Bound To My Husband

Chapter10

"How about you spend the weekend at my place."

He leaned in close when he said it and my brain immediately made a decision without consulting me. I thought he was about to kiss me, I immediately closed my eyes, my whole body leaning into the anticipation of it.

Nothing happened.

I opened my eyes and found him tucking my hair behind my ear, his fingers unhurried, his face entirely too close to mine. And on his lips, that smug pull at the corner of his mouth that told me he knew exactly what he had just done and was very comfortable with himself about it.

He watched me register it. Watched me understand that he had done it on purpose. Something in his eyes was enjoying my desperation in a way that should have embarrassed me more than it did.

Then he leaned in again, closer this time, and I felt the air shift between us.

The door opened.

Laura stood in the doorway taking in the scene between us with the expression of someone who had walked into exactly what she expected to walk into. She paused the appropriate amount of time before speaking.

"Do you want rice or pizza?" She looked at me, but we both knew that was not why she had opened that door.

"That won't be necessary." Logan straightened up. "She's coming with me."

I reached over and wrapped my arms around his, partly because I wanted to and partly because I could feel Laura's knowing smile from across the room and I needed to do something with my hands.

The cramps were starting to creep back in, low and persistent, reminding me my body had its own agenda today.

"Should I start packing her things?" Laura's voice was entirely too innocent.

"No. Whatever she needs I'll sort out." He took my hand and moved toward the door, and I followed him because apparently that was a decision my feet had already made.

I looked back at Laura over my shoulder. She gave me a thumbs up with the energy of someone who had been rooting for this outcome for some time. I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing.

His car was outside, a driver already waiting. He opened the door and we settled into the back seat together, and almost immediately his hand found the side of my face, guiding me down so my head rested in his lap, my face tilted up toward him.

He looked out the window.

Not at me. At the window, like the city outside was suddenly very interesting. His jaw had a particular set to it that I had started to learn.

"Are you going to tell me why you were so angry yesterday." He kept his eyes on the glass.

My heart picked up. I had half hoped he had let that go, filed it somewhere and moved on. I lay there running through options, trying to build something that sounded reasonable, coming up empty.

The jealousy got there before my good sense did. "Why didn't you tell me you had a nickname."

He looked down at me then. Genuinely confused, the kind that isn't performed. "A nickname."

"Ace."

He laughed. Turned back to the window. His thumb moved to his mouth the way it did when something was landing funny to him. "That's my third name." He said. "That's just my name."

"Oh."

The quiet that followed was the kind I didn't know how to fill. I stared at the ceiling of the car and wondered if the expression on my face had given me away completely.

"Is that why you went out in the rain."

"No." My voice came out too fast. "I haven't been in the rain for a long time."

He looked amused in a way he wasn't trying to hide. He leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to my lips, light enough to be unfair. "It's okay to be jealous. It just means you want me."

I said nothing. He said nothing. The city moved past the windows and the silence between us was the comfortable kind that didn't need filling, which was new for me, sitting in quiet with someone and not feeling the need to perform.

We finally got to his house.

It was a mansion, the kind that made sense for him but still made me stop in the doorway for a second. My father's house could hold a conversation with it, but I had been living in Laura's spare room because the hospital kept him and the walls of his house felt too large for one person.

He led me to his bedroom, where I went to his wardrobe to look for something comfortable to wear.

I found one of his oversized hoodies before I had even finished looking around. He had changed out of his work clothes too, and seeing him in something casual and loose did something to my chest that I wasn't prepared for.

I had barely sat down on the bed before he leaned close to my ear. "I'm not with you for your body." His voice was low, for me only. "Just a reminder."

Something heavy moved through me. I remembered what I had said to him, the words I had used, and they sat in my stomach like something I couldn't take back. He wasn't saying it to wound me. That almost made it worse.

I followed him to the kitchen without deciding to. He was already at the counter with an apron on by the time I got there, and I came up beside him and wrapped my arms around him from behind and just held on. The days without him had stretched out longer than they should have.

His phone rang.

He glanced at the screen and put it face down. It rang again. My eyes went to it before I could stop them.

Selena.

I breathed in slowly through my nose and kept my arms where they were. "You should answer it."

"It's nothing important." He reached for the onions and started chopping with the focus of someone who had made a decision. "What do you feel like eating."

The phone rang a third time.

"Fuck." It came out under his breath, quiet and tired, before he picked it up. "What." His voice landed completely differently than it had been landing with me, all the warmth gone, replaced with something cold.

He moved to the window. His back was to me now but I watched his posture change, something tightening across his shoulders.

"I don't believe you." A pause. He leaned forward slightly, looking out. Then went very still.

A pink car rolled into the compound below.

"There is absolutely no way you are at my house right now." He was already moving toward the door before he finished the sentence.