Page 59

FIFTY-NINE

MOIRA

Dear Journal,

I’m on the fanciest fucking plane I’ve ever ridden, and Bane just slipped into the seat beside me.

What do I feel???

Not gray. That’s for damn sure. All I’ve felt for weeks since I started those dumb meds is gray—fucking gray. I hate fucking gray. At least I did.

But now Bane’s back. A burst of red.

I see it in his eyes. He wants something from me.

But I’m afraid.

Fear feels like blue—the blue-black of a bruise.

I’m not an idiot. I see the lust. The want.

But what if he wants something I can’t give him anymore?

Everybody loves the bouncy, shiny girl.

The shadowed, sad girl—I’ve always tried to tuck her away.

Hide in the cabinet. Cower down. Mam’s fucking again. Hide in the cabinet. Put your sad thoughts away there, too. Just a crack of light in the cabinet-dark.

Men wanted Mam for an hour or two at a time.

Domhn had friends at school—or at least people who respected him and wanted to be like him.

No one wants you.

Bruise blue girl.

Petals plucked, one by one.

Who’s going to want you now?

Holy fuck, Bane is rich .

I mean, I knew it. I knew it in the way you know the ocean is deep or that the sun is hot. But there’s a difference between knowing and standing in the middle of a goddamn castle while some starched-up butler with an accent straight out of a period drama asks if I’d like my tea with honey or lemon.

Castle. Castle. With turrets. With a hedge maze. With an actual suit of armor in the hallway that I swear shifts slightly every time I walk past it. The whole place smells like old books, old money, and the kind of secrets that don’t stay buried, no matter how many silk curtains and imported Persian rugs you drape over them.

And somehow, in the midst of all this gothic nonsense, I’m supposed to be here to “figure things out” with Bane’s father’s estate. Which—newsflash—I shouldn’t even be part of . I did my research. We don’t live in California. And Texas doesn’t do that whole ‘Congrats, you married a man and now you own half his empire!’ bullshit.

So when I bring this up at dinner, where I sit across from Bane at that absurdly long table like we’re starring in a high-budget enemies-to-lovers adaptation, he just smiles .

That slow, deliberate, I already know how this ends kind of smile.

Then he says something about our joint bank account.

And I frown. “You mean the joint account we made so we could, like, split the cost of ramen and toilet paper?”

He nods. Casually. Too casually. Like he isn’t about to say the most batshit thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

“Why would you put anything in there?” I ask because someone needs to inject some logic into the conversation.

He just gives me that look . The kind of look that makes my goddamn bones itch with need, along with every sinew and nerve ending, too. I didn’t know I could still feel that itch through the medical gray.

“Because we’re man and wife,” he says, voice smooth as sin. “And what’s mine is yours.”

I choke on the amazing soup—the first of several courses, by the way, all prepared by the Michelin-star chef who apparently lives here.

Bane doesn’t even blink. Just waves a dismissive hand. “I’ll see that you get a fair settlement.”

A fair ? —

I swear to God, my brain is short-circuiting. My hands tremble with the effort it takes to not launch my soup spoon at his stupid, smug, infuriatingly perfect face.

“I told you from the beginning I don’t want your money,” I snap.

And he?—

He chuckles.

This man—this infuriating, impossible bastard—just chuckles to himself like I’m a child and just said something adorable . Then he scrolls through his phone, completely unbothered, while I’m seconds away from flipping the entire table over.

“Tomorrow, Rotterdam and the rest of the family will show up,” he continues, voice cool. Commanding. “You should try to sleep off the jet lag tonight.”

Oh. Oh, should I? Should I just sleep ? Like I’m not trapped in a stone mansion that probably has secret passageways? Like I’m not currently lying in a bed that could fit four of me, staring up at a chandelier worth more than my entire life, while somewhere down the hall, he’s probably sleeping like a king who just conquered the last piece of land he had left to claim?

So no. No, I can’t sleep.

Instead, I’m here, scribbling in this stupid journal, trying to make sense of any of this, trying to wrap my head around how I went from splitting bills with Bane in his tiny little parish house to being an actual pawn in some old money inheritance nonsense.

And the worst part? The absolute worst part?

I felt something when he said it. When he smiled like that. When he mentioned a settlement like I was already his to take care of.

So no, I can’t sleep.

Kira says I’m supposed to write down my big feelings when I have them, but I don’t know what the fuck I’m feeling right now. I need a canvas the size of Dallas and even then I don’t think I could paint out what I’m feeling. Especially when Bane comes around and scrambles up everything just when I thought I was settling into a nice numb gray I was starting to embrace.

She says if I need help, I should look up the Feelings Wheel .

Feelings are stupid.

The Feelings Wheel is stupid.

I don’t know what I fucking feel.

Nothing.

I’m about to slam the journal shut. Or better yet, throw it across the room until its spine cracks against the brick wall.

But I don’t.

I sigh, then take a forced breath.

Inhale for three. Exhale for six.

I pull open that goddamned color wheel on my phone and try to find a word for whatever the fuck this emotion is.

Inadequate. Alienated. Empty. Apathetic.

I try each one out. But no, none of the outside wheel words are quite right. So I head inward to the more basic emotions.

Sad.

Afraid.

Angry.

Oooh, angry, my old favorite.

But now that Bane’s not here, I can’t even work up a tenth of the buzzing, bright fury I used to be able to call on at the twitch of my fingers.

I feel like a witch whose magic was stolen.

But I do think about unaliving myself a lot less often lately.

So, you know.

There’s that.

Dear Journal,

I don’t know how to want things without wanting to swallow the entire world whole.

I don’t know how to want things like a person on a canoe with strokes so even.

I don’t know how to want things like a sane girl.

I miss the chaos.

The kaleidoscope of such pretty, wild colors ever-shifting.

Today, I’m still just black and blue.

Today, I meet the rest of Bane’s family.