Page 77 of The Amendment

These walls.

They’d fight in the beginning, or in Joanna’s case, they’d try to play along, try to outsmart me, to pretend to want to be with me. From the moment I’d brought her here, the day she’d figured outfencingwasn’t fencing, she’d begun to change. She’d been everything I wanted in the beginning, saying everything I wanted to hear, but in the end, just like all the others, this was what I was left with.

A sniveling, whining, shadow of the woman I’d chosen in the first place.

The woman I’d deemed special.

“You’re safe in here,” I told her, gesturing around the secret room. “Safe from her.”

“She won’t hurt me. You’ll protect me. We can take care of her.”

She didn’t know my wife at all, but it was fun to amuse her. I stood, running my thumb across her cheekbone. It stuck out more now than it once had. “We will someday. I’ve told you, we have to be smart. You want to be with me, don’t you?”

“More than anything,” she swore, brushing her cheek across my stomach. “That’s all I want.”

She was teasing me, but it wouldn’t work. In this room, I had all the self-restraint in the world.

I was a god here.

The whole world.

I had all the time I needed.

She was at my beck and call.

Whenever I finally took her, it would be everything I wanted it to be.

For that, we still had to wait.

Just a bit longer. The waiting was the fun part here.

Time stood still.

I drug out our time together because I knew, soon enough, it would be over.

Soon enough, I’d go back to my regular life and Joanna… Joanna would have to go to the woods.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

AINSLEY

“You seem distracted tonight,” I whispered, handing Peter a glass of wine as I sat down next to him on the sofa.

“Do I?” He took a sip, eyes locked on the TV.

“Yeah…”

He didn’t respond, but leaned his head over toward my shoulder as if to placate me. Was it all just a habit with him? Was he only doing what he thought I wanted him to?

Where did he go when his mind wandered?

How often had I accepted him physically when mentally he refused to stay with me?

“Hey, did I tell you I heard from Glennon?”

“You did?”

“Mhm. Apparently she met someone in Canada.”

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