Page 8 of Accidentally Marrying the Prisoner
“Sucks for you,” I mumble with a small smirk.
Aha! I did it, I think to myself, when Conrad wrenches back the comforter to get out of bed. My silent victory doesn’t last long, though, since he takes my tablet and pen out of my hands and sets them on my drafting table. I bounce on the mattress when he dives back onto my bed.
The sheer audacity of this man.
When I try to get up, planning to retrieve my tablet, Conrad strikes, wrapping an arm around my waist. He hauls me back down, then pushes me up against the wall and forcefully tucks the comforter tight around my body, trapping my arms next to my sides like a swaddled newborn baby.
“Go to sleep,” he says with a threatening edge, then rolls onto his opposite side, facing away from me.
“I’m not tired yet. And besides, I was going to work at my desk so I wouldn’t bother you, your highness,” I say sarcastically.
He snorts. “Your highness,” he says mockingly. “I’d have heard your tapping from all the way over there, so, no. You’re done for the night. Now. Go. To. Sleep.”
After hours of being pushed to my limits, I lose my temper as I wriggle to work my arms out from under the comforter. “Why are you so bossy!”
“Because I can be!” he snaps with frustration. “Finally, after years of having to ask if I can so much as use the restroom with privacy, I get to make the decisions.”
“That doesn’t mean you can bossmearound.” I cross my newly freed arms over my chest, staring at the ledge of the breakfast bar above my head.
“You need someone to do it for you,” he says snidely, “since it’s obvious you can’t take care of yourself. And if I have to live with you for the next three years, I’m not doing so in a filthy apartment while allowing mywifeto try killing herself by eating moldy mac and cheese.”
“It wasn’t moldy,” I insist.
“Yes. It. Was. Now, for the love of god, go to sleep!”
“Fine!” I stew in my anger, my hands and face growing hot while I wait and wait and wait for him to fall asleep so I can get back to work.
Rolling onto his back, Conrad suddenly slaps his hands against the mattress at his sides.
“What’s wrong now?” I ask tartly.
“It’s too quiet.”
“Are you kidding me?” I throw my hands up and let them fall with a thud. “First, my tapping was too loud, and now it’s too quiet in here? What do you want?”
He drags his hands down his face and scratches his jaw through his beard. “I don’t know. I think…I’m too used to all the noise from the other prisoners.”
Fine. He can’t sleep, I can’t sleep, so I ask the thing I’ve been too chicken to bring up before. Maybe pestering him to death will finally get him to leave. “Why were you in prison?”
“Do we really have to do this now?”
“Yes.” I almost tack on apleasebecause I was raised with manners, but I’m feeling pretty petty right now since he’s had no problem not usinghismanners.
Conrad takes a long time to answer and only does so after I prod him again, reminding him that since we’remarriedand stuck with each other, it’s my right to know.
“Possession with the intent to distribute a Schedule One substance and transporting it across state lines.”
I lean away from him as far as I can. My voice is harsh when I ask, “You’re a drug dealer?” That’s not just a simple, regrettable mistake. It’s a premeditated crime. What the hell has my mom gotten me into?
“No.”
“Then what? An addict?”Is that better or worse?I don’t know.
“No,” he grits out. “Not that I’m against the weaker stuff, but I haven’t touched it since college.”
“Okay, then what?”
“It was my younger brother’s, but I was the one driving. He had—” Conrad’s voice is thick with emotion. “He had a glioblastoma. Inoperable.”
