Page 110 of The Black Trilogy

“Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

“I don’t really know. I thought it might help.”

“Has it?”

“No.”

Nick sat down beside me. “Want to talk?”

I wasn’t sure what to say, but I couldn’t keep everything bottled up inside any longer. The pressure had built, and it was either let it out or end up exploding, and that wouldn’t be pretty. I smacked my head back on the couch.

“I’m so messed up, Nicky. Inside. I’m not capable of having a normal relationship without making a shambles of it. Everything I do ends up hurting someone.”

“That’s not true, Emmy.”

“Yes, it is. Look at my track record. My mother disliked me so much she didn’t bother to see me after the age of ten. When I moved to the States, I upset Jimmy, and after that, there was my succession of sleep disasters and…” I counted on my fingers. “Six relationships I managed to screw up. Seven if you count my marriage. Then with Luke, I lived a normal life for the first time and managed to make a mess of that too, and to top it all I’ve made you, Nate, and Mack hate me. The only person who can stand to be near me is Dan, and that’s only because she’s made of Teflon.”

I turned away from Nick, gulping in air as I tried to control my runaway tongue, but he shuffled closer and laid a hand on my thigh. “I don’t hate you, and neither do Nate or Mack. We were just hurt you didn’t talk to us. We only wanted to help.”

“Logically, I know that, but three months ago all I wanted to do was get as far away as possible. I had visions of that maniac picking you off one by one.”

Running had seemed like the best option at the time, and besides, avoidance was a tactic that had worked well for me in the past.

Nick sighed and shook his head, showing me his opinion of my thought process. “And I don’t blame you for the whole sleep episode; I’ve made that clear,” he said. “Nobody, least of all you, knew that you’d react like that.”

A decade had passed since I’d tried to kill Nick, but it seemed like yesterday. “It wasn’t just you, Nick. What kind of woman tries to stab her own husband?”

For me, that was perhaps worse than what I did to Nick. CCTV had shown me wandering through the house, my movements smooth, my face blank. Moonlight glinted off the four-inch Sabatier paring knife I’d selected from the block on the kitchen worktop—perfect for getting in between a person’s ribs.

I moved with purpose, looking for something. Someone. I found him in the study. My husband had been sitting at his desk, concentrating on paperwork until I’d darkened the doorway, and he only had time for half a smile before I launched myself at him, knife in my outstretched hand. Luck was on my side, and he managed to fight me off long enough to Taser me. If it had been anyone else, I’d have woken up with a body in the house.

And to this day, I have no idea why I did it.

“He never blamed you for that either. He loved you more than anything,” Nick said.

“Loved me? Did he really? Because he never once told me that. I was more of a project to him, and perhaps that’s just as well. It’s not like I could ever have been a real wife.”

“You were far more than a project. Maybe that’s how it was at first, but he’d moved on a long way since the beginning. Don’t underestimate the strength of his feelings for you.”

“He kissed me once,” I blurted. “Then told me it was a mistake.”

“I know.”

Huh? He’d told Nick that?

Nick chuckled. “Don’t look so surprised. Men talk occasionally too.”

That kiss happened four long years ago. At first, our marriage had been purely one of convenience. The training my husband put me through was hardly compatible with a romantic relationship. He pushed me. Hard. So hard I almost broke. He had more confidence in me than I had in myself, and he understood my limits better than I did.

Some days, I hated him.

No, most days. Back then, it never occurred to me to sleep with a man whose death I plotted over breakfast each morning.

The change happened gradually. As I became stronger, my animosity turned to gratitude because it was him who’d made me that way. He was always there for me, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. And finally until death do us part. My husband became more than just my mentor and trainer—he was my confidante, my rock, and my best friend.

I fell in love with him, but until that night, he’d never shown the slightest inclination he might have felt the same way.

Hungry and tired, we’d stopped for a break halfway through a journey upstate. Heavy rain soaked us as we ran from his Porsche to some little honky-tonk bar, the only sign of life in the middle of nowhere. Dinner was nothing special, but sick of the cramped car, I dragged him onto the dance floor afterwards to delay our journey a little more.

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