Page 91 of The Husband Contract

“It matters. I only want to understand.”

“I want to understand as well.” She closes her eyes and leans back on the bed. “This is just so fucked-up.”

I lean back as well, our shoulders pressed against each other.

“You thinkI’mfuckedup?”

“What do you think? I already called you Hannibal Lecter.”

“I guess it could be worse,” I say, chuckling.

I roll onto my side and gaze at her. She mimics my position.

“How could it be worse?”

“You could have called me Hitler. You could have called me Mussolini.”

She sighs heavily, clearly not in a playful mood. “This doesn’t even feel real. It feels like I’m in the middle of a bad dream and I’m hoping to wake up. I’m so desperate to wakeup.” Tears well in her eyes and then race down her cheeks, and she swipes them away quickly.“I’m not going to cry.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry about what, Sebastian?”

I rub her shoulder and then pull her into me. At first, she resists, but then she nestles her head in the crook of my neck. When she begins sobbing, I rub her back. I know it’s odd to be comforting her when I’m the one who’s put her in this position.

“You don’t believe me. You don’t trust me. You never loved me. And I’m just sitting here day by day waiting to find out what’s going to go on.” She looks up at me. “I’m sorry about your business. I’m sorry about everything. But it’s not my fault. I wish you would believe me. I wish you would.”

A choked sob rattles out of her. “I’m sorry and I’m mad at myself.”

“Why are you mad at yourself?”

“I’m mad at the fact I’m allowing you to be the one to take care of me when you’re the one who’s making me cry. You’re the one who has me imprisoned. Is this what Stockholm Syndrome feels like?”

Her words pierce through my heart. I pull away from her and sit up.

“I don’t want you to think of me as some sort of captor. I don’t want you to think of me as an evil person.”

“What do you want me to think of you as, Sebastian?”

I stare at her and shake my head. She looks beautiful. And sorrowful. There’s an ethereal quality to her and my heart aches to touch her. My heart aches tobewith her.

“I don’t know.”

Her phone starts ringing then, and she grabs it from the nightstand.

“It’s the Magnolia Club,” she says. “They’ve been callingme. They want to know when I’m going to come back. I can’t lose this job, Sebastian. Brielle and Katherine can’t take my role. I know you think I have these offshore accounts where I’m hoarding money, but it’s not true. I need the money. Can I please go in tomorrow evening?”

I stare at her, and in every iota of myself, I feel like she’s being sincere. And suddenly I doubt everything that I know. My world is turning upside down because I believe her. Yet it makes no sense. It makes no sense whatsoever. I’d only casually glanced at the bank records Louisa had brought. Maybe I needed to do a more forensic accounting of Willow and her accounts.

“You can go,” I say, not even realizing I’m completely going against everything I initially thought when I brought her here in the first place.

“Thank you.” She reaches for me and hugs me, then pulls away quickly when she realizes what she’s done. “Thank you.”

I press my lips against hers, waiting to see if she’s going to pull away, but she doesn’t. She lifts a hand to my cheek and I kiss her deeply. With a rumble of need, I pull her up onto my lap. She wraps her legs around me and grabs my face, kissing me back hard.

I run my fingers up underneath her T-shirt and learn she’s not wearing a bra. I pull off her shirt to see if she’ll complain. She says nothing. She pulls my T-shirt off and we just stare at each other. There’s raw sensuality in the air. There’s sexual chemistry, and I know that neither one of us can resist each other in this moment. She digs her fingers into my skin, intending to hurt, but I relish the pain. I push her down onto her back. I kiss the side of her face. I kiss and suck on her neck. Her fingernails dig into my back as she runsthem down.

Is this really happening? All I had to do was give her what she wanted?