And yet here I am.
She leans close. “You should let me take a look at it.”
“It is fine,” I say. “A shaving cut. A scratch. Nothing.”
She raises her hands. “You don’t have to be a badass all the time, you know. It’s just me.”
“Are you preparing a report for the detective? Does he want my full medical history, or just the more recent injuries?”
The bitter words come too easily to me, before I can think twice. As soon as they’re out, an apology lingers on my tongue, but I stifle it before it can become real.
“Wow.” She bites her lip.
Guilt and hunger attack me in equal force. It is the same way she bites her lip when she’s captivated by pleasure.
“Is that how badly you wanna push me away? Stop being a stubborn ass.”
She makes to grab my elbow to examine the wound. I lean forward, a sudden urge taking me. I am about to kiss her—hard, a kiss to make us both forget—when I remember the sweet voice she used when she lied to me. Her deer-in-the-headlights eyes, the guile I never expected in her.
I push her away.
“You should go back to your room.”
“Whoa!” she snaps. “More fool me for trying to help, right? I guess I—”
She pauses when her cell phone buzzes.
I snatch it away from her as she takes it from the pocket of her robe.
“What the fuck? Give it back!”
I turn my back, shifting from side to side as she tries to reach around me.
“It could be the detective,” I say.
“How many times do I have to tell you this? I’m not talking to the fucking detective!”
“—anymore,” I finish sarcastically.
But it’s a text from Jackie, her mother’s nurse. Hey, sweetheart. I don’t want to worry you but your mom had a bad night and she’s been asking after you. Think you could swing by? xx
“Here.” I hand her the phone.
“I have to see her today,” Camille says as she reads it. Her voice loses its strength. “Like, right now. Bad night. Shit, Jackie, be more vague, could you?”
“You’re not leaving the house,” I say sternly.
“But—Erik.” She tosses the phone from hand to hand frantically. “It’s my mom.”
“You’ll have to wait until I can arrange a guard,” I snarl.
“Well, when will that be?” she yells.
“When I am ready!”
She throws herself back as though punched in the chest. Her face drops, then fixes in place, stiff with hatred. I almost soften, but after Fyodor, I cannot allow anybody else to question my position. Least of all her.
A proud man is a dead man—another of Father’s countless sayings.
“You need to be careful,” she says. “Soon, you’ll burn this bridge completely. And I’m not helping you rebuild it when you do. Shit, Erik, just … I can’t tell if you’re not the person I thought you were, or if I was just wrong to begin with.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
She spins away from me, bathrobe fluttering like a cape. “Maybe you were always just another jerk!” she calls over her shoulder.
I let her go, unable to stop myself from studying her lithe legs, from admiring her bravery in talking to me like that. No other woman has ever dared, but then, that is why I have never truly wanted another.
At least, not the way I want Camille.
“Erik,” Ashley says softly, emerging from the kitchen in Camille’s wake. “Was that really necessary?”
“You tell me. Is it really necessary for every woman in this damn house to spy on me?”
She does not take the bait. She never has. She just shakes her head and walks away, giving me one last look that has more of an effect than words ever could.
She is right, I reflect. I have not handled anything well today.
But a man can only take so many challenges. Sooner or later people will have to be reminded of who is in charge.
20
Camille
As soon as the window of opportunity opens, I’m getting the hell out of this nightmare.
It’s one thing for Erik to go all twisted fairy tale on me and treat me like a fucked-up Rapunzel for his own personal pleasure, but there’s no way I’m going to let him keep me away from Mom.
I almost slapped him downstairs.
The caveman shtick is just getting so tiresome. It’s like there are two Eriks: the one he is pretending to be now, this ice-cold bastard who would happily let my mom think I’ve abandoned her, and the Erik from before, the one who jumped around like a kid on Christmas morning when he discovered I’m pregnant.
Or maybe I was wrong all along. Jesus, if that’s the case I’m really screwed. He could’ve been playing me.
I kneel on the floor, ear pressed against the hardwood, straining to hear.
His voice comes, muffled: “… business … hours … soon …”
Then the door sounds.
I know it’s Erik from the way it slams. The whole house trembles. He really is an earthquake, this man. Sadness tugs at me. He’ll probably never forgive me for this, but what other option is there?
Do nothing?
Let Mom think I’ve been abducted?
I’ll be with you every step of the way, I told her when she got the diagnosis.
I was a teenager but already I felt older, the weight of life pressing heavily on my shoulders. I let thoughts of the things I would miss—prom, sleepovers, boyfriends, all of it—pass like sand through fingertips across my mind.
No matter what, I said, squeezing her hands, kissing her knuckles.
I meant those words then.
I’m not about to go back on them now.
I call the cab company and arrange for a car to pick me up in thirty minutes from the next street over. Then I grab the trash can and hold it up near the fire alarm. It makes me
