Page 64 of The Love Bandits

“But after we got engaged…I…I thought I loved him, and I wanted him to know the real me. But every time I tried to express myself—me, not the person I’d created for him—he’d try to snuff it out. He’d say I was being impulsive, or foolish, or classless.” I shrug. “If I bought something he didn’t like, he’d throw it away. If I got a drink with my friend Claire, he’d retaliate by getting one with a childhood girlfriend. If he got mad, he’d make me get down on my knees and beg for forgiveness. He didn’t like it when I did anything by myself. We had this huge apartment, but it felt like a cage. It was suffocating.”

“And he never made you come,” he says, his voice rough, and I almost laugh, because of course that’s where his mind went.

“No, but that was partly my fault. I had trouble letting go with him. I overthought everything I did.” I pause. “I was really good at faking it.”

“He should have known. A real man would have known.” His gaze is penetrating, and I look out the window again, down at that car sitting there in the dark like an accusation.

“Maybe he did know. Maybe he didn’t care.” A sigh gusts out of me. “It was my own fault, though. I tricked him… So if I was unhappy, I have no one to blame but myself. And maybe my parents, for convincing me that the only way I could be someonewas by marrying a rich man. They didn’t care how he treated me.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, his regard a living thing, breathing down my neck, caressing my spine, whispering in my ear, and then finally he says, “Sounds to me likeToddgot everything he wanted, and you got none of what you wanted. Are you sure you’re the one who tricked him?”

Emotion suddenly gushes through me. Raw and consuming. Maybe this is what I’ve been dancing around for months. Foryears. I wanted to think I had the power all along—that I was fooling him and letting him do those things to me for my own purposes. Because I was getting what I’d aimed to get. But all along, he’d been taking, and I’d kept giving him exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it, and how he wanted it. Adding a little cherry on top for good luck. I’d folded all of the stuff that was important to me inward, hiding it from him—and from myself too. And I’d let it go on for years. The only thing that had saved me was that I’d found out he was cheating.

He’d used me and then spat me out, and my parents had set me up for it. They’d set me up, period. My mother’s constant whispering in my ear.

Lainey, he just needs a little push and he’ll propose.

Lainey, it’ll all be worth it.

Lainey, you were born with that wildness inside of you, but you’d better swallow it up if you want to keep him.

Tears prick at my eyes, but I’m angry too. My whole body is on fire with it. Todd’s lucky he’s in New York. So are my parents. They’relucky.

“I…think I’d like to be alone now,” I tell Jake numbly, only then realizing he still hasn’t moved his hand off my arm. His fingers are curled around it, his head bowed down toward mine. A different feeling surges beneath the anger, but I tackle it and muzzle it.

He doesn’t argue.

He doesn’t try to talk me around.

He just nods and says, again, “You know where to find me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

JAKE

I watch, fascinated, as Elaine steps out of her room with the baseball bat white-knuckled in her hands. I’m standing behind my own door, cracked open to give me a view of the hallway, because I could tell she wasn’t just going to lie down for a good cry. Maybe the cat knows it too. She slunk out of the other bedroom after me and is hunkered at my feet.

Elaine had the truth written all over her face, her light brown eyes full of the kind of rage that can lead a person to do something impulsive and potentially dangerous.

None of my business, and yet…

I’ve never been this drawn to a woman.

I’m fascinated by her. I’m smitten. I’m her prisoner in more ways than one, and I hope hell exists, even if I’m doomed to spend eternity there, just so her parents and that piece of shit Todd can be forced to suffer too.

Stupid. It’s stupid of me to let these people become human for me, but it’s too late. Elaine has had a hold on me since the night she showed up at my apartment door, and Damien and Nicole are already growing on me.

I know Damien had a purpose for taking me out with him this afternoon. Sure, unpaid labor is the best kind you can get, buthe was also sussing me out—and giving me a chance to suss him out. I appreciate that. It also felt good to do something that got the adrenaline pumping but didn’t make me feel guilty.

Elaine slips past my door, her footfalls nearly silent, and I wonder if she learned to walk that way while she lived with him—to make less of an imprint, the way Ryan and I did when we lived in foster care. Rage fills my cup too.

I wait, listening to the slight creak of the stairs, listening to the beep of the alarm system being disengaged. Knowing that I could get away.

I could leave.

I could break into Anthony and Nina’s house and question them. If I threatened them with my knife, I know Anthony would fold and tell me everything. If one of them has it, I’d be able to grab it and go. I could get in Jake Jeffries’s car and drive until I’m far enough to ditch it and go to the airport. But the thought leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

I’d hate myself again if I did that.

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