I just didn’t think I could get her back.
The look in her eyes told me that she hated me. She was hard now, like a woman carved from stone, and I was afraid that no matter what I said or did, I could never bring her back to the way she had been before. I had broken her in too many pieces, and what had been pieced back together had no room for me.
“Are you happy?” I asked her despite myself. It was a stupid question.
She gave me a sharp look. “What do you think?”
I pressed my lips together and nodded. “I’m sorry.”
But she didn’t seem to understand that I was sincere or appreciate how sorry I was. I knew sorry meant nothing anymore. In fact, the words that came out of my mouth made her tense up even more.
Annoyed, she brushed her hair back from her face and looked down at her cup of tea before taking a sip.
Her neck was covered in small bruises.
My heart stilled but I made sure concern wasn’t showing on my face. I stared at them for a moment, memorizing the shape, before she could catch me looking.
They looked like fucking hickeys. Or bite marks. They looked like what I used to do with her when I was feeling particularly bloodthirsty and crazed with lust.
My mind raced, trying to come up with an explanation. She also had bite marks on the backs of her hands, so it’s possible something in the desert air had been biting her.
It was possible.
But unlikely.
I pushed it aside for now.
“I have good news,” I said. She didn’t look at me but I went on. “Evaristo talked. We’ll keep him for a few more days.” I paused. “I need a favor from you.”
“Oh?” she said.
“He’s pretty beat up,” I explained. “It wasn’t pretty, what I had to do down there.”
“But I bet you enjoyed it,” she muttered quickly.
I appraised her, the sharpness of her words, the burning in her eyes. “Yes, I did,” I admitted slowly. “Does that still surprise you even now?”
She looked right at me. “He never did anything to you. He didn’t deserve it, what you did. He was an innocent bystander. That used to be something you believed in.”
“I used to believe in a lot of things, Luisa. Myself, included.”
“That makes two of us.”
Ouch. I managed a smile, as if it didn’t sting. “Back to the favor though … can you tend to Evaristo?”
She rolled her eyes. “Play nurse again?”
My expression grew grim. “This isn’t a game, Luisa. You know that. I’m not asking you to put on a nurse’s uniform and give him a pity fuck.” My eyes narrowed as I watched her freeze up again. “That’s not something you’re willing to do, is it?”
She got out of her chair abruptly, nearly spilling her tea again. “Of course not,” she said, taking the cup to the sink. Her actions were entirely deflective.
“Good,” I said, rising up. “Now you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but I thought it might appeal to your good side that there’s a wounded, innocent man down there who needs your help.”
“My good side?” she repeated, keeping her back to me.
“We both know you’ve got bad in you as well.”
But just how much bad has come out to play lately? I wondered. And with whom? I had an idea.
“Fine,” she said, turning around and walking past me. “I’ll go help him.”
I reached out and grabbed her arm. Her eyes widened as I pulled her close to me.
“You look different these days,” I told her.
She held her ground. “Maybe it’s the dry air.”
I smirked at her. “Maybe it is. Maybe it’s a lot of things.”
Our eyes were locked intensely, another game to see who would look away first.
I chickened out first.
I leaned down and kissed her, hard and flush on the lips, my grip still firm on her arm. I’d forgotten how well my lips knew her. I realized how long it had been since I’d last kissed her. I realized how damn much I missed her.
She barely kissed me back. She made a sound of surprise and pulled back, and when she looked up at me, she looked more scared — and confused — than ever.
All she saw was a monster.
She swallowed, her eyebrows coming together, trying to process it. You’d think she had just been doused in acid.
“Don’t worry,” I told her gruffly. “I won’t ask anything more of you.”
I let go of her and she stepped back, still looking shocked, as if it hadn’t been her husband at all that had kissed her. It took all of me to not feel even remotely humiliated.
With her head down, she slowly turned away, as if to run.
“Oh,” I said lightly before she could leave the kitchen. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to Esteban about the interrogation process.”
“Why … why Esteban?” she asked, slowly turning around, hand at her chest.