“If they allowed it,” she whispers.
Her face morphs from wide-eyed shock to confusion, then is drawn down by grief, until it finally settles on anger. “How could they?Whywould they? Aidia gave them access to Rafe—a way to keep tabs. Why would they give it up?” She rubs her temples. “Why would they let him hurt both of us?”
Her whole body is trembling, breaking under the weight of her rage.
“Tell me where it hurts. Tell me and I’ll take it away,” I say.
She tears across the study and shoves me so hard I hit the wall behind me. She glares up at me, her palms pressed to my scarred chest, her face a mix of fury and grief.
I know this feeling—the powerlessness, the anger clawing its way out. This is what I want from her. I need her to know this—thatIam a safe place to be angry.
“You can’t,” she gasps.
“I have to try.”
Harlow presses a palm to her heart and tries to still her quaking body. “This is where it hurts,” she rasps. “I used to know how to endure. Icould do it because Aidia did it too. But they gave her to that monster and now she is gone and it’s all my fault.”
The light has gone out of her eyes. She turns and shoves everything off her father’s desk. The fine set of crystal glasses and ornate lantern shatter on the floor. With a great heave, she flips the desk onto its side, then picks up the fireplace poker and starts to hit the mantel. Glass shards explode from the vases and expensive-looking statues placed there, and when the poker gets stuck in the portrait of her parents, she shreds it.
She starts to batter the desk, all the rage and hurt coming out in vicious swings of the iron poker.
“I will not be a good little soldier. I will not be a weapon. I will not be quiet. I will not bethem!” Her voice is raw. Her rage is a life force.
She pounds a fist against her chest. “This is where it hurts. Here. And everywhere else and it will never stop.”
She turns and swipes the poker across the desk. It catches in the wood and slips from her hands, clattering on the floor.
The floor is covered in broken glass and the remnants of expensive, fragile things, but Harlow isn’t finished. She looks around the room, wildly searching for anything else to destroy.
I see the war in her. I see a monster who doesn’t want to spread the hurt around. Just like I see the woman who knows how easily she could tip over that edge and become the thing she fears.
If I don’t slow her down, she’s going to hurt herself, either on the shards on the floor or the explosiveness of her anger. I grab her shoulder, and she spins on me with her fist raised in the air.
She stills, looking at her hand like she’s surprised.
Slowly, I reach up and take her fist in my hand. She lets me take it, but when I thread my fingers through hers, she grips tightly.
She squeezes until my bones creak, like she wants to press her pain into me—like violence is the only language that will make me understand. And I want to take it. I want to drink down all that poison if it will keep her from feeling like she’s dying.
Finally, she looks up at me. Her beautiful face is streaked with tears, her hair wild and half-undone, one shoulder of her dress ripped. She looks savage and so beautiful.
“You win,” she rasps. “I hate them.”
Guilt unravels in my stomach. I want to say that isn’t what I wanted—or thatwhyI wanted it has changed. I wanted to use her anger against them, but knowing how they’ve wronged her now, I want them to suffer not just for what my family has endured, but for what Harlow has survived and lost.
Something tugs free at the center of me, like a hook behind my sternum, like a skip in the rhythm of my heart. I squeeze my eyes closed and press a hand to the strange ache. When I open my eyes again, the world is blurry, then bright.
I blink rapidly to focus, and when my vision snaps into place, it’s on Harlow’s eyes.
Harlow’sdark violeteyes.
I stumble back a step. The first color I’ve seen in ten years is the bold violet of Harlow’s eyes, and they are stunning.
In black and white, my wife is striking, but in full color, she is devastating—so angry and fiercely alive, it’s breathtaking. The flush of her cheeks, the red of her lips, the emerald of her dress. I never realized how much I missed color until I see all the colors of her.
Harlow Carrenwell isbeautiful. And I’m in love with her.
No, no, no. This is not the time. When I claimed her, it was just a raw animal wanting. It was just the blessing and a need to feel like I could in some way tame her, but she was not supposed to stay mine. This is not how this plays out.
