Page 42 of Sweet Ruin

That stops her. “You… huh?”

“Your voice. It’s sweet. Does it match your face, I wonder?”

I start to reach for the light switch on the wall over her shoulder, but she darts out a hand to catch my wrist and stop me.

“Don’t,” she whispers.

I pause. There’s a note in her voice that confuses me. It’s almost like she’s… begging?

But not in the fun way. Not in the hands-cuffed-behind-her-back, bare-and-submissive-before-me kind of way.

This begging is a bit too desperate for my liking.

“Why not?” I ask.

She releases my wrist. “If you turn on that light, I’m going to see your face, and you’re going to see mine, and then this becomes a real conversation with a real person in it. And then I lose my nerve.”

“That’s the only reason?” I scoff. “I’ll lend you some of my nerve, then. You⁠—”

“No!”

She snatches my wrist again and clings on hard.

“I like that you like my voice,” she mumbles. “I don’t want to know what happens when you see that my face doesn’t match.”

I turn to stone.

Some part of me wants to be angry at her for what she just said. Well, no, not at her, exactly.

But at whoever installed that sentence in her brain and made her so sure it was true.

Her husband, probably. Her sister. That whole braying room out there.

“Say that again,” I order her.

“No.”

“Say it again.”

“I said what I said.” Her hand is still tight around my wrist. “Don’t make me repeat it. It’s humiliating enough the first time.”

“It’s not humiliating.” I let my voice drop. “It’s just fucking wrong.”

“You haven’t seen me. You don’t know.”

“I know more than you might suspect.”

“Look, it’s just… I just… I’m asking you to please leave the light off, okay? I know that’s stupid, but I’m in a really fragile state right now and I just… I need that.”

Slowly, I start to peel her fingers off of my wrist one by one. It feels like plucking petals off a delicate flower.

“If the people in this house make you feel lesser-than, then they’re stupider than I ever thought possible,” I snarl at her. “I hear the fire in your voice. That’s all that matters to me.”

She laughs quietly, shamefully. “That’s a hell of a line.”

“It’s not a line.” I pull my wrist free of the last of her fingers. Slowly, so she knows I could have done it whenever I wanted. “A line would be me telling you you’re beautiful. I don’t do favors and I don’t hand out compliments to make women feel better.”

“Then what are you doing?”