By “together,” Victoria always meant Adrian and Victoria.
I was expected to provide refreshments.
I had listened until dessert.
Then I put my spoon beside my untouched crème brûlée and said one word.
“No.”
Adrian smiled through the rest of dinner.
He drove us home in total silence.
He waited until the front door closed behind us.
Then he followed me upstairs.
Now I was on the bedroom floor.
“You’ll apologize tomorrow,” he said.
I looked up.
“To whom?”
“My mother.”
A laugh almost escaped me.
I tasted blood again instead.
“No.”
Something flickered behind his eyes.
Not surprise.
Offense.
As though my refusal itself were violence.
Adrian stepped closer.
“You think you’re independent because I let you pretend to be.”
My heartbeat quickened.
He crouched so that we were almost eye level.
“Everything around you exists because of me, Eleanor. My house. My money. My name.”
His name.
That part almost made me smile.
Almost.
Instead I lowered my eyes.
Because eight weeks earlier, I had learned something Adrian did not know I knew.
And eight weeks was long enough to understand that sometimes survival looked exactly like submission.
He mistook my silence for surrender.
Men like Adrian often did.
He stood.
“My mother is coming for lunch tomorrow.”
I said nothing.
“You’ll be pleasant.”
Nothing.
“You’ll tell her last night was a misunderstanding.”
Still nothing.
He watched me for several seconds.
Then he stepped over me.
Actually stepped over me.
He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, washed his face, changed into navy pajamas and climbed beneath the Italian linen sheets.
I could hear every ordinary sound.
The bathroom drawer sliding shut.
The click of his phone connecting to its charger.
The soft thump of his pillow being adjusted.
Then darkness.
Within minutes, his breathing changed.
Slow.
Deep.
Sleeping.
My husband had hurt me badly enough that my cheek was swelling beneath my hand, then fallen asleep ten feet away without losing a minute of rest.
That frightened me more than his anger.
I remained on the floor until the room stopped tilting.
