Page 156 of Jensen

He drains the glass and throws it into the electric fireplace. It smashes on the ground, spraying glass shards. Panicked, I drop my wine to the floor and pull back, scrambling onto the bed. Leland turns, striding closer like a hunting animal.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “You’ll pay for everything with your freedom.”

My heart is in a hundred thousand different pieces of fine porcelain. Before he got his hands on it, it was whole. Simple but beautiful, just like the little house I grew up in, the one he tore me from. I never asked for much from him, just that he leave me alone.

That’s all I wanted.

To be left in peace. To not be wanted, to not be desired. To not be taken against my will because of it.

“Leland.” My voice breaks.

He looks but doesn’t respond.

“Why do you want to keep me at all?” I whisper, another tear slipping down my face.

Hereaches out and cups my chin. I look up at him, but he’s not seeing me, not the way Jensen does. It takes everything I have not to shudder as his hand drags down my neck, down over my collarbones to the satin bra cupping my breasts. His middle finger runs a straight line to the diamond tucked between them. His lids are lowered, eyes focused on my body wrapped in gold and silk.

“Because I like beautiful things,” he says finally.

All at once, I’m back in the river by the church. I’m desperate, trying to scrub the blood out, trying to wash Leland from my sheets. He did that like it was nothing. I know that to him, it was truly nothing, a shallow river in the light of the rest of his life.

He is a boy reaching for the best toy, holding it up so everyone can see what he owns. He is a consumer, a destructor, hungry for everything and nothing at all.

He took me. He took this city. God knows what he’ll take next.

His ego will burn the world down if nobody stops it.

All these years, I showed him the wounds he put on me. I begged for understanding. I made myself soft and vulnerable, hoping he’d look into my eyes and really see my pain.He never did because he never wanted to understand.

“Leland,” I whisper. “The night you got me pregnant…why didn’t you wear a condom?”

He’s not listening, stroking over my stomach. With slow pressure, he slides his other hand around my body and lays me down against the pillows. The heat of his mouth burns my stomach as he kisses me.

“Leland,” I repeat. “Please tell me.”

“I don’t remember.” He lifts his head. “Why does it matter, Della? You’d have gotten pregnant eventually after we married.”

Crack.

I was wrong that there’s no more heart left in me to break. Right now, he’s grinding the final shards of it to dust with his heel. Biblical anger pours through me, mixing with a deep sadness, deeper than the river I tried to wash him away in.

Maybe he’s lying. Or maybe that’s the God honest truth.

It doesn’t matter. His time is up.

“You will behave tonight,” he says against my bare skin.

The ceiling swims overhead. My only prayer is that the drug works fast, and that I gave him enough to sedatehim.

A hot tear etches into my hair.“I understand,” I whisper.

He flips us with effort, like his hands are unsteady. I’m on top of him, straddling his body, and his arousal beneath my bare thigh sends waves of sickness through my stomach. Are his eyes heavy? Or is that just the light?

“Do what you did to him,” he says. “Do it to me, but make it better.”

He slurs,andI swear I can hear it. Slowly, I bend and touch his forehead with my lips, thenhis cheekbone where Jensen broke the skin. He makes a noise in his chest, and this time, I know for certain he’s fading.

“Fuck,” he says, eyelids flickering.