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  For tonight, he wanted to do his best to be as “normal” as they could.

  Maybe the glimpse of everything they were missing might help motivate her. He didn’t know. He