But I can save her now. I can save her from myself.
I stand there for a minute, not knowing what to do, how to say goodbye. Or maybe the truth is that I don’t want to say goodbye at all. I’ve never cared about a girl the way I care about her.
At last, I hold out a hand. “It’s been an honor being your husband.”
She stares at my hand, then turns her face up to mine, her eyes flashing in the familiar way that fills me with relief even though it’s always driven me insane before. I didn’t want to break her spirit, to turn her into someone else. I just wanted to claim her, to remind her she was mine, that she couldn’t do whatever the fuck she wanted. But I took it too far. Knowing she still has some fight left in her puts my mind at ease. I know I’ve made the right decision, that she’s strong enough to move on, that she’ll be fine without me. And Al will know better than to use me for such an important job again. I’m too young to be trusted with a job this big, with something so precious as Eliza Pomponio.
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” she demands. “You want ahandshake?”
I drop my hand.
“You know what?” she says. “Fuck you, King. This isn’t about what I deserve. This is about the fact that you can’t survive without having someone to stick your dick in, and now that you fucked up, you can’t stick it in me because you feel too guilty. But I told you all along I didn’t want that to be part of our marriage. I told you I didn’t like sex. I told you to get a mistress. It’s not my fault you’re too proud.”
My own temper starts to rise, but I hold my tongue. This is my fucking fault. Not for what I did last night, but for falling for her. I wasn’t supposed to care. But I didn’t protect my own heart, and now I’m fucking paying for it. My one consolation is that she shows very few signs of returning those feelings. I can handle the pain if I know I did right by her.
“You’re right,” I say. “You’re right about everything.”
“Ugh,” she says, grabbing a shoe off the floor and hurling it at me, barely missing my head. “You’re impossible.”
I twist off my wedding ring and set it gently on her vanity. “Goodbye, Eliza.”
I turn and walk out of the bedroom. I hear another shoe hit the wall, and she yells after me, “Don’t worry, I’ll be gone when you get home, and you won’t have to deal with my shit ever again!”
I close my eyes and take a breath. “That would probably be best.”
A lamp flies out the bedroom door and crashes to the floor beside me. I wince, every instinct telling me to turn around, to go back and tell her I can handle all of her, the damage and the crazy, the brat and the wild girl. That we’ll work through it together. That it’s going to be okay, that it isn’t her fault. That after last night, I will spend the rest of my life making up for what I did.
But this isn’t about what I want. It’s about the fact that I fail, and it’s better to just get it over with now than wait until she cares. I will never be the husband she wants, one who’s satisfied in a marriage where we live two separate lives. I’ll never be a husband who’s happy to cross paths once a day because he has no interest in her as a person. I’ve already failed in that. She was forced to be my wife, but she never wanted this, never wanted me. I was supposed to change her mind, but all I did was prove that she had every reason not to trust me from the start.
I want her, and I’ll never stop wanting her, and that’s dangerous for both of us. I can handle putting myself in danger. I do it every day. But I can’t put her in danger. The least I can do is take her out of harm’s way, out of danger, and that means letting her go live the life she always wanted—one without me in it.
twenty
Eliza
I hurl the other lamp out the bedroom door into the living room with a scream of rage when I hear the front door close. He left. He fucking left me. After everything he did, I should be the one leaving. I grab his shoes, all lined up neatly under the edge of the bed like he’s in the military instead of his own fucking home, and I hurl them at the wall, the mirror above the dresser. The mirror tilts, reflecting the surface of the dresser, where his wedding band sits like an accusation.
It’s over. I should be happy. I’m finally free.
I snatch it and hurl it at the mirror. It bounces off, barely making a sound. The rage wells up inside me. I open my mouth and let out a roar of fury. Grabbing the edge of the tilted mirror, I heave it with all my strength. It totters, then topples over with a splintering crash as it hits the floor. I jump back, but I’m filled with a gleeful satisfaction. A hysterical laugh bubbles up inside me. I grab the wooden frame and kick the glass out, not feeling the cuts on my bare toes.
I tried. Even this morning, after what he did last night, I played nice. I tried to appease him, telling him I’d hire a maid, even giving him a goodbye kiss. Because the truth is, he only did what every other man would do. I knew it, but I also knew he was different, and it pissed me off. It pissed me off that he was so above everything, like he thought he was better than me and everyone else. He left me alone, and when he did touch me, he was too fucking good at it. It’s not fair.
I slam the frame of the mirror on the floor again and again, pounding the pieces of glass into smaller fragments until the wood splinters and cracks, and I’m left with only one long piece of the frame. I’m too mad to care that there’s glass in my feet. I stomp across the floor, gritting my teeth against the pain as new shards cut me.
It’s like walking over hot coals. Mind over matter. I control my body. Just me. Not him. Not the face in my nightmares, my memories, distorted through water like in a funhouse mirror.
I catch sight of myself in the mirror above my vanity. I look insane, my hair a wild tangle, my face flushed with exertion, my gaze desperate and unhinged. I rear back and swing the wood like a baseball bat, shattering the mirror above my vanity. Glass rains down over the makeup scattered over the surface. I swing again, sending the bottles of nail polish flying. King must have brought them in from the other room sometime last night after I fell asleep. Taking another swing, I clear the top of the vanity. Then I pick up the chair, smashing it on the floor and letting out a primal scream of pain and rage. How could he fucking leave me?
Everyone leaves. First my brother, then my mother, then every single nanny I ever had until Sylvia, then my own husband. The only person who never left is my father.
When the chair is destroyed and my throat is sore from raging, I sink into the shards of mirror on the floor and let myself cry. It’s all so fucked up.
My feet are bleeding. Between my legs is still shockingly painful from King’s rough treatment. And inside my chest feels hollow but hot at once, raw and aching.
I did this. It’s not his fault. It’s mine.
The truth is, I didn’t just know it was going to happen. I wanted it to happen. Not because I wanted sex, but because I just had to prove to myself that he’s not special, that he’s the same as every other guy. I had to win, to prove myself right, to prove he was no better than me or anyone. He’s a common man, with common needs, not someone who’s too good to get a mistress even though I won’t let him have me.