“I don’t have any room for you.” My sneer hurts my face.

Something at least masquerading as sincerity crosses his face. “You can’t be happy with that guy. C’mon. He’s—”

“He’s my husband, Christian. The father of my son. Watch what you say about him.”

He puts up his hands. “Fine. But he doesn’t make you happy. He doesn’t get you off. This happy little homemaker life? That’s not you, Jewelann. Never was. Never will be.”

“You don’t know anything about me!”

He laughs. “I know everything about you that anyone could ever need to know. Kenny’s the one who doesn’t know who you are. Why do you put up with that? The way he talks about you—”

“How does he talk about me?”

“Like you’re something he owns.” Christian actually seems angry on my behalf. “Like you’re stupid.”

Icy fury floods me, but at who? Christian, or my husband? “Did it ever occur to you that I might love him?”

“But do you, though? Do you?” Christian makes a face.

“I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer,” I tell him. “But I want you to leave me alone. Please.”

“You won’t even look me in the eye,” he says in a low voice. “Did I really fuck you over that bad?”

I will admit nothing to him.

Christian’s voice rises, rasping. “Why did you go upstairs to my hotel room? Why did you stay after they left, if you didn’t want me? You know what? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. You should have fucked me when you had the chance. You want me to leave you alone? No problem, Jewelann. Watch how alone I can leave you.”

He takes me by the upper arm, his other hand turns the doorknob and neatly, easily, he sets me out on the driveway. He slams the door behind me. The lock clicks.

It’s the promise from him that I wanted. Why, then, does it feel more like a threat?

CHAPTER
18

“WHAT’S HE DOING in there?” Eli asks this in a low voice.

Ken’s been tinkering in the kitchen for the past hour, trying to fix the leaky faucet and figure out why the sink’s been draining so slowly. Before that, he’d gone to the carriage house to check on the plumbing issues over there. Eli and I are in the living room, working on some homework he doesn’t really need me to help him with.

“He’s fixing the sink.”

Eli’s eyebrows raise. He looks toward the kitchen, where Ken is whistling. The sound is piercing, an out-of-tune warble I don’t recognize. Every now and then it stops, and I hope he won’t start it up again. He always does.

“Is he ever going to start traveling again? It’s been almost a month. He’s never home for this long.” Eli turns his attention back to the papers in front of him on the coffee table.

We haven’t spoken about our conversation by the river, but it hangs between us now.