I heard her arm rustle in the dark and her fingertip burned over my scar.
“I’m sorry you hate yourself like this,” she whispered. “You deserved better.”
If she had shoved her hand in my chest and torn my heart out, it would have hurt less. I froze in place. She turned over and huddled beneath the covers. For a long time, I lay on my back and felt the storm shake the foundations of the house.
I barely spoke to her for the next few days and she kept out of my way. I heard her in the music room running through the “Queen of the Night” again and again. Then she’d quit in a rage, slam the door, and her footsteps would ring down the hall to the bedroom. At night we ate dinner together and exchanged small talk over our wine without looking each other in the eye.
The sex was dirty and impersonal and I preferred it that way. She’d started on the pill and we took advantage of it as often as possible. At night, she would roll onto her stomach and let me mount her hips and grip the back of her neck while I fucked her in silence. Then I would make her come because all was fair, even in this war without love.
And because there was nothing that let me rest easier than the lingering taste of her on the back of my tongue.
Early the next week, I dropped her off for her evening classes at the academy. I sat there behind the wheel of my Cadillac and watched her walk up to the hall and disappear through the front doors. There was a soft ache in my chest and when I swallowed, my throat was dry. I couldn’t let Merrick touch her, and yet I couldn’t not let him. I was fucking everything up and we hadn’t even been married two months.
And yet, I wanted to do this. I wanted her to experience being traded for an alliance, to watch her drip down the inside of her thigh while she came again and again. I wanted Merrick and I to torture her until I was no longer so jealous and she was satisfied.
I gripped the steering wheel hard, my knuckles going white as I pulled out onto the road. I had always been this way, for as long as I could remember. I’d hidden this selfish part of me beneath my sculptures, beneath the artistic beauty of this old house, to avoid having to face that darkness.
I couldn’t face it because I knew what I fucking was, I’d had it ground into my brain for years. Monster. Broken on the inside, beautiful on the outside. A jealous, toxic, ugly monster. A burden to everyone around me.
It’s not that bad, stop crying.
Stop fucking crying.
My vision flashed. I yanked the steering wheel to the side and pulled over as a wave of panic moved through me. My heart hammered and my back dripped with sweat. My scar tingled and I shook my head hard, running a hand over my face. As I sat there on the edge of the highway, I realized this wasn’t even about Rosalia.
This was me and the fucking demons that lived in my skull.
In the last few years, I’d finally come to terms with the heart of all this fucking pain I carried around. The people who should have loved me the most didn’t protect me, which meant there was truly no one to trust.
In fact, they had hurt me more than any of my enemies ever could. The people I trusted without question, my guardians, my blood, had failed me. They’d broken me, they’d taken my hope of having an intimate relationship.
My ritual didn’t heal me anymore, it only made me so painfully aware of how inherently broken I’d become. I had carved a thousand angels, but never gotten it right. But I’d never stop because without it there was no perfection. And without perfection, there was only my own chaos.
And yet, here was Rosalia who had never asked me to be anything more than what I was. Who had never criticized me. Who had never made me feel broken. I closed my eyes. Deep inside myself, where I was too afraid to go, I had a blossoming idea that if it was possible to carve perfection, it would look like my wife.
But I couldn’t accept that thought because it meant allowing myself to understand that she meant something. And that was a dark thing to carry with me. It was a stone wall between Rosalia and I because if I let her love me, I was right back to where I’d started.
Vulnerable.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ROSALIA
The warmer months of autumn slipped by silently. After that night in his study where he’d confessed what his grandfather had done, Peregrine was distant with me. The house was colder than my parents’ mansion and I spent my mornings wrapped in blankets in the library with a cup of hot coffee. It rained a lot through the month of October, but when it was clear, I walked to the academy.
After my classes, Peregrine’s personal assistant and bodyguard would let me go to the coffee shop to study. When my responsibilities as a student were over, I went home to fulfill my duties as Peregrine Calo’s wife.
That meant making dinner with Mrs. Greene and then hurrying upstairs to fix my clothes and hair before Peregrine returned. I wasn’t sure why it mattered to me that I looked good for him. He still wanted me just as badly when I wore leggings and a sweatshirt as he did when I wore a dress and heels.
The Calo House was a comfortable place to watch the autumn months pass. The windows were big and old and they rattled when it stormed. The fireplaces were all outfitted with gas units so I could curl up like a cat before them and bask in the warmth with my books. Occasionally, Peregrine would join me in the library at night and sit in an armchair, while I laid at his feet before the fire, and we would both read in silence.
I took the credit card Peregrine had had made with my name on it and bought a winter wardrobe. The price tag made me cringe, but my husband didn’t blink when I told him how much I’d spent. He didn’t seem to care, which bothered me. I almost wanted him to get angry with me because I craved his attention and he was suddenly polite and distantly affectionate.
Nothing roused his emotions except sex, which I reveled in. That always got him to let go and I loved seeing him unguarded. The things he whispered against my neck made my eyes roll back in my head and the way he made me come with his mouth and fingers gave me flashbacks all the next day.
He was beautiful, filthy, and as sensual as silk in the dark. And I couldn’t resist him. His touch was addictive, and even though I told myself I didn’t care about him, I still waited every night to feel the heat of his body between the sheets. Surely it was just the way he was in bed that made me crave him. Surely I didn’t truly feel anything for this strange, unpredictable man.
If I felt something for him, that meant I had to face the horrible realization that I loved a man who had no interest in loving me back. That I loved a man who would rather spend his nights in his studio, carving angels like his life depended on it. Like the ritual would somehow save him from a darkness I didn’t understand.