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

She followed me around like a lost puppy begging for a treat. Nothing I had was a treat, it was all punishment.

Pouring a glass full, I watched the emotion float to the surface, distorting all her features, her tears spilling out silently. “What are the cages for? For me? For the girls who look like me?”

We were both on either side of the kitchen island, as I braced my weight on my hand and chugged the alcohol, knowing being a functioning alcoholic who has somehow been drinking less with her around meant I no longer knew the outcomes of consumption.

Retorting with a question I knew she wouldn’t answer, I asked, “What exactly did he do to you, Eve? Was our wedding night-” I cut off my own words because it was too hard to swallow not being her first.

Hugging herself, I watched her swallow hard. “Every time I had my period, they’d give me this tea for my cramps. It always made me really sleepy. I remember trying to tell my mom something was wrong… no one listened.”

My fist slammed against the counter hard enough to feel the sting vibrate through my bones. I watched her jump at the violence and her shoulders shoot up to her shoulders. “You can say something any time…” She was waiting for my truths that weren’t ever going to be vocalized.

Rounding the island, I poured another full glass, keeping my hands busy, leaning down to her eye level, I pushed her chin up. “You can’t handle my truths. Last time I gave you one…” I let my voice drop down to a whisper for my next words. “...you cowarded, when I kill.”

Walking away from her breathless body, I felt like I killed her when all I wanted was to kill Elias. Or anyone willing to piss me off.

Stomping away with the Henny under my arm, folders she placed on the countertop like a bomb, and my glass full, I headed to my not-so-secret room that I knew she had found.

Thanks to Khaos.

 

Following me, I could feel her bleak presence behind me still wanting answers but not cowarding away this time. “I’m not a fucking coward. I survived for us. I didn’t make anyone’s life easy when they were hell-bent on breaking me. Don’t you ever call me a coward.”

My entire house reeked of old Evey, yelling her truths and demanding respect.

Turning around in the doorway too quickly, I watched her stumble backwards. “I’m referring to the silent treatment you gifted me with.”

If you could physically study anger erupt in someone, this was a prime example as her fists tightened and her old ways came storming back. She wanted to hit me and in the past she wouldn’t have thought this long about it.

“The silent treatment I gifted you?” She paused, trying to swallow her own anger before it cut through me. “I spent a year of my life being courted by you, the one who ignored I existed at all! You drank yourself stupid, pretending you didn’t remember me. I was just stuck here like some fucking useless ass princess. Then you break me but still expect me to sit pretty? Don’t ask any questions, quietly let you drink your own liver to death, watch you cut your arm up, and act like a coward yourself for being scared to let me love you. Don’t paint me the damsel in distress.”

Eve wasn’t going to roll over and play dead for anyone.

She didn’t think she was broken enough for me to love, and that’s the real honesty she avoided.

Now she was broken the same way and I wanted to avoid honesty.

My hands still occupied, I leaned against the door frame casually like all of what she said didn’t feel similar to a slap across the face. “You want truths? Because we always match. It’s the answer for everything. Even miles apart we always fucking match. I’m trying to build a fucking wall between us of all my flaws and you keep loving me anyways. When are you going to get it, Evey? I’m no good for you. Isn’t it enough that I saved you? I can’t be the guy of your fucking dreams when I’m solely made of nightmares.”

Twisting the doorknob, I nearly fell into the office already too buzzed to be letting words fall from my lips.

Clapping her hands together and holding them like she was about to pray, her fingertips touched her lips before she spoke, “So I’m supposed to thank you for saving me by marrying me but not expect you to be a husband?”

Exactly.

Didn’t know I was speaking gibberish.

If she could just stop loving me this wouldn’t be so messy.

“It could be worse. You could still be Elias’s plaything.” I polished off the glass full and felt everything in me beg to stop. I couldn’t physically stop until she hated me because what comes next is too ugly to love.

The truth buried under the lie of this bullshit.

The truth that I had to buy her back.

“You’re a fucking drunk asshole.” Her hand swiped the bottle from my grasp, and I felt my lifeline get further and further away. I could hear the feelings taunting me, waiting to come stinging back to the surface.

Shrugging, I watched her think she was being cute, protecting me, only this time it was from myself. “Like I don’t have more Henny?” I laughed to myself thinking of all the bottles I have waiting for me to crack the tops off of.

The fear in my throat lumped up, and I heard glass clinking together. Standing straight up, I panicked, all my little lifelines were screaming to be saved… or drank. Depends on how hard you listen.

I followed her ready to give her my worst if it saved the liquor. “So, you