Scott bowed his head. “Yes, I like it. Thank you.”

It was awkward, climbing into the cage. He tried not to look at her. The quality of her breathing had changed. It got quicker when she was humiliating him, panting.

His back was already aching as he hunched over.

She left the room and returned with a padlock. “There we go, safe and sound.”

She locked it with a heavy click.

22

NATALIE

Scott got a sick thrill from making me sleep in a dog cage. This was after the yelling, the holes he’d punched into the walls, after he’d pressured me into having sex more times than I could count. This was after the broken promises; it was after he’d made me so scared of him, sometimes I couldn’t sleep, lying awake, grateful for the hours of darkness and silence.

He didn’t hit me. That was his only redeeming quality, if such a basic thing as do not hit your wife can be considered a positive characteristic.

The first time he showed me the dog cage, I told him no. I thought he was joking. Our marriage was confused like that; amidst all the shouting and the arguing, there was love, there was respect sometimes. There was something real.

His breath reeked of whisky as he moved closer. “I’m not messing around, you stupid slut. You’re sleeping in there tonight.”

“Scott–”

“If you don’t…” He got even closer. “I’ll tell your backward parents you cheated on me. Can you imagine their faces? They’d soak their Bibles with all their crying. They’d disown you.”

I froze. For a second I thought he knew about the affair, knew about her. But he didn’t. It was all part of the threat; he was saying he was going to lie to them about a fake affair. He didn’t know about the real one.

“Why, Scott?” I whispered.

“Why?” He laughed, making it sound violent, like a jagged cough. “Why? You know why.”

He stared for a second, and then it hit me. The other night, I’d been performing oral sex on him. And then he’d become aggressive, pushing far too deep. I’d started to choke and he’d grabbed my hair, and then, when I pushed against his legs to make him stop, he’d taken it as a sign that I was enjoying it. Or he’d pretended to.

I’d finally managed to get away from him. He’d become pouty, as he had many times before. “You always ruin it when it’s getting good.”

“It’s your choice,” he said. “The cage or I ring the religious nutjobs. What’s it going to be?”

Scott knew how much my parents mattered to me. He knew how much I loved them. Any sort of scandal would ruin them; whenever anything happened in their lives, their first question was always how their church friends would react to it. It was always how things seemed, rather than what they were. Scott knew I couldn’t bear to inflict that on them. Even if they maybe deserved it.