Page 35 of Claimed By Rage

“Rage?” I brush my hand across his shoulder, feeling stupid for even that small of a gesture. I hate going to sleep without resolving an argument, though. After a year of cold, sleepless nights with my ex, the last thing I want is another one. I never used to know how to appease my ex-husband, but with Rage, I have a feeling that bridging the divide is the first step. Whenhe doesn’t answer me, I slide up behind him and wrap my arm around his middle. Part of me is terrified that he’ll suddenly decide to sayfuck thisto our little negotiations, flip me onto my stomach, and have his way with me, but another part of me is terrified that I mightwanthim to.

If he can give me a baby…

I shut down the thought, unwilling to entertain it for another second. Getting my hopes up will only lead to a crash so massive, I won’t be able to recover.

I might actually kill myself this time.

Admitting my fears to Rage feels like swallowing a mountain, so I start small, with the tiniest one I can.

“I don’t know if I—” I take a quick breath—“if I would make a good partner.” I hug Rage tighter to ground myself in my body instead of allowing my mind to drift out into a sea of sorrow. “I wasn’t exactly…” I wince. “…wife of the year, in my last marriage. Not that we’re getting married!” I resist the urge torun far awayand bury my face in Rage’s back instead. Breathing in his scent, I refocus. “I, um, don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for that. Again, I mean.Everagain.”

Rage laces our fingers together and lifts my hand to his lips. Softly, he murmurs, “if I do my job right, you’llwantto marry me.” He draws a deep breath and lets it out slowly, clutching my hand tightly in his. “Not because I force you to, but because… you want to.”

We fall into silence, with Rage pressing a kiss to my palm every few minutes. As we lie in the dark and breathe in the stillness together, I imagine a golden thread looping around us, tying our aching hearts together.

Because as much as I’ve wanted to be desired since the brutal heartbreak of my divorce, I realize that Rage might have been looking for that, too.

Desire.

Need.

Love.

Chapter 11

Ruin

There’sa hole in Rage’s bedroom door. It’s too small for my hand to fit through, but large enough that I can see shadows of Rage and Celia within, two shapes created out of darkness, unmoving.

They’re sleeping—or pretending to.

That’s their first mistake.

What’s the point of beingwithsomeone and not learning how they breathe? The little twitches of their muscles as they fall asleep—or the way they lift their leg or roll onto their stomach in the middle of the night. There are thousands of things to catalogue about Celia at night, and Rage is wasting his opportunity to learn every single one of them.

She’s wasting hers to learn more about him, too.

I pick at the hole in the door, prying off splinters of wood and flinging them to the floor. I don’t realize that I’m doing it at first, but once I recognize the steady pull of my fingertips and snap of wood, I can’t stop. I pick and pick andpick, harder, longer, peeling away the layers between us, digging my way inside.

As the hole expands, it’s tempting to slip my hand inside, but even after an hour, I can only manage up to my wrist. My arm won’t fit. I can’t unlock the door from this side—not withoutRage’s handprint. But from the inside, with the right amount of leverage, the lock will pop and the door will swing open.

Rebel chooses this precise moment to wander in from the club well past five AM, wandering to the connected kitchen to chug a bottle of water. I remain still as he shuffles through the motions of undressing, dropping his clothes where he stands. It drives Rage crazy when the house is untidy, so he’ll pick them up before leaving in the morning and throw them at Rebel’s closed door.

I know all of this, because I watch it unfold.

Just like how I know that Rage thinks he loves Celia, because I watch him struggle with it every day. He isn’t used to loving things. With us, it’s easy—we are a constant in his life, always present, never changing. Sure, we argue with him when we don’t like a call he makes, but we don’t throw it back in his face, because we know that he’s usually right when it comes to making decisions for our best interests.

Celia doesn’t understand that yet.

She keeps fighting him.

I don’t think Rage likes it as much as he claims he does.

I think he’s so desperate for another point of stability in our lives that he’s clinging too tightly to the possibility of one—and pushing her away in the process.

Celia isn’t like Rebel or me. She doesn’thaveto be here. She doesn’thaveto accept us as we are.

He keeps forgetting that.