I breathe through the ache behind my eyes.
And I hate myself the same way I hate King.
That funeral was the day she woke up with a tattooed finger.
It was the day after I revealed my plan to join The Alliance and destroyed her heart.
It was one more horrible fucking experience for her to go through alone.
And I was the one who did it to her.
I remember the way she paled when I told her we were going to a funeral. And the urge to apologize, for the first time in twenty years, grips at my throat.
But then Val continues. “It was everything I’ve always dreamed a family could be. Could mean.” She presses her forehead against my sternum, and I slide my hand up to grip the back of her neck. “I was terrified to go.”
“Val—”
She cuts me off. “I want to thank you for letting me be a part of that. It doesn’t change the other funerals I’ve been to, but it proved to me that it doesn’t always have to be like it was.”
This fucking woman.
“It will never be like it was. Not for you,” I promise her. “We grieve together.”
“I know.” Her lips press against my skin. “I like your family.”
Her muscles loosen under my hold. “They’re your family now, too,” I say quietly because I think she’s falling asleep as we talk.
“Only if you keep me.”
I barely hear her.
“I’ll keep you forever.”
Her tired fingers grip my sides. “But now you know.”
“Know what?” We’re both whispering now.
“That I’m not valuable.”
I’m not valuable.
Her words hit me with such force I can’t breathe.
I hate the people who made her feel this way.
I curl around her, trying to protect her from her own past, her own awful emotions.
She’s so fucking valuable.
She thinks because King is a shitty-ass brother to her that I’ll just… what? Return her? That I suddenly wouldn’t want her anymore?
I press my nose into her hair and inhale her scent.
Of course that’s what she thinks. Every member of her family has either betrayed her, ignored her, or left her.
I inhale again.
Not me.
Never again.
“You’re worth more than everything I have,” I tell her a moment too late, as her body relaxes fully into sleep.
I stay that way, holding my wife, for the next hour as I stare into the distance.
I fill my lungs with her.
I don’t shy away from the story she told; I replay it. I do my best to understand how she’s felt all these years. I listen to what she said she wanted.
And then I contemplate if there’s anything that’s too far when it comes to making sure I can keep her.
There isn’t.
So if my wife wants a family, I’m going to give her one.
Carefully, I extricate myself from the bed and silently move into the bathroom. I shut the door to block the light, then go into the closet and open the safe I have hidden in the back wall.
I don’t hesitate. I just reach in and take out the three rectangular sheets of pills.
This is how I keep her.
And how I give her everything she craves.
I open the drawer where I know she keeps hers and replace the two backup sheets with two from my hand, and then I pick up the one she’s currently using and pop out a matching number of pills on the last sheet from my safe.
I let the water run, washing away the evidence, while I make sure to put the last packet down exactly how I found it.
Then, with a feeling of rightness filling my chest, I put Val’s real birth control pills into the safe. And lock it.
CHAPTER 54
Val
“Oh hey, I keep forgetting to ask you!” Bri stops me before I hang up our call. “Are you coming tonight?”
“Uh, coming to what?”
“The Christmas party.”
I shift my position, crossing my feet where they are on my desk. “What Christmas party?”
Bri put this call on our work calendars, and I thought maybe we had a project that overlapped, but she just wanted to fill me in on some gossip about a guy from another branch who’s going through a messy divorce.
She groans into the phone. “Did you seriously not get an invite to the company party?”
“No, but maybe they only sent it to locals this year, and I just became a local.”
“No, it’s because Tosh in HR is a lazy bitch.”
I snort out a laugh. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Alright, well, it starts tonight at eight. It’s a whole building thing again, so it’s still in the atrium on the fourth floor. But I’ve heard there’s a decent buffet this year.”