“It’s your name. You don’t like your name?”
“I like my name. I just don’t like when you say it.” She knew she wasn’t making any sense. But she couldn’t help it.
“Then what do you want me to call you?” he asked, sounding confused.
She let out a breath. “I like when you use my nickname.”
“Your nickname?”
Great. He was going to make her say it. “Little thief or baby girl.”
There was a beat of silence. “All right, Little Thief. Don’t smack your hand again, understand?” He yawned. “One day, I’ll know everything about you.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” she said lightly.
“I didn’t wish for something. Wishing for something is pointless. If you want something, you have to go after it.”
He fell silent. And she tried to relax. She really did. But it was impossible. She was drawn to him.
“Are you awake?”
“Yes. Clearly, so are you,” he replied. “You need to go to sleep. You need your rest.”
“Cause I’m so ugly?”
“What?” he growled.
“You know how people need their beauty sleep. So I was saying do I need to sleep because I’m so ug—”
“Do not,” he growled. “I’m trying to be very good here, little girl. I’m on my side of the bed. I’m not reaching for you and dragging you over here to sleep pressed up next to me where you should be, because I don’t want to scare you. But any more remarks like that and you’ll be getting a spanking before I wrap myself around you and hold you tight to remind myself that you’re here. That you’re alive. That I wasn’t too late.”
Too late?
What was he talking about?
“Too late?”
“To save you.”
“Carl wasn’t going to . . . to kill me. He was only violent that last time.” Well, sort of. He’d grabbed her in the past.
“So he was escalating. What triggered him that last time?”
“I tried to leave.”
There was a beat of silence and she got the feeling he was processing that. “What do you think would have happened the next time you tried to leave?”
She guessed she hadn’t let herself think about that.
“I’m going to find that asshole and make him pay for what he did to you.”
“Please don’t,” she whispered.
“You don’t want him to pay?” he asked.
“I do. But I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Nothing will happen to me,” he told her arrogantly.