Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 138003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
“My legs feel like jelly.” Her words hit the air in an incredulous-sounding warble. “They wouldn’t hold me up.”
“It’s okay now. You’re safe.” Strange how my reassurance feels as much for myself as for her.
Thump, thump, thump goes my heart. In my chest. In my neck.
A dull thud sounds from behind me. Another. Another. Lavender pushes her head into my chest.
“Make it stop,” she whispers hoarsely.
I say something in Llanito, maybe Spanish, that makes the sounds halt, and Luis curses.
“It’s okay. You’re okay.” My words are all relief and thanks as I fall to the side, pulling Lavender into my lap. I stroke her hair, her back, and curse Tod and fate for keeping me outside.
Primrose kneels beside us, her words not making any sense.
Luis pulls out his phone, words like a rapid-fire down the line.
“Rope,” he then demands with an aggressive roll of his r’s.
“M-me?” Tod squeaks from the other side of the room.
Primrose says, “We should call the police.”
“No.” My voice. Lavender’s, too.
“Raif?” Lavender's fingers tighten in my shirt.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“I don’t want to speak to them. I just want you to take me home.”
31
LAVENDER
“What are you doing?”
Pausing at my sister’s voice, I turn her way, my left cheek aching from the movement. It’s still tender to the touch and will probably bruise, but hey-ho.
“The rhumba,” I answer a little too aggressively, pressing my hand to the mattress. My breakfast tray dips precariously, the slim vase holding a rose bumping into my glass of juice.
“Then I might do the cha-cha.” And then, because I’m sorry for being a bitch and also bored of being treated like a Victorian damsel prone to swooning, I do the twist along the side of the bed. I even break out into the sprinkler partway.
“Mental case,” Primrose says with a beleaguered shake of her head. Crossing the room, she puts down two massive mugs of tea on the nightstand.
“Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.”
“And a stupid dance as a bonus.”
“I was looking for my slippers,” I say. “I’m going downstairs.”
“Please yourself,” Prim says, flopping to the velvet bench at the end of the bed. “But the cleaners are in. It’s a hive of noisy activity down there. They’re really getting stuck in.”
“Where’s Raif gone?”
“Dunno. He just said he wouldn’t be long.”
After he’d brought me home last night—Prim, too—I’d just wanted to shower and sleep. Perchance to forget all that preceding shit. But it’s not every day your (fake) husband from your (real) marriage looks at you like you’re the sole reason for his heart bleeding. I gave him the bare bones of the tale—who Julian is and why I thought he turned up—when all I wanted to do was shove those facts into the spare bedroom of my brain, stuffed in a box wrapped tight with tape, and thrust to the back of a cupboard behind other detritus. Never to find or examine again.
But I will because I promised him I’d fill in the blanks later.
Last night, he’d undressed me like I was made from glass, then turned on the shower and ushered me in. He’d gotten in behind me without speaking a word and washed my skin with such care and tenderness. His kindest act of all was to pretend he didn’t notice my tears.
I was exhausted by the time I’d crawled into bed, and I was grateful for his strong arms as I drifted off to sleep. He wasn’t there when I woke, but Primrose was. With such warming words of comfort.
“Do you know you snore?” she’d asked as I’d pulled myself upright against the pillows. “You never used to. Not when we shared a bedroom.”
“Thanks.” The words had sounded a thousand years old.
“Also, just so you know. You farted in your sleep, and Raif was still in the room.”
“Everyone farts.” Farts. Snorts. Drools. Wakes with their hair looking like a bird’s nest. Why on earth is he with me?
“Yeah, but you’ve only been married a couple of weeks. Is the honeymoon period truly over?”
I bit my tongue from saying it hadn’t begun, that pretend love doesn’t earn one of those. Then I realized I was wrong. I might’ve married a stranger for no other reason than cold, hard cash, but he’s treated me so well. He hasn’t once upcasted my role. Never suggested I’d sold myself or called me a whore. Conversely, the boy I imagined myself in love with five years ago thought I owed him my body in exchange for the title of girlfriend.
He took. And I let him. And I think that might be the worst feeling in the world. The shame, the indignity, that I did nothing to stop him.
I blow out a breath and plonk myself down next to Prim. My little sister shuffles closer and rests her head against my shoulder.
“I’m sorry I didn’t know.”