Page 111 of Endgame

“Now be good while I get you cleaned. You have a long day ahead of you.”

19

AURORA

“Good girl.”

Everett’s eyes are cold. Impersonal. His knuckles on my cheek skim over the ghost of my dried tears.

“Stop it,” I beg. “Let me stay here.”

“Don’t leave anything out when you tell me about your day later.” The derisive command doesn’t sting. It’s fake.

I know better than to believe he still hates me.

Between the two of us, Everett might be the puppet master. He owns all the secrets. He owns this house behind him. He ownsme.

But he’s made one mistake, and that’s keeping me close. Close enough to study him. Close enough to learn my husband’s tells.

A part of him broke down for me earlier. He’s been hard at work to reclaim his composure ever since he wiped his cum off my face.

With almost impersonal movements, he sanitized a new butt plug and put it in me.

He looked at me with a closed-off gaze as he locked the collar around my neck.

My pleas went unanswered while he forced emerald-green pants and a cream blouse onto my body. He didn’t say a word when I kicked him with the new black heels he put on me.

This silence doesn’t mean he hates me. Not at all.

Liking me scares him, because it means he’ll have to stop hurting me.

He’s damaged. Flawed. Wounded beyond repair in the most beautiful, dark ways.

And despite how cruel he is to me, I don’t want to fix him. That cruelty is just his pain talking.

Something inside me tells me he’s been waiting for it for a long time. That he’s been planning this forever.

Everett even pursued a judgeship just to trap me. He didn’t say as much. Didn’t have to.

My husband is a calculated man. Never leaves anything to chance.

With time, he’ll tell me what broke him. We’ll grow into whatever this is. My only wish is to spare him some of that ache.

That, and to convince him not to send me to the ward.

His expression tells me that at least today, that won’t happen.

But I still hope. I try.

“Everett.” My anxiety clamps around my lungs and throat like a vise.

“What?”

“Hear me out, okay?”

“No.” His comment slices me.

Living under the Clarkes’ roof was awful enough. A constant reminder of the love I could never have from my biological parents. How am I supposed to survive this?