So with all of this in mind, I’m attempting to start my own journal. Again. I always feel weird about exposing myself on the page, but this time I’m committing because Rebecca’s fears, dreams, and life in general drove me to be better. And I think I’ve grown enough since meeting her on that first page I read to make that growth come from reading my own fears and insecurities on the page. And if I share them with Chris, because I am able to with him, who knows where that will lead us . . .
So where are we now? I am sitting in Chris’s Paris studio, curled inside the nook in front of the window where he was painting me just two hours ago. He’s back to painting. “Take Me to Church” is still playing on repeat in the background, while he works on one of his Underground Tom paintings, all of which have been dark, and no doubt inspired by the recent and past tragedies of his life, as well as his fear that part of his life will somehow touch me and us. He is broken in many ways, as dark as those paintings, but somehow that part of him collides with all the others and equals perfection to me and the canvas. He started by painting me, quite literally, and I’m not talking about the canvas. I’m wearing his shirt now, but beneath it, I have paint all over my body. My God, the things that man does to me!
One minute he was kissing me, the next my hands were bound and I was at the center of the studio, on the floor, his brush, hands, and mouth driving me wild. Controlling me the way certain triggers make him want to control everything around us, and yet he manages to keep those moments naked and raw. And somehow, I like it when he controls me. The control freak in me stopped fighting that months ago. I like it. I love it. He might dominate in those intimate times, but I am never as free in life as I am then, when I don’t have to be anything but his woman.
But going back to how the need for control started today, or rather, why it started . . .
The minute he’d heard I might be in danger, I knew it would be a trigger for him, for which he’d need a release, which for Chris used to mean pain. I still can’t believe how he’d . . . I can’t write it. I just . . . can’t. Now, his release is sex. Hot, amazing sex, and this time it included binding my hands, painting my body, and teasing me incessantly. Teasing both of us, because when we finally . . . it was explosive. This is how he heals now. How we heal.
We.
I like that word.
Wife.
Husband.
I like those words, too, though there are still no white picket fences for Chris and me. I’ll happily take the many shades of perfect imperfection that define Chris Merit. But I really want Ella to have her version of the white picket fence. And I know she’s not the simple happy schoolteacher she played at being. I saw her own shades of imperfection because they spoke to mine. It’s why we connected and understood each other, beyond what we dared speak to one another. But maybe we will now. I just want the chance for us to get that close. I really need her to be okay, and my gut says she’s not. The way it said Rebecca was not.
ella
“This is where you say ‘yes,’ sweetheart,” Kayden says. “This is where you agree to be my wife.”
“Wife,” I say. “I never thought . . . but I like how that sounds.” I have recovered from the shock of his proposal enough to know why I’m hesitating to accept. “But there are so many reasons—”
“For you to say ‘yes,’?” he supplies, his voice rough, shadows in his eyes that weren’t there moments before.
He’s right; there are. But instead I say, “For us to talk. I need to sit up so we can talk.”
He stares at me, his expression unreadable, his naked shoulders bunched, and I can tell that he wants to refuse to move, but he doesn’t. He leans back just enough for me prop myself on the arm of the couch behind me. But he continues to bracket my hips, caging me as if he thinks I’ll run away, when all I want to do is kiss him. I settle for reaching up and fingering a strand of his light brown hair. “You’re The Hawk.”
“And that has what to do with you marrying me?”
“Everything,” I say, my hand moving to his jaw, the newly forming stubble rough beneath my fingers, while my rejection of his proposal is a weight on my shoulders and heart. “You’ll make decisions to protect me.”
“That’s right,” he says unapologetically. “I will.”
“But those might not be the right decisions.”
“We had this conversation thirty minutes ago. Caution is good.”
“Unless it makes you afraid to act.”