“I do, Owen. I love you more than anything. But sometimes you . . .” I couldn’t say what I wanted to say. I couldn’t tell him that I felt like a prisoner, that I felt like a victim, that I felt like his toy to play with whenever and however he felt like it. I couldn’t say those things because they sounded silly even as I considered them. I was his wife, who vowed to love him the way he needed to be loved. So he was rough in the sack. Why did I make such a big deal about it? Maybe because—and it was so hard to even think about it—his preference for vicious, impersonal doggy-style sex, with no face-to-face contact . . . felt an awful lot like rape.

Despite his flaws, he loved me when no one else had. He was the pill I swallowed to feel happy. It tasted bitter going down, but once that panacea took hold, I felt whole again.

I needed to stop before I drove him away and ruined my family.

“Sometimes I what, Mackenzie? You need me just as much as I need you. I do everything for you. How would you survive without me? Would you even want to? You have the life most women dream of. You get to stay home and raise our daughter, you have no stress, no worries. How could you dare accuse me of not doing my best for you, for us?”

“I never said that. I know you do. I just wish you considered my feelings when it came to certain things, Owen.”

“What things?” he asked. He genuinely had no clue.

“Things like . . . sex. You hurt me.”

“I hurt you? Because I want to make love to my wife?”

“Is that what that is—making love? Because it doesn’t feel like it to me.”

“Wow, I ask for one thing from you, one thing. Sex. A little passionate lovemaking between husband and wife. And you can’t even give me that? You want to begrudge me intimacy? How about I do what other husbands do and find it somewhere else, with someone else? Would you prefer that, Mac?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then what? Tell me what it is you want me to do.” He stomped toward me now, grabbing both my arms, lifting me off the sofa, squeezing until my muscles ached. After this his thick fingers would leave long blue bruises, which I would hide with sleeves until they faded enough that no one would notice . . . and then a week or two later there would be new ones.

“I . . . I want . . .” I knew the script by now. I was supposed to tell him I’m all his, take whatever he wants, do whatever he wishes. But yes doesn’t always mean yes, and silence doesn’t always mean yes. “I want you.”