Better (Too Good series) (29 page)

The next two days were tortuous. She was too ill to be left alone and too belligerent to talk to. He suppressed the urge to yell at her every time she ignored his questions or offers for help. She didn’t want hi
m feeding her. It was a sad comedy—her attempts at making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It took her half an hour. He couldn’t watch as she tried to reach for a glass in the cupboard, and waited for the inevitable crash. He let her do it her way. He bided his time, waiting for her to be fully restored to health before letting her have it. This episode was the final straw. It’d be her last, and he suspected a part of her knew it.

Day Three dawned, and she was back to her angry, vindictive self. He let her be. He went to work because he had to. Plus he needed the time to sort out his plan of attack. Yes, he had one. And he hoped it would work.

“All right, Cadence. Let’s have it out,” Mark said, storming into the bedroom that evening.

Cadence sat propped up in bed reading a book for English 201. She affected confusion. “What?”

“You know what. I kept my marriage from you—my past. And you’ve been punishing me for two months!”

Cadence raised her head a little. “Punishing you how? I’ve
just been busy.”

“Bullshit.”

She sneered. “Okay. So I haven’t called you every day. Big deal. I—”

“It is a big deal when you live with me,” Mark interrupted.

“So I need your permission to live my life?” she asked.

“Get real. You’re not living. You’re spiraling. And I would think that after what happened to Oliver, you’d have a wake
-up call. What the hell, Cadence? Smoking weed? Getting drunk every weekend? You want that to be your life? That’s a loser’s life.”

Cadence’s mouth went tight—a thin line of insolence.

“Now I know why you’ve been absent. I do. And I know I deserved your absence. But it ends now. You’re gonna stop playing your bullshit passive-aggressive games with me.”

He walked to the bed and grabbed her upper arm, hauling her to her feet. She ripped her arm from his grasp.

“I’m studying,” she spat.

“I don’t give a fuck.”

Cadence balled her hands into tiny fists. Mark saw and encouraged her.

“Just give it to me.
Would that make you feel better? Because I need anything in the world right now to make you feel better,” he said. “How many times can I apologize? How many ways can I work to make things right? I was wrong to hurt you like that, but you’ve gotta forgive me at some—”

Cadence swung at his face, driving her fist into his right ear.
She gasped in disbelief. She hadn’t meant to hit him that hard. But the blow fueled within her a desire for revenge—the physical kind where someone goes down for the count.

Mark hissed
and rubbed his ear, but said nothing.

“I want to rip you apart! I want to make
you hurt like you’ve hurt me!!” she screamed.

“Then do it,” he replied.

“I’m resentful of you!”

“Then show me.”

She wasn’t expecting an invitation. She stood, momentarily confused, waiting for him to rescind his offer. But he didn’t, so she drove a fist into his chest. It wasn’t a hard hit. It was tentative, like she was testing him out. Did he mean it, and could he handle it once her hesitation turned into full-out fury?

“Show me,” he urged. “If that’ll make you feel better.”

This time she didn’t hesitate. She beat on his chest harder, making him stumble backwards slightly. She slapped his face over and over—one cheek, then the other—her hand stinging from the hit and his stubble. She pushed against his shoulders in an attempt to knock him to the floor. He took each blow, accepting punishment for his deceit, knowing it was deserved and justified.

“You LIAR!” she screamed in his face.

He nodded.

“I can’t trust you!”

She pounded his upper arm.

“
I HATE you!

She slapped his face with all the force her 100-pound body could muster.

Mark grunted and blinked until he no longer saw stars.

She didn
’t know how long she pummeled him. She thought he deserved at least an hour of it, but her hands started aching, and she grew tired.

“You . . . you . . .”

She dropped her arms and stood staring at him. She thought she was supposed to cry for her pain, but she had no tears. Her heart was detached, unfeeling. She wanted to be close to him, but the wedge between them was thick and unyielding, and she feared it would divide them permanently.

“You have to forgive me, Cadence,” Mark said quietly. “You can’t carry around that resentment
, or we won’t survive it.”

Cadence nodded.

“I’m just so angry with you. It’s taken root in my heart, this anger. It’s grown a monumental hatred that’s made me crazy. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Mark reached out and took her hand. She let him.

“I know I acted out. I know I frightened you when I wouldn’t call. I know I hurt your feelings when I wouldn’t show up for dates, wouldn’t spend time with you. I just didn’t know how to punish you enough. Every time I did something ugly, it only made me want to do something else even uglier. I got addicted to it—seeing you hurt. Because it provided me a little measure of satisfaction. ‘Good,’ I thought. ‘He hurts as much as I do.’”

“You had a right to feel that way,” Mark said.

“You hurt my feelings. You made me feel like I wasn’t important to you—just some stupid girl with nothing special about her. I can’t shake those words you said to me. I think the damage is irreparable.”

“I hate that I said those things, Cadence. I didn’t believe them at all. I would have never pursued you if I didn’t see something special in you. Something worth
cherishing. You’ve been my savior—that person who showed me how to feel again. How to love again.”

Cadence sighed
. “I don’t know how to get back to where we were,” she whispered.

“We m
ay never get back there. We may have to find a new place. A better place.”

She hun
g her head.

“But that’s worth doing, right?” he asked. “I want to find a new, better place with you.”

