Page 74 of Black Heart

It was going to be the best two weeks of his life and he couldn’t wa-

“What the hell is that sound?” Shayne demanded for what was probably the hundredth time in the last week and drawing Tristan’s attention right back to where it should be.

“Don’t know. Don’t care,” Tristan said as he started to head up the stairs to his wife, praying that she was able to sleep tonight. “Just keep them off my ass for one night.”

CHAPTER27

Tristan was hiding something from her.

Actually, she was pretty sure that he was hiding several things from her and, if she wasn’t so damn tired, she’d probably be really pissed off, but right now, she couldn’t quite find the energy to pick a fight with him. She could barely find the energy to reach down and grab the comforter and pull it over herself.

After several failed attempts, a few groans and whimpers, Marty gave up and settled for curling up on her side and closing her eyes only to open them a split second later and shoot a nervous look around the dimly lit room when she thought she heard a noise. She didn’t see anything, but…

Biting her lip, Marty quickly leaned over the side of the bed and grabbed a fistful of the thick comforter that had been kicked off the bed when she’d tumbled onto the bed with Tristan after their shower. Throwing one last wary glance around the suddenly too-quiet room, she dropped back on the bed, yanking the comforter over her in the process.

Her grip on the comforter tightened as she pulled it up to her chin, her eyes darted to the left when the sounds of softly spoken whispers reached her ears. Swallowing hard, Marty squeezed her eyes shut and yanked the comforter over her head, all while telling herself that she wasn’t scared. She wasn’t. It was late, she was tired, and everyone knew that sleeping with a comforter pulled over your head was the best way to sleep.

Within minutes, the air trapped beneath the comforter became stifling, but she ignored it along with her suddenly parched throat and the pounding of her heart as she strained her ears to listen for any sounds that would let her know that she wasn’t alone.

She opened her mouth to call out for Tristan but thought better of it and settled for curling up into a tight ball instead, careful not to dislodge the protective comforter from her body.

She couldn’t call Tristan because he’d probably have her committed. Not that she could blame him. She was hearing voices, after all, Marty thought unhappily as she held her breath, hoping that whatever it was would just go away and leave her alone. But she knew that it wouldn’t.

It didn’t matter if she ignored the voices or tried to flee the room, they followed her, screamed at her and cried, breaking her heart and terrifying her at the same time. She didn’t know what to do or how much longer she was going to be able to keep this up. To be honest, she was surprised that she’d been able to hide it for this long. She’d thought by now that Tristan would have picked up on her strange behavior and demanded to know what was going on.

Then again, it wasn’t as though she responded to the voices or was acting crazy, so maybe she shouldn’t be surprised that he hadn’t noticed that something was wrong. As far as Tristan was concerned, she was just having trouble sleeping. He didn’t know that she was probably going crazy.

As the whispering became louder, Marty wondered how she was going to explain this one to Tristan. She could lie to him and tell him that she was freezing, but that would only end with him cranking up the heat and her struggling not to pass out from heat exhaustion. Then again, she could try playing it off like she was being playful, but that would just end with them making love all night.

Not that making love to her husband all night was an unpleasant thought. It wasn’t. If the circumstances were different, the idea of spending the night between the sheets with Tristan until the alarm forced them apart in the morning would have sent shivers of anticipation through her instead of making her feel like she was going to be sick.

She couldn’t do this any longer. She just couldn’t. Since the voices started haunting her, she’d lost too much sleep to be healthy, lost weight, her nerves were fried, and, for the past week, she hadn’t been able to hold anything down. The only time she’d managed to get any sleep was when Tristan drove her to work, but most mornings that wasn’t nearly enough to help get her through the day. It was only thanks to her frayed nerves and the fear of experiencing more of those heart-wrenching dreams that kept her from falling asleep at work.

Every time she felt her eyes begin to close, she forced them open and if that didn’t work, the voices suddenly screaming in her ear usually did the trick. Once the voices started, they didn’t stop. The only time that she could escape them was if she was in a car or when another voice, a man’s voice that, from what she could tell so far, was obsessed withGilligan’s Island, porn, and harassing Tristan, which was odd, appeared.

Then again, was there really anything about this situation that was normal?

She was married to a man that had spent more than a decade pretending that she didn’t exist and then made her life a living hell once he was forced to acknowledge her. Tristan was an equal opportunity asshole, Marty thought with a small smile that quickly disappeared with a grimace as her stomach chose that moment to perform somersaults.

Clamping a hand over her mouth, Marty squeezed her eyes shut and willed her sensitive stomach to calm down. There was no way that she was going to leave the safety of her comforter when she knew that something was waiting for her in the dark.

As her stomach began to settle, she couldn’t help but will a certain voice with an Irish brogue to come to her rescue, and yes, sadly enough, she did think of that voice as a protector of sorts. He seemed to be able to handle the voices and make them go away. In her book, that made the man’s voice a godsend. The only problem was that he normally didn’t come around unless Tristan was with her.

She should be comforted by the fact that her hallucinations liked Tristan, but oddly enough, she wasn’t. It probably had something to do with the fact that she was going crazy and wouldn’t be able to hide it for very much longer. No doubt, by this time next week, she’d be fitted for a straitjacket while Tristan filed for divorce. Her stomach rolled violently at the thought of never seeing Tristan again.

This wasn’t right.

After everything they’d been through, they deserved a better ending than this. They deserved a real chance. They should get a chance to celebrate anniversaries, have babies, and grow old together, but none of those things were going to happen now.

After Tristan finally managed to convince her to take a chance on him, mostly by exhausting her with sex until the point where she would have done or said anything to get some sleep, she’d been terrified that Tristan would regret marrying her and leave her. Never in a million years would she have ever thought that she would be the reason why things ended.

She loved him so much and it killed her to hide this from him, but what choice did she have? Whether Tristan decided to stay with her or not, she’d already made her own decision about their marriage. She was going to leave him. It would be the hardest thing that she ever did, but if Tristan tried to be noble and stick it out with her, she would be forced to do the right thing.

She knew from her studies and internships what waited for her. If she didn’t spend the rest of her life in and out of institutions, then she’d live her life completely dependent on pills and therapy, hoping, hell, praying that she didn’t have another setback. It wasn’t an ideal life. She knew that a lot of people with mental illness managed to lead productive lives and that she’d most likely figure out how to do that with time and help, but she just couldn’t put Tristan through that.

If he stayed with her, they would always be waiting for the day when her medication no longer helped her. It wasn’t the kind of life that she wanted for Tristan. She wanted him to have a real chance at happiness and if he stayed with her, he would never get that chance.

How sad was it that she wished that those tests she’d taken when the voices first started came back differently? Marty wondered with a choked sob. At least a tumor or a blockage would have explained why this was suddenly happening to her. It would have also been easier to tell Tristan.

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