THE CONTROL: An Arranged Marriage Romance by Elena Monroe (ebook reader android .txt) 📕

I didn’t-” his voice was hoarse as he stammered again, using his sleeve to catch his tears and any other liquid trying to drain from his body.

Eve shot up from the pew clearly having pieced the story together. I still felt the overwhelming need to say it when she turned around with tears in her eyes, staring down at me looking just as unhinged. Her sweater was slipping from her shoulder and the slip was showing through in a defiant way.

“Say it, Bowey. Say it.” She was twisting my words against me.

I debated shutting her down, reminding her that her truths come first. I watched her hand close around the monstrance when she actually scared me into sitting up straighter. “No point in saying what we all know, Evey.”

Climbing the few stairs up to where he was sitting, she held it above his head like a threat. “Apologize. Now. Beg for forgiveness the same way you tell your congregation.”

She was relentless and took my stillness for all the omission she needed without my words to confirm the truth. I watched a single tear roll down to her perfect jaw line as she snapped.

She used to beat up my bullies, force them to apologize through grated teeth, but she never had the menacing look in her eyes that screamed for no absolution. Eve had no more princess left in her; this was the real breaking point of how far she had put Denmark in the rearview mirror.

He pleaded with her as his hand landed on her exposed leg, trying to usher in some kind of sympathy from the wrong person. Something in me knew Eve understood all too well.

Still smoking the joint down to a nub, I watched Eve silently cry while driving the solid gold monstrance into him recklessly. The cross sitting at the top of the metal rays surrounding what was supposed to be the body of Christ plunged right into his heart—the black organ that believed in God but acted like the devil among us.

I was calm and she was the storm, always.

The blood pooled out of him, soaking into the stairs and sticking to my boots as it ran right to me like I had commanded it to. It was poetic, all the leftover danger escaping her and sticking to me just like when we were kids.

Looking up from the blood pooling at my boots, I watched Eve violently lose it with every plunge of the monstrance into him. She wasn’t even aiming, simply gripping her weapon of choice and demanding apologies from a dead man.

I couldn’t see the features of his face or hear him choking on the blood anymore when I stood up, taking the long strides to Eve still hovering over his body. Every stab left his face even more caved in than the last, the bones cracked, and the skin was so muddled in blood that none of him looked human anymore.

His outside finally matched the inside.

Pushing out my hand, I passed over the few puffs left on the joint and wrangled the monstrance out of her grasp. It took a few tugs before her grip finally let go.

“Enough, Eve. It’s enough.” Her bloody hands shook, and her tear-stained face physically hurt to look at.

I should have stopped her, saved her from this moment she wouldn't forget—her first kill. I never expected her to do more than hold my bullies responsible.

“Enough? Enough to fix us? Enough what, Bowen?” She was exhausted and delirious from the realization that even miles away we suffered similar circumstances.

I didn’t have the answers. All I knew was that he was dead and hitting him more wasn’t ever going to make the truth disappear—the pain that turned into those demons, demons we held onto still.

One hand tangled in the other; one hand holding the darkness.

Pushing her hair behind her ear, I forced her to look away. “Nothing is enough. Only you.”

Curling into me, I wrapped my arms around her, smoothing down her hair carefully when she whispered against the cotton of my shirt. “We kill each other’s demons... or at least leave scars.”

Keeping my arm around her, I walked her away from the body and through the door still propped open. She was sprayed with blood, and the wake hadn’t even truly started, this was just the fucking preamble.

I expected Eve to be numb in a way that made her seem unrecognizable. The same way I was after I killed the priest who actually did what he did to me. That same night I looked in the mirror and saw a person I lost, a ghost, Braeden. Eve looked exactly how she did before—in love, in heat, and in the middle of eight different thoughts.

Spotting the stoup outside the door, full of holy water, the bright idea of tarnishing it came to the foreground of my mind. She dipped her hands into the water and pretended to sizzle when her mouth made the sound. Cracking a slight smirk, I let her crawl her way inside my chest the way she wanted. She was the only person who cracked my surface and she basked in that fact.

Rubbing the water against her hands, I tried to make her as clean as possible before people reached for her hand to make sure she knew she wasn’t alone in this trying time. We certainly couldn’t continue with Father What’s-His-Name’s body still bleeding out.

Vic entered the room, confused and silently trying to assess what was happening. Then, he saw the blood. “Casket has to move. Now.” Vic was the kind of guy you could rely on. He didn’t need any extra information or justifications, he just wanted results.

“No shit, Sherlock. Why don’t you handle that? I don’t personally care if that entire room is filled and we all sit front row.” Sarcasm wasn’t something