She nodded, and he picked her up, encircling her waist with his arms and rocking her side to side the way he did the first time she visited him at his apartment. He was surprised at the soreness he felt from her blows. She was little, but she packed a mighty punch.

“
You still love her.” Cadence didn’t state it as a question.

Mark was silent for a moment, contemplating his response. She may not like it, but he would never lie to her again. So he told her the truth.

“Yes. There’s a place in my heart that will always be with her. But you . . .” He inhaled her scent, then pressed his lips to her ear. “. . . you
are
my heart.”

And that’s when
the healing began. She no longer resisted. The anger started to melt, and she tightened her arms around Mark’s neck to keep from slipping out of his grasp. He answered her by crushing her little body to his.

“Kiss me,” he whisp
ered.

She pressed her lips to his timidly. It had been a long time since she kissed him with feeling. It was strange, like she was doing it for t
he first time. He was patient with her, letting her search his mouth. He wanted to be aggressive. He wanted to bruise her lips, but now was not the time. She drew his bottom lip into her mouth before opening hers in an invitation for his tongue. He gave it to her, and she sucked it before biting it.

He flinched and drew back.

“Are you finished punishing me?” he asked.

She smiled the prettiest little wicked smile he’d ever seen, and he was glad for it—glad that it acted a
s justification for what he planned next.

“Good,” he purred. “Because now it’s your turn.”

Her smile vanished, and her body went rigid. He set her on her feet, then stood at his full height.

“What are you talking about?”

Her voice was so small that for a moment, he almost decided against it. Until he remembered last week when she disappeared for three days, then returned home with no explanation. Only a straight-up bitchy attitude.

“I let you punish me because I deserved it. And now you need to be punished for the way you acted,” Mark said.

“I had a right to act that way,” Cadence argued. She took a step back.

“Maybe, but if there are no consequence
s for how you treated me, how do I know you won’t do it again and again?”

Cadence’s eyes went wide. “I wouldn’t.”

“Oh, I know you won’t,” Mark said. “Come here.”

“No.”

“Cadence, don’t make it worse.”

“I’m not a fucking child!” She stamped her foot.

“I didn’t say you were. This doesn’t have anything to do with that. This has to do with reparations.”

“
I . . . I’m sorry I did those things,” she said quickly. “I told you I’m sorry!”

“I know that. And now I’m gonna make sure you mean it.” He reached out for her, but she evaded his grasp.
He sighed patiently. “Cadence, come here.”

“No!” she cried, running to the opposite side of the bedroom.

“You wanna make it worse?”

“You’re sick!” she screamed.

“How so? You don’t even know what I have planned,” he said matter-of-factly.

He watched the rapid rise and fall of her chest, and grinned.
He couldn’t help it. Her fear fed his resolve, and he was going to act on it. He was going to restore this relationship, once and for all.

“I’ll bend you over that bed myself if I have to,” he said evenly.

“You wanna hurt me,” Cadence whispered. Her voice shook.

“No. No, I don’t. But I will. And you’ll deserve every bit of it.”

He waited for the transformation. She was no pushover—not like he’d been for months. And sure enough, he saw her fear turn to absolute rage.

“No!” She offered it up like a challenge.

“I gave you your space and time because I love and respect you. I let you act like a little bitch for two straight months because I love you. I let you worry the shit out of me because I love you. I let you break my heart because I love you. And now? Now, I’m gonna beat your ass.” He paused to let this information sink in, watching her eyes light up with defiance. “Because I love you.”

Cadence glimpsed the bedroom door, wondering if she had enough time to
run to it, turn the knob, and make her escape before he grabbed her. She thought she didn’t, but she had no choice. She had to try.

She sprinted, and he scooped her up before her fingers even touched the knob.

“No!” she screamed, squirming to break free from his grasp.

He ignored her, walking to the edge of the bed and standing her beside it.

“Bend over.”

“Fuck you.”

“Bend over, Cadence.”

“I hate you!”

“God, you’re a stubborn little thing,” he said. He stood behind her, body pressed close, and whispered in her ear, “I’m doing this one way or the other. You either bend over, or I’ll bend you over. And you don’t want me to bend you over.”

She whipped around for another assault with her fists, but he was too quick. He pinned her hands behind her back a
nd pushed her neatly on the bed, face first. She twisted, grunted, and screamed. He paid her no mind as he tugged on her cotton shorts. She made it too easy for him. Elastic waistband. No panties. Had she been wearing jeans, he would have had to negotiate with her, and that would have taken all the fun out of it.

He stared at her naked ass and drew in his breath.

Control
, he said to himself.
Control
, thinking absurdly of that MGMT song. He smiled.

“Cadence?”

No reply.

“I’m only gonna take what I need,” he explained.

She tried for guilt. “You’re a monster and you don’t love me! If you love me you wouldn’t—”

His palm came down with a
sudden, swift
smack
! It bit her skin—the sting of fire ants.

“Shit
!”

“I know,” Mark said. His tone was neither placating nor sympathetic.

She tried to twist her hands free, and he spanked her harder. She screamed.

“
Lie still, Cadence,” he ordered, smacking her a third time. He grew hard watching her plump little bottom bounce.

Control. Control it.

“I get it!” she cried. “I get it, and I won’t ever do those things again!”

He
struck her bare ass over and over until he made her cry. She cried! And while she didn’t want him to know it, she secretly reveled in it—the tears running steadily from her eyes to soak the comforter. She was crying. Feeling something. After a month! Feeling!