And, to make matters worse, I finally got to sleep with Bram.
But only because he was drunk off his ass, and he wanted it, he said.
I’d given it to him, as well as my virginity, and he didn’t even notice.
From there on out, we shared a room.
He fucked me, but he didn’t love me.
The day that he graduated from his welding school and got his first job as an underwater welder, I went out of my way to plan a party for him.
No one spoke to me once.
Well, no one but Jeremiah.
He spoke to me.
• • •
“Why don’t you ever eat my food?”
I looked up at the gruff biker that honestly scared the crap out of me.
Actually, all of them scared the crap out of me.
That was why I’d battened down the hatches and tried to appear bitchy and aloof. Because if I showed them a single hint of fear, they would pounce on that thread like hungry cats.
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
I’d hoped that none of them noticed that I didn’t eat any of the food that I didn’t personally make.
In fact, I didn’t even eat the food that Bram made well.
I could choke it down, but there was a fifty percent chance that I’d puke it back up later.
Mostly because I didn’t trust Bram.
He was my husband, and I didn’t think that he’d ever put me first if push came to shove.
“Umm.” I hesitated, unsure what to say.
I mean, technically, them (them being the Crow family) knowing that I didn’t do well eating their food wasn’t a big deal. I wasn’t sure that they would care whether I ate or not. And knowing that I couldn’t eat it probably wouldn’t be any skin off their noses. But still.
“Come on.” He took a seat next to me.
Nobody had approached me all night.
They’d all eaten the cake that I’d purchased, the alcohol that I’d painstakingly braved the wilds of the liquor store for, and the food that I’d asked Jeremiah to cater—that I’d paid for.
Yet, none of them had said thank you at all.
Not even Bram, who was well on his way to drunk, had said a single ‘thank you.’
It was days like today that really hammered the nail into my proverbial coffin.
I loved a man that would never love me back.
I went out of my way to do everything for him—and his family—and not a single one of them paid me even a single ounce of their attention.
Except for, apparently, Jeremiah.
And, since he was actually acknowledging me—I had a feeling it had to do with the book in my hand and not the fact that I hadn’t eaten—I decided to go for it.
I hadn’t meant to go for it quite so spectacularly as I had, though.
But once I started to talk, the words just kind of vomited out.
“When I was younger, my brother used to do things to my food,” I said. “I was diagnosed with ARFID—avoidance/restrictive food intake disorder. Pretty much, sometimes I just can’t eat. Can’t make myself eat. I try, and then I throw it up. That’s what usually happens when I eat y’all’s food. I try it. Then I spend the next thirty minutes outside puking it up.”
“What did he used to do to your food?” Jeremiah growled, sounding pissed.
I looked at him skeptically, wondering idly if he actually cared.
Shrugging, because what did it fucking matter at this point, I continued to speak.
“What didn’t he do would be an easier question to answer,” I admitted. “He once collected mouse droppings and put it into a cake. He waited until I’d eaten a piece before he showed me what he’d done. I got really sick from that.”
I sighed. I’d spent two nights in the hospital for that one.
“Then there was the time that he’d known he couldn’t get away with it, and then he’d put cilantro into my food because that was the easiest way to hide the fact that he wanted to fuck with me. I can’t stand cilantro. It tastes like soap to me,” I admitted. “He did that a lot. And then I was forced to eat it because there wasn’t anything else to eat if I didn’t. And he liked to see me starve more than he liked to fuck with my food.”
Jeremiah’s fists clenched hard. “What else?”
“There’s a lot.” I shrugged. “I…”
“Yo, Dorcas.”
I looked up to see Price looking at me.
“Yeah?” I asked very quietly.
“You got any more beer anywhere?” he asked.
I licked my lips nervously and said, “No. I think I only bought three cases.”
That’d been all that I could carry.
“Fuck. That sucks. You should’ve gotten more,” Price grumbled, turning around and dismissing me.
“What’s that face for?” Jeremiah wondered.
I looked at him with a hint of fear in my eyes that I couldn’t quite hide. “He used to call me Dorcas in the most annoying way,” I admitted, changing my voice to sound like Amon’s soulless one. “‘Dorcas, does that food taste good? Dorcas, do you want to come sleep with me tonight? Dorcas, don’t you just hate it when you wake up and you can’t breathe?’” I shook my head. “Hearing my name gives me major ‘I want to stab myself in the eardrum with a knife’ vibes.”
When I looked at Jeremiah next, it was to see his face completely blank.
“When’s the last time you ate?” he asked quietly.
I had no clue.
At least not since yesterday sometime.
I’d been too nervous about today to eat what little my body would allow.
“What if you watched me cook you something?” he asked, obviously reading the look on my face for what it was.
I thought about that for a moment.
“I can sometimes only eat lunch meat and bread,” I admitted.
“What about a grilled cheese?” he asked.
I swallowed hard. “I think… as long as the cheese is pre-packaged, I could do that.”
There couldn’t be any butter, though.
“Come on.”
That was the first time that I ate anything that Jeremiah cooked for me—someone besides myself, as a matter of fact, that didn’t come from fast food. But it definitely wouldn’t be the last.
• • •
Honestly, I think I would’ve been all right continuing to live the life that we’d made with each other… until I saw that Mimi had come back home to run her parents’ racetrack years after we’d married.
It was seeing the look in Bram’s eyes as he stared at her that sealed the deal.
It was that look that helped me make the decision.
Not only was the investigator that’d been responsible for looking into Amon’s murder dead—he’d died in a car accident a year ago—but Mimi was back.
There was no reason to keep playing this game.
No reason to keep thinking that I could make Bram happy when everyone knew I couldn’t.
No reason to continue to deal with abuse from the Crow family when I didn’t need to anymore.
It was time, and I made the decision while having sex with Bram.
“Turn over,” he growled.
I did, unhappy that I couldn’t put up a fight when it came to my husband.
I would do anything to make him happy.