Page 41 of Gorgeous Misery

“What do you do when we’re not together?”

“What do I do? Like… work shit?”

“All of it. I want to know all of it.”

“Ya know”—he pauses to grin at me—“you could always tag along one day. You could like… not walk out on me in a fit of hate and rage and instead get in my truck and see for yourself what I do all day.”

“I could maybe do that. But I’m not asking what you will be doing, I’m asking what you have been doing.”

“Wendy—”

“No. Let’s hear it. Did you get any more?”

“Any more what?”

“You know what. And they’re not a what. They are a who.”

“So you’re starting the fight early this time? Is that what you’re doing? So you can what? Walk out before we even eat dinner?”

That is what I’m doing. And I don’t even want to do this. I don’t want to start a fight with him. I don’t want to walk out. I want to stay with him forever. I want to marry this man. And I’m not the kind of girl who dreams about weddings, or anything stupid like that, but Nick is all I have left. And I’m so afraid of losing him, I want to kick him away before he figures out that I’m not worth saving.

I am exactly like those girls he kills.

I am an incurable disease.

He walks up to me, places both his hands on my cheeks just like he did a few minutes ago, and stares down into my evil blue eyes. “Everything you were just thinking, I want you to say it out loud.”

I suck in a deep breath, shake my head, and look down at my feet.

Nick tips my chin back up, forcing me to see him. “Everything. Out loud. Now.”

But I can’t say those things. Because I have this sneaky feeling that he’s never thought of me that way. That he truly does love me. That I am his rock, the same way he is mine. And if I say these words out loud, he will change his mind about me. I will plant doubts inside him and those doubts will work their bad magic and turn our good thing into something rank and sour.

So instead, I pull out the smooth, worn, folded piece of paper with the words ‘Kisses with Nick’ written across the front, and I hand it to him.

He looks down at the paper, then back up at me. He takes these other words from my hand and then I do what I do best.

I walk away.

But I don’t leave, that’s the important part. I head towards the bathroom.

“Is this a fuck-you?” Nick calls after me.

“No.” I stop in the doorway to the bathroom and then look over my shoulder. “I think it’s… I think it’s what you want to hear, Nick. But even if it isn’t, it’s how I feel. And that’s all I’m gonna say about it.”

Then I go inside the bathroom, close and lock the door, and start a bubble bath.

As I take off my clothes I think about the cure.

It always comes back to the cure.

PART TWO - THE WICKED

“Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.”

― Aristotle

CHAPTER EIGHT - NICK