DECEIT (B723) by Hazel Grace (ebook reader for surface pro .TXT) 📕

call. I didn’t want to wake up the whole house.” His eyes flick around my face, and his frown deepens.

“You’re gonna bruise.” I lift my shoulder dismissively. “Were you protecting my honor or something?”

I scoff. “You don’t need me for that or anything for that matter.”

“How wrong you are,” he drones before his thumb reaches up to brush my cheek. I feel the damage he was speaking about, but I don’t flinch from the slight discomfort. I welcome it because it’s a reminder of why he’s the way he is. “You really need to stay in your own lane, wife.”

I avert my gaze from him and take a deep intake of air before I answer, “I know you’re right.”

“You do?” I keep my lips shut. “Yet, here we are.”

“Not for much longer.” I shake my body a little. “Can I go now?”

“Cold?”

“Always around you, yeah. It’s a damn draft.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t try to pry doors open that don’t want to be tampered with.”

“Oh, you mean your feelings? Scary shit.”

“Like you telling everyone I’m your husband? Yeah…scary shit.” He drops his hands and takes a significant step away from me.

In a way, I’m glad because being near him is not only cool but nauseating too. However, it’s also invigorating and aimlessly addicting.

Bishop made me doubt everything between us and myself. I know we weren’t perfect, but I’ve never felt this way for no one.

He’ll be fine when I’m gone.

I’ll still be a fucking wreck for him.

Unless I can somehow find me from three years ago when I wasn’t so astray and past hope.

“Good night, Bish.” I pivot to get back in the house, knowing it’s going to be a long night.

So I lock myself in the bathroom until I hear his bedroom door shut.

I still remember his lie in my head like a skipping record.

Forever and for always. 

Driving from Pittsburgh back to Connecticut was a waste of time—to anyone else but me.

My anxiety over Emmy believing that she’s not good enough for me has made me edgy and irritated. I can’t focus on anything else but the fact that she went home for some more space.

I’m at a crossroads in my life. To pry through some deep and bad bullshit so that I can be open and honest with her.

I need to let all the past memories go without the fear of my wife eventually turning into Camilla. That down the line, after I’ve bared every single heartbeat of my soul, she won’t choose me over something else.

Emmy is nothing like my ex; I know that in a way. I’m aware that she’s not a cokehead or that she wants to annihilate my feelings on purpose. I don’t think Emmy would choose anything over me other than maybe shoes and potato chips, but I’m okay with that.

It’s that small murky inkling that Emmy is ashamed of me that stops me from ever speaking the truth.

When we did get married that night, I thought we’d broken a barrier. But as weeks turned into months, she still wanted to keep us a secret. I was fine, giving her the space to think and get used to the idea, but then doubt began to sink in after month six.

Then seven.

Then she got defensive and used her sweet lips and pussy to distract me. When we got up to nine, I had enough. I was that dickhead that gave her the ultimatum. And she shot back with wanting me to open up and express myself. That she wasn’t going to look like a—quote; a foolish asshole that was stupid enough to marry a soulless dickhead just for me to go changing my mind. 

She had a point.

That it’d change our dynamic as a whole with B723. It ate us alive by keeping it from our family.

It literally tore us apart.

Neither one of us wanting to give up or in, and I separated the remaining portion of my heart that I could muster and fucked Blue.

I wanted her to despise me.

I needed her to so I could relate her to Camilla by forcing me to close myself off. Because without it, I was the only one to blame for our marriage failing and Emmy wanting to keep me in her closet.

I fucking hate her for it.

I loathe her for not believing that I cared about her. Thinking that I would marry her just for fun.

The shit isn’t fun. It’s hard.

It’s brutal when I don’t want to divorce her or move on without me. But it’s what she’s trying to do and failing at.

Whoever she’s seeing doesn’t threaten me because I hold the key to releasing Emmy. I just can’t throw it away yet and let the princess out of the tall, dark tower.

I did ask her to marry me once—for real and sober—when she was sleeping, bundled up in her bed with her nose and eyes the only thing peeking out.

I never could make myself ask her again. Not being able to stand my own damn self for feeling this way—weak, dumb, entirely out of my element. She inadvertently demands my mental state and, while I’ve been able to hold back, her going towards my worst nightmare landed me here.

A life of her own.

And while B723 kept us linked, I’m running after a woman who left me without saying goodbye again and beat my ex’s ass. Who brought my dog home and hasn’t forgiven me for the sins I’ve committed against her.

I wouldn’t either.

And my saving grace might be for me to express how much I can’t live without her nor with someone else.

Either way, I’m fucked.

Now, laying beside her in her bed, she’s fast asleep.

Yeah, I broke the fuck in. It wasn’t a hard thing to do which is another subject I’m going to bitch at her on.

Her bedroom looks completely different from when I last saw it. Gone are the frilly little pink comforter and rose-colored walls. The girly decor that made her that much sweeter but unexpected.

I never would’ve been able to foresee