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

“I really do want to keep you safe,” he told her.

“Mr. Avdonin, I think maybe you should leave now,” Mel insisted.

“Karine, let me hug you before I go,” he tried again.

She shook her head.

Again.

Because they both knew the truth ... and once he put his hands on her, she was going to feel better—good again. She always did in his arms. And God, he wanted to do that for her right now, even if it wouldn’t last and it was only a lie. He needed to say goodbye, too.

Yet, there they both stood.

An invisible wall remained between them, and he couldn’t close that distance unless she let him first.

She didn’t.

Karine allowed herself to be coaxed away by the woman who had joined Mel in the doorway. The tears crept down her cheeks as she passed him by, not looking away to hide those blatant tears, but she didn’t give him a thing.

Didn’t say a word.

“Karine,” he shouted at her back.

Her dainty shoulders tensed, but she continued walking until she was at the door. One more step, and she would be gone.

He had no choice but to let her go.

Heart dying.

The outburst of emotion came from Roman before he could stop it. Without thinking, he drove his fist into the closest wall, driving his hand wrist deep into plaster. He heard the sound of bone crunching when the skin of his knuckles split against the beam it found inside the wall. His blood stained the pristine white paint, but none of it helped.

None of it changed anything.

Nothing would now.

SIX

Karine was sure Roman was long gone by the time she had found a bathroom to hide inside. She quickly realized the door couldn’t be locked from the inside unless someone had a card for the electronic reader, and it was just one more reminder about what this place really was.

How stupid could she be?

How many cameras did Karine overlook? Why hadn’t she thought to ask about the heavy doors, and the locked corridors that hadn’t been open during the tour?

No, she’d been ... all too willing to follow Roman like a lost puppy. Straight into a new cage, with prettier bars.

The woman who opened the bathroom door to peek inside at Karine wore plain white scrubs, and a lanyard around her neck with an ID badge that Karine suspected controlled things like the card. At the sight of Karine sitting on the bathroom floor next to a row of pedestal sinks, the lady said nothing about the outburst earlier.

Karine’s face still burned with shame all the same.

“Do you just need a minute?” she asked.

Karine nodded, but didn’t look up from where she picked at her fingernails. “Please.”

“Not a problem. You’re not going to be forced to do or take anything here that you don’t want, Karine. Not unless you’re a danger to yourself or others. You’re welcome to your privacy, but I did have to check. I’ll be out in the hall whenever you’re ready.”

The door clicked closed without the woman waiting for a reply. Not that Karine had one, anyway.

For a long while, she simply sat there alone in her heartache. Silent and angry. Didn’t she have a good reason to be, though?

Why did it have to make her feel guilty, too?

In the meditation room, Karine had decided she would be as calm and controlled as she could be—she had to be. It took mere minutes for her to figure out the plan that had unfolded around her by her husband’s hand.

There was no way out.

No other option.

Karine had never once found herself in an institution. Despite the threat of it sometimes lingering over her head when Maxim thought she was getting out of hand, she’d managed to avoid it. She had enough knowledge about places like these to know once she had been involuntarily committed, fraudulently or not, leaving was not as easy.

But that was the thing ...

Once she understood why they were really there, she didn’t need to know anything else.

Roman had already made the decision. When she thought they were creating something real—when her traitorous heart believed they had a shot at love—he was actually plotting to lock her away.

Essentially.

The other details didn’t really matter—his reasons weren’t as important as what he’d done in the end. She wasn’t convinced this was the best option for her.

How was keeping her far from her husband, somewhere she didn’t know with people she couldn’t trust, the right step to take?

Karine cursed herself for opening up to Roman. She shouldn’t have told him so much about her past. Nonetheless, despite being aware of her triggers—he still chose to abandon her.

And not like before ...

Not like the lodge when she was still fresh from Chicago, and scared of her secrets that were no longer hidden. No, this time he’d let her wrap him around her heart only to squeeze it to death so slowly that she hadn’t even realized she was dying.

Roman made her love him.

And then he did this.

Didn’t he know how difficult it was going to be to keep control of the fractured parts of her mind that had already started screaming between her ears? Once again, she could hear the echoes of voices.

It would be easy.

To give in, and go to sleep. Let them handle all the fears, and the darkness beginning to creep through her mind.

She didn’t, though, instead forcing herself to meditate and clear her mind as best as she temporarily could on the tiles floor of an unfamiliar bathroom with a row of silver stalls facing her.

And she thought of him.

Roman.

She’d gone into that last conversation wanting him to understand what he had done, what he was really doing to her. She had needed him to know there was no coming back from this.

His betrayal.

But then she saw him.

He’d looked almost afraid—like he was falling apart, too.

Just like her.

Karine had tried hard to keep from giving into her weakness for him. All those thoughts and the pain she wanted him to hear her say jumbled