Page 63 of Unholy Masks

He looked up, finally.

“Ryden…” He walked toward the bed and sat down.

“I’m not angry.” He lay down, closing his eyes. “I know this is perfect, Yara. Us. Right now. It’s everything I want—you’re everything I want.” His voice was softer now, like he was speaking more to himself than to me.

He let out a slow breath when I ran my fingers into the mess of his raven hair.

“But…” He yawned, his voice dipping lower, rougher, as he turned toward me. “I—I want to introduce you as mine. Not my girlfriend, not Yara. Mine. I want people to look at you and know you belong to me, the way I already belong to you.”

My stomach tightened. He looked utterly defenseless right now. So vulnerable. Like I could break him with a single word, a touch.

He was, once again, giving me everything, everything I didn’t even ask for.

How did I get so lucky?

“I want your future tangled with mine so tight there’s no way to walk away from it.” His eyes cracked open, hazy with exhaustion. “I want to own every part of you, the way you already own every inch of me.”

“Ryden, I…”

“I want to shout to the world that you’re my wife, that I’m the happiest man in the whole wide world and—”

Fuck.

Wife? No. That can’t be.

I never wanted that. I never wanted to give that power over me to someone. Wife? All the wives I knew eventually died because of their husbands.

My mother did. The dead women I had to dissect did.

But Ryden made me crave things I always hated, because he was different from the ones I had met.

Marriage to me was what my mother had with my father. What Ryden’s father had with his mother. It was shackles disguised as eternity of togetherness, promises that slowly curdled into obligations, love that rotted to become wounds and scars.

Marriage was not a happy ending to a love story, not for me.

Deep down, I knew Ryden was not my father, or his. I wasn’t my mother.

“Ryden, I love you, and I want—” With a frown, I looked at him. “Ryden? RYDEN? Fuck you, Turtle Mocha!”

Did he just fall asleep in the middle of that?

“You make me think and worry about things I don’t want to, and then you go and fall asleep just like that?”

Shaking my head, I lay down next to him, placing a hand on his chest, letting the beat of his heart calm me.

He looked so innocent, so breakable, and I wanted to protect him with everything I had. I wanted to protect him from the world, from Patty, from myself.

“You scare me, Ryden. I have never feared anything in my life, but now I do.”

I reached out, brushing my fingertips over the furrow in his forehead. His lips twitched, then curved into a small, sleepy smile, so beautifully serene.

I stayed there for a long time, just staring at him, wondering if I would ever become strong enough to give him everything he wanted.

I wanted to. I wanted to give him the whole fucking world.

“I promise I won’t always be a coward, Ryden. Just give me some time.”

With a sigh, I stood up from the bed and walked out, grabbing my laptop on my way out.