Chapter 401
[ 486 words ]
Chapter 401:
Caroline lay there, her heart pounding a frantic, confused rhythm against her ribs. What had she done? What had she said? It was a reasonable request. Wasn’t it?
She propped herself up on an elbow, her mind racing. She reached out a hesitant hand and lightly touched his shoulder. “Jarrod?”
His muscles bunched under her fingertips. He flinched, a small, sharp movement away from her touch.
The rejection was more painful than a slap. One second he couldn’t get close enough, the next he couldn’t bear for her to touch him. The whiplash was dizzying, and a spark of anger ignited in her confusion.
She sat up completely and grabbed his shoulder, forcing him to roll back and face her. “What is wrong with you?” she demanded, her voice trembling with a mixture of hurt and frustration.
He looked at her, and the expression in his eyes made her breath catch. It was a look of profound, gut-wrenching pain and a self-doubt so deep it was terrifying to witness.
“Do you find me… disgusting?” he asked, the words sounding like they were being torn from his throat.
The question was so far from the truth, so utterly out of left field, that she could only stare at him, speechless.
“Is that it?” he pressed, his voice raw. “Do you regret it? Marrying me?”
“No! Of course not! Why would you even think that?”
𝘉𝘦 р𝘢𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 оur 𝗰𝘰m𝘮𝗎𝗇і𝘁y оn ga𝗅𝗻𝗼v𝗲𝗅ѕ.c𝗼𝗺
A bitter, self-mocking laugh escaped him. “You slam a door on my hand to keep me out. Then, when I finally touch you, you need to go ‘take a shower.’ Caroline, what the hell am I supposed to think? Those aren’t invitations. They’re rejections.”
He was connecting the dots, but he was drawing a monstrously wrong picture. He saw it all as a pattern of her physical repulsion to him.
“I was just… I’m not used to this,” she stammered, trying to explain something she didn’t fully understand herself.
“Not used to it, or not willing?” he shot back, his voice hard as stone. He sat up, the space between them charged with a new, colder tension. “You never wanted this. You never wanted me. This whole thing started with me forcing your hand. Didn’t it?”
He was dragging their entire history into this bed, using their flawed beginning as proof of a flawed present. He was defining their entire relationship by her initial, terrified refusal.
Caroline opened her mouth to argue, to deny it, but no words came. How could she explain that the ghost in this room wasn’t him, but a past he knew nothing about?
He saw her silence, and it was all the confirmation he needed. The last flicker of hope in his eyes died, leaving them empty and dark.
“Just tell me,” he said, his voice flat, exhausted. “What is it you really want?”
She stared at him, at the chasm that had just opened between them, and realized she had no words to build a bridge across it.
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