The Marriage (Darkest Lies Trilogy Book 3), Bethany-Kris [books for 8th graders txt] 📗

Karine wasn’t accustomed to putting her foot down, and expressing her feelings. Not without suffering for it, anyway. She was still learning to handle the roadblocks put in front of her without defaulting to the way she coped before—through medication and a fractured mind.

He reminded himself of that.

This wasn’t easy for her, either.

Roman was not the kind of man who clung on to hope, but he did more times than he could count when it came to Karine. He had hope for her.

“You manipulated me into coming here. You’re having me admitted to this place that I haven’t even agreed to come to,” she said, apparently deciding to just say it and get it over with. Roman stayed silent as she continued. “They’re filling out paperwork for a seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold. Do you know what that means?”

“Only at first, to get the quick admission. It was just semantics, babe, that’s all.”

“Still. I’m not even a danger to myself. I haven’t been. This is bullshit.”

Roman let out a sigh. “Yeah, I know. But it gets you in the door at first. Fast, that’s all I can say.”

And no matter how many times he tried to explain all of those details were nothing more than surface steps to a grander plan, he didn’t think she would care to hear it.

“I thought we were going to have another great day together, but instead, you’re leaving me here. You’re abandoning me again. What do you think that is going to do to me? You can’t keep telling me you won’t do something, and then turn right around and do it. What is wrong with you?”

He’d never been asked that before.

Not quite like she asked it.

Roman stared at her, unsure of what to say, so he stayed silent.

“I don’t expect you to actually give me an answer,” Karine muttered, not looking away from her lap where she picked at the frayed knee of her skinny jeans. “I expect you to turn around and leave me here, like you planned to do, anyway. So do that, then. Leave.”

Roman didn’t.

He couldn’t just leave it at that.

“You know why this place bothers you the most?” he asked quietly. She wouldn’t even entertain his question, never mind that he spoke in the first place, and continued to refuse to look at him, even when he uttered a low, “Karine.”

Still, nothing.

Fine, he thought.

“The truth is that you don’t want to be within a mile of a place like this because a part you knows this is what you needed a long fucking time ago. And maybe when you’re not drugged and dazed, you’ve got a little more control, babe, but that doesn’t help you deal. If Michelle gave you enough insight to understand what’s going on, then imagine what a team can do. Take the fucking label off it—stop hearing other people in your head because that’s what it is, isn’t it? You hear your father saying you’re a lunatic, or some other stupid shit. It’s not about him, okay? It’s about you.”

Karine let out a shaky exhale before asking, “I thought you said this wasn’t even about that? Earlier, that’s what you said to me. I wasn’t here for that. It’s about—”

“That’s not a lie, either.”

“But which is it—is it to keep me away from Dima and his father, or for my mental health?”

Roman threw his arms wide. “Karine, it can be both.”

“Except it wasn’t ... until you got me through the doors.”

Karine’s jaw clenched, and while her gaze remained lowered from his view, he didn’t miss the tears tracking down her cheeks. Guilt gnawed on his bones, killing him from the inside out.

Slow, and painful.

Just like he deserved.

“The thing is,” Karine said, her bottom lip trembling as she spoke, “I know I don’t get a choice in the matter, Roman, so just leave. Because you see, that’s the only choice I do get here—the very least you can do is let me make it.”

“Karine—”

“I want you to go.”

Dull and flat, her words stabbed at him. The heat of disbelief flared up the back of his neck when she still wouldn’t look at him the longer he stood there, waiting for even a goodbye. A simple bye.

Hell, a fuck you would do.

She wouldn’t even give him that.

“What, you won’t look at me now—you won’t say goodbye?” he asked, hearing the hurt in his bitter tone.

The thing he didn’t think anyone could understand about him and Karine was the fact she adored him, and he absolutely needed that. He wanted her idolization—her unyielding love just because she wanted him to be hers. She could spend her entire day staring at him in amazement, and she left him with just as much wonder. They were not exactly the kind of people who were meant to be, but damned if the universe didn’t just make it so for them both.

It probably wasn’t healthy.

Very few things he loved were.

“I want you to say goodbye to me,” he murmured, doing his best to keep the anger out of his voice.

And failing.

Miserably.

What he needed was to touch her. Wrap her in his arms, hold her tight, inhale her scent, and pray to a God he didn’t even believe existed that he’d be able to do that again someday. Just to help him last for the time they were going to be apart.

But she wouldn’t give him that, either.

He already knew it.

Her nostrils flared in rage. She shook her head once more, and the calm composure she had carefully cultivated came apart at the seams when Karine let out a screech of frustration, standing from the floor in a blur of wildly waving arms. Narrowed eyes turned on him, and for a second, he wished she wouldn’t look at him.

Not like that.

It hurt, too.

“Why won’t you just go? Leave!”

Mel and another member of the staff came to stand in the doorway at the sound of Karine’s raised voice. He didn’t even glance their way, refusing to break his wife’s stare now that he had