My thighs screamed in protest from the sudden movement, but I somehow managed to finagle my arm around Noah’s neck once I was behind him.
“Now take your other arm and cross it behind my neck, creating a kind of lock.”
“Like this?” I asked, once I’d adjusted my other arm into the proper position.
His head nodded in the crux of my arms. “You can use your hips or knees to bend me back, taking me to the ground or to my knees.”
It took me a moment to figure out what came most naturally. Driving my knee into his spine, I pressed until Noah’s body arced away from me, his knees eventually crashing to the ground.
Through the frame of my arms, he smiled at me. “That wasn’t too hard, was it?”
Weakness had exited my body, leaving a dizzying, almost smug kind of power in its wake. I’d never considered myself strong in body, but the ability to render a man inept proved otherwise. “Surprisingly not.”
“Squeeze your arms tighter, applying pressure to the sides of my neck.” He nodded at me.
“They’re wrapped around your throat. If I squeeze any tighter, you’ll go unconscious.”
“That’s the whole idea.”
“Brain damage,” I said. “It’s a thing.”
“My IQ score suggests I have some to spare.” His hands lifted to my arm roped around the front of his neck and pressed it deeper into his throat. “You’re not cutting off my air supply, you’re cutting off my blood supply to the brain. Done correctly, I’ll go unconscious in five to ten seconds.”
“I get the idea. You don’t have to pass out for me to get the basics.”
“You learn by doing. Not by imagining what comes next.” His hands fell away from my arm. “Squeeze.”
“What if I hang too long and cause permanent damage? Or worse . . .” My head shook, but I didn’t release him.
“As soon as I go unconscious, that’s when you’ll know to release your hold.” His knees shifted beneath him, rocking his head in my hold. “You can do it, Grace.”
“You promise everything will be all right?”
His expression relaxed. “I promise.”
Taking a breath, I tightened my arms around his neck. I felt his trachea through one forearm, his spine against my other. I thought he was trembling until I realized it was me who was shaking. I wasn’t sure why I was doing this—why I’d agreed to such a hazardous tactic—excusing it with the reassurance that Noah had been practicing this for over a decade and possessed some sliver of self-preservation.
“Harder.” The word rattled in his chest, barely discernable from the adrenaline raging inside me.
Biting my lip, I squeezed until I could go no further. A strange hissing sound rushed past his teeth after another minute before his eyes rolled back into his head. The moment his body went limp in my arms, I released my hold and eased him onto the ground.
“Noah.” My voice wavered as I gently shook his body.
He remained still, peaceful looking in his slumber—too tranquil for a man who’d literally been strangled into oblivion.
“Shit, Noah. Come on,” I cried, speaking each word louder, continuing to rock his body.
The few seconds that followed spanned an eternity.
Finally, Noah’s eyelids quivered, his mouth parting to gasp for air right after. After blinking and collecting a handful of breaths, he looked totally normal, as though the living breath hadn’t been choked out of him a minute ago.
“For a moment there, it almost looked like you were worried about me.” One corner of his mouth twitched, his voice hoarse.
Exhaling my relief, I lightly shoved his shoulder. “You’ve never been good at reading my mind.”
“I don’t need to read it. I’m a shrink.” His dark brows moved as he sat up, color flooding back into his face. “I can simply crack it open and peek inside.”
“If it’s so simple, why do you get me cookware every year for Christmas?” I asked, brushing away the dirt and debris covering his back.
“You don’t like cookware?”
I blinked at him purposefully. “I don’t cook.”
He rubbed his mouth. “What do you like?”
“Not having to consider facing twenty to life for killing my husband.”
Noah swept the sweaty tangles of my hair from my forehead, eyes gleaming with a playful sheen. “Not sure how to wrap that up and stick it under the tree.”
“Then how about a nice handbag from Nordstrom? Any color so long as it’s black.” Standing, I tried not to give away how sore I was.
Noah basically sprang up, looking capable of setting a personal best in a marathon. “Why has it taken so long for you to tell me? Nearly two decades of Christmases together and you’re just telling me this now.”
“I didn’t think you cared,” I replied, trying not to wince as I stretched my quads.
“I didn’t think you cared either,” he echoed, his expression knitting together. “Where did we go wrong?”
His question should have taken me by surprise, but instead I felt as though I’d been waiting years for him to ask that very one.
“I’m not sure we ever were right,” I said. “Right for each other, right for a relationship, right for building a future.”
“Then why have you stayed? Why didn’t you leave me years ago?” He looked me straight-on, no hesitation in his words. It was as if he’d been waiting years for this conversation as well.
“Because, right or wrong, the idea of leaving is worse than the reality of staying.”
His breath clouded around his face. “The makings of an ideal marriage right there.”
“It’s a marriage,” I argued. “None of them are ideal.”
“Then why do people do it? Get married?”
I kicked at the uneven earth, shoulders moving. “Well, we got married because I was pregnant.”
“Why do people stay married?” Noah pressed.
“Because not everything needs to be—or should be—easy in life.” My voice grew with each word. “Sometimes the most meaningful things are difficult, and painful, and costly.”
Noah let the quiet creep in around us before piercing it again. “This is meaningful to you?”
“It’s . . . important to me.”
“You’re important to me. More than our marriage.” Noah breeched the space between us, expression solemn, eyes more so. “If you need something else—someone else—I won’t let some patriarchal custom get in the way of your needs.”
“You wouldn’t mind if I divorced you?” Even as I asked it, I untangled a small branch from the ends of his hair and combed at the dark ends once it was freed.
His gaze lowered to the thorny twig in my hand, interpreting something in it I could not decipher. “Sometimes the most important gift we can give our spouse is that of letting them go.”
Twenty
There weren’t enough hours in the day to complete everything I had to. Basically, it was the typical Monday of a working mom who’d taken on too much with too little left to give.