Page 59 of My Wife

“You say that so easily,” I whisper.

“Because itwaseasy,” he admits. “They hurt you.”

“Youhurt me.”

“I did what I had to because I fucking adore you! I would never hurt you!”

He raised his voice as if that’ll get me to agree with him. I refuse to react to that at all.

Clay curses under his breath. “Don’t you get it? Hurting you… that was the last thing I wanted to do. I knew you loved me, Cyn. If you didn’t, I really would’ve died instead of just pretending. But I always knew you couldn’t love me as much as I loved you. It wasn’t possible. You could live without me… baby, I could never live without you.”

That’s what he told me back at the cabin. I want so desperately to believe it while, at the same time, wanting to smack him so hard, his brain rattles around his skull. How could he possibly think I didn’t love him as much as I did? Maybe I didn’t when we first got together—I had no idea how obsessed he was in the beginning, or how he’d waited years for me to notice him—but once I fell for him, I fellhard.

I don’t remind him that he lived without me for five years. I already have, and I’m not in the mood for him to tell me how he stalked me the whole time, making me sure I was fucking crazy.

Instead, I grit my teeth. “Losing you fuckingbrokeme, Clay. Do you understand that? I wasshattered. My heart still has cracks in it.”

“I know. Don’t you get it? That’s why I needed this grand fucking gesture. I could say I was sorry with words. I could tell you I love you and pray you believed me. But I showed you my devotion with blood, and my remorse with as many lives as I could sacrifice—and all for you. Now I know what it’s like to kill,and if I have to do it again, I’m ready. Nothing will keep us apart anymore, Cyn. Fuckingnothing.”

We’ll see about that.

I glance over at him. “For me? You sure you didn’t just kill them all because they were my friends? Because you’re a possessive asshole who acts like he can share, but never learned how?”

It’s true. I didn’t mind it, but when Clay and I were together, he didn’t want me to have any friends. He refused to let me work. He wanted it to just be the two of us, and I was so obsessively in love with him in return, I didn’t care. Is taht why I never felt like a part of Tommy’s friend group? Because, deep down, I was better with one person…myperson?

“I killed them because it was the only one I could think to prove to you my devotion,” he says again. “You didn’t think I had the balls to do it.”

“Clay—”

“No. It’s okay. We both know it’s true. I’d do anything for you. I know you wondered how far I’d go. Well, damn it, Cyn. I ‘died’ for you. I killed for you. And now, when you tell me what kind of nerve it takes to take a life, I can tell you I know all about that.” He waits a beat, then says, “How about you, Cyn? Was it easy?”

I go still. “Was what easy?”

“When you killed your mom. I never asked. I figured you had your reason and it worked out for me in the long run so it didn’t matter. But was it easy?”

I refuse to answer him, and I’ll give Clay a shred of credit: he knows better than to push me on that.

Maybe I shouldn’t have lured him to the lake. It’s where my life changed forever, but if I want to think about the true beginning of our love story, I have to admit it begins with the night I drowned my mother.

He’s right, though. We don’t talk about that. After he threatened to out me as a murderer if I didn’t do what he wanted, we came to a silent agreement. My mother drowned. It was an accident. It was suicide. It wasn’t murder.

Clay and I were fucking? Oh, no. I fell for his charm and his generosity after he invited me—no, not forced, why would you say forced?—to move into his home after my mother died. I wasn’t being blackmailed. I was a foolish girl in love who cheated on her loyal boyfriend because she couldn’t resist his best friend, the star kicker on the football team.

You mean the boy so obsessed with me, he stalked me on the island, following me while I was completely unaware that he was there? The boy who watched as my mother thrashed and I kept her head under the water, only releasing her when she went still and floated away?

You mean Clay, the man who’s own twisted nature was a perfect complement to my own before he disappeared and returned to me a fucking serial killer?

Because he’s not done. I can sense the bloodlust emanating off of him as he drops his hand on my thigh possessively. If I try to leave him, he won’t kill me. I believe that to the depths of my soul. He won’t kill me, but anyone who stands between us is a goner.

Staring at the water, ignoring the way he’s boring a hole in my head with his gaze, I smile.

“Look at me, Cyn.”

No. I can’t always give him what he wants. He doesn’t expect me to, either. If I always obeyed him, it wouldn’t make it special when I did something like crawling to him because I wanted his dick in my mouth so damn bad?—

“I said fuckinglook at me.”

My smile widens.

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