Page 160 of If You Claim Me

His jaw tics, and his fingers press into the arms of the chair, but he remains silent, unyielding. I see his father in him now, and it terrifies me.

But I move closer anyway, even though it feels very much like I’m cornering a scared animal.

“What do you feel for me, Connor?” I ask again.

“Gratitude.” He crosses and uncrosses his legs. “You gave me back the person who means the most to me.”

That hurts, the way it’s intended to. My next question scorches its way up my throat. “How much of my happiness these last few months has been tied directly to Meems and how much of it was actually about me, if anything, Connor?”

“Making you happy made Meems happy,” he states simply, as if it should be obvious.

As if there’s nothing more to it. As if we haven’t shared a bed for months. As if he hasn’t held me every night like I’m precious.

“And what about you? Did it make you happy?”

“My happiness is irrelevant, Dred.”

“Stop calling me that!”

“Why? It’s what everyone else calls you.”

“You are not everyone else!”

He shrugs. “But what if I am?”

“Why are you shutting me out like this?”

“I’m not,” he says flatly.

“You are,” I argue. “Everything you’re doing right now makes me feel like I’m all the things your father accused me of.” And I refuse to allow myself to be used so Connor can escape whatever is happening inside his heart and his head. I know there’s something.

His throat bobs, and he rolls his head on his shoulders. “You signed a contract. You agreed to marry me for financial security. And I don’t blame you. If I was in your position, I would have done the same thing.” He motions between us, voice void of emotion as he continues to eviscerate my heart. “This was never real. I saw an opportunity, and I took it. So did you.”

Every word feels like salt rubbed into an open wound, one that’s festered since childhood. The little girl who was too broken to fix. The one people took home and hoped would be the daughter they’d always dreamed of. But I never was. The part of me that could trust an adult to take care of me, to put me first, had been shattered.

I’m a charity case.

Broken.

Dispensable.

I always have been. Like everyone else, Connor felt bad for me. He saw me as a chance to make the one person who has his heart happy. And he took full advantage of every single weakness I have. He used my soft, flawed heart against me.

He drops his head, shielding his eyes from me. Cutting off my link to his emotions. But now I’m angry. All those years spent broken taught me how to recognize it in others. And I hate being lied to.

This started as a contract, but somewhere along the way,things shifted. Connor might not want to admit the truth, but I was more than an obligation to fulfill, and he was more than just a ticket to a better life.

I fell forhim. Not the angry son of a billionaire. Not the hockey player who became a villain on the ice and welcomed all the negative attention because it affirmed what he already believed about himself. I didn’t fall for this closed-off version of the man who handed me a marriage contract.

I fell for the man who took care of me when I slid into a pit of memories I couldn’t escape on my own.

He gifted me the twins for Christmas.

He gave me a room in this house he knew I would love.

He played board games with me.

Read books to me.