My heart is hammering with rage inside me. “You’d better tell me who did that to you, so I can take care of him.”
Them.
Fuck. She said ‘they.’
“You can’t,” she says, pulling her hand from mine. “There’s nothing you can do. It was a long time ago, and it’s already been taken care of.”
“You told your dad?”
She doesn’t say anything.
Fuck. My heart freezes in my chest, and I remember my earlier suspicions. “It was your dad,” I say flatly.
“No,” she says quickly.
Too quickly. Too emphatically.
Who else would have access to her…Andnot be terrified of what Anthony Pomponio would do?
“Look, King,” she says, turning her face to me at last. “I’m sorry that you got a wife who’s broken, but I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to know and react exactly like this. I wouldn’t have told you at all if I hadn’t freaked out like that and given it away. I would have just endured it like a good little wifey and kept my mouth shut, just like I did when you fucked me. That’s how much I didn’t want you to know. So please, please respect my wishes and just drop it. I don’t want revenge. I don’t want to talk about it. I want to forget it happened and move on with my life.Please.”
I don’t know what to say to her. I can’t just forget it. I can’t drop it and let it go and pretend I don’t know, especially after what I did to her tonight. But it’s her body, her experience, and I’ve already violated her enough. I have no right to ask for anything else. I have to respect her wishes, even if it feels wrong to the very core of my bones.
“Okay,” I say at last.
She shakes her head. “I’ll do my duty to the family. I know we have to have a baby. Maybe it worked this time, and if not, I’ll find some way to get through it if it happens again. Maybe I’ll just get really drunk, so I don’t even feel it.”
“I’m not going to do that,” I say, adjusting my position where I’m kneeling on the tiles. I relish the ache in my knees, the pain reminding me that I hurt her so much worse. She didn’t hurt me, though. She never did anything but act like a brat. I’m the one who fucked up, and now I’ll live with the consequences. I’m glad when she sweeps a mountain of bubbles over her body, so I can’t see her anymore. Looking only reminds me what I can never have again. It reminds me what someone took from her, and the immensely more devastating thing I took from her.
Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe I can still make it right.
“Can I get in?” I ask. “I won’t touch you. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want, Eliza. Never again. No matter what. I don’t care how you act, or what the families expect. I’m going to make this up to you, no matter how long it takes. I know you might never trust me, but I’ll work the rest of my life to prove to you that you’re safe with me. That I’ll never hurt you again.”
She looks up at me, her eyes all question and vulnerability. “Promise?”
“I promise.” I lean forward and kiss her forehead.
“What happens when they ask about a baby?” she whispers.
“We tell them we’re trying. And when that stops working, we can tell them you couldn’t get pregnant. As long as we’re married, the families are united. A baby would help solidify it, but even without one, they have us.” I squeeze her hand, and she nods, a tear sliding down her cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
I climb over the side of the tub and sink into the water with her. Instead of scooting to the far end, I open my arms, giving her a questioning look. She swallows, then slowly scoots over, giving me space beside her. I sink down next to her and pull her into my lap. She tenses, and I curl my body around hers, kissing the back of her neck. “Can I just hold you?” I ask. “I don’t want anything else.”
“Okay,” she whispers, and I feel her begin to relax. I hold her gently, like a fragile thing, though I know she doesn’t want that. No one wants to be thought of that way. But the burn of my anger has cooled into something warm and fiercely protective, and I keep my arms around her, as if I can protect her from myself after what I did to her.
I don’t know when I stopped thinking I would never care about this girl. Maybe it happened sometime during the honeymoon, when I was counting the freckles on her skin, watching with envy as she laughed at everyone’s jokes but mine, admiring the fearless way she dove into the water from a cliff. Maybe it was in the weeks since then, when I earned her obedience, fed her from a spoon, licked it clean after being inside her. Maybe it was when she stitched me up even after I demanded her submission on her knees. Or maybe it was tonight, when I came inside her and then saw inside the cracks in her armor that look so much like mine, even if the cause of our brokenness is so very different. Even if I put the cracks in her armor tonight that let me see through to the real girl inside the brat.
I only know that I’ve already broken the vows I made on the altar. Not the ones to her, but the ones to myself. I promised I wouldn’t let her love me, but I forgot to worry about my own stupid heart.
My sister once told me that I’d make a good father because I want to protect people, to take care of them. I may never be a father, but the other part is true. I didn’t ask for it, but I’m cursed with an instinct that makes the life I’m bound to even more dangerous.
I know what it’s like to hurt, and when I see someone hurting, I want to take that hurt away. It binds me to them in some way, a way that has nothing to do with the vows I made to Eliza or the rings we put on each other’s fingers. I can’t help but care about what’s mine, and I will go to the ends of the earth to protect it. And the instinct isn’t just for family, for a girl I vowed to protect. It’s more than that. She found my weakness. When I know a girl is hurting, something primal inside me awakens, an instinct to protect her, to care for her, to heal her, even if I’m the one who caused the damage.
I know how dangerous that is, not just because someone could take her from me, but because I won’t be able to protect her from all the hurts that come with being a made guy’s wife. I can’t promise her I’ll always be here. I wasn’t there to protect her in the past when she was hurt, and I can’t protect her from the effects of her past on her life now. The truth is, I can’t even promise I’ll protect her if I’m here. I’ve failed before. How could she trust me to take care of her when the last girl I was supposed to protect ended up dead?
Even worse, I’ve made sure she can never trust me. That I won’t protect her from the monster in her own house. I don’t deserve what I took from her. I proved myself unworthy of the wife the families chose for me, the one they entrusted me with. I didn’t protect her and cherish her. I lost control of her, lost control of myself. I ruined her, wounded her in a way that can never be healed. And for that, I can never even ask forgiveness.