t sure how she’d take all the participation I forced on her at lunch time yesterday. Victimizing a person and using brute force is one thing, but forcing them to participate in your crime against them is another level entirely. It shifts blame and fucks with their mind. I’ve already made her kiss me from the first, blurred lines until she’s completely discombobulated—but forcing her to participate the way I did yesterday, exercising no real physical force… she could sink under the weight of that. All Adrian’s joking about her trying to kill me made me wonder what she’d do if she had the chance. So, before I climbed on the bed and fucked her, I left my gun out in the open, letting her think I was distracted and forgot.
But she threw me entirely by following up the forced sex with a bonding session, then ignoring the weapon I made available to her and curling up beside me to sleep.
She’s so bizarre. I really like it.
Smiling fondly, I drag my knuckles down the curve of her naked back. Her skin is so soft and smooth. She’s not a light sleeper like I am, so the caress doesn’t wake her. It’s only been a few days, but somehow this already feels like a routine I’m getting attached to. I like to wake up before she does. It provides a little unguarded window to simply enjoy her presence—her quiet, unquestioning presence.
I like her much more than I expected to. We couldn’t be less alike, but maybe that’s why I like her. I’m by no means full of self-loathing, but given she is my opposite in every way, she does surprise me sometimes. People don’t ordinarily surprise me, so it’s refreshing. I can think of things from my perspective and many other perspectives—but not through the eyes of the innocent. I don’t think I’ve ever been innocent. If I was once, I can’t recall the feeling.
In a way, she highlights the broken parts of me. It should rankle, but she’s so bizarrely accepting that it doesn’t. Beth was never really accepting. I fooled myself that she was in the beginning. Well, she fooled me that she was, but I was blind enough not to see past it. I never saw it when she was alive, not even at the end, but Beth saw me as a golden ticket, not someone to love. I should’ve been more suspicious of how eager she was to get pregnant; it was too soon for a normal, well-adjusted person to be ready to start a family with someone new. I needed an heir so it didn’t matter to me if she got pregnant, but she saw it as much more than that. Of course I loved her and was happy to have Isabella even when she turned out to be a girl, but Beth needn’t have had a child to secure a future with me. All she had to do was be a better fucking actress. Let me believe she loved me, even after the limerence wore off. I treated Beth like treasured gold; it would’ve been the most lucrative job she ever could have scrounged up with very little required of her.
She couldn’t do it, though. Infatuation doesn’t last long with me. I’m full of distrust; I need to poke and prod at people until they’re fed up with me. Even if they really like me to begin with, I eventually convince them not to. I eventually become too much to handle.
My gaze drifts to Mia’s arm stretched across my torso. It’s the strangest thing that she sleep cuddles me. Obviously we were getting along well enough when we went to bad last night, but even the very first morning she woke up in this bed when she was drained and completely miserable about it, she woke up with her arm around me like this. What makes it stranger is that she doesn’t always wake up this way with Vince. I even double checked the footage to be sure. About half the time she does, but not consistently.
It’s been consistent with me.
Like a moth to a flame, Mia is helpless to resist my pull.
With Mia, it almost seems like my pattern is working in reverse. She began a few days ago betrayed and hating me, worn out, wishing to be away from me. With each passing day, instead of pulling away from me, she drifts closer. Instead of beginning the relationship with enthusiasm and growing miserable, she began miserable and is convincing herself to gain enthusiasm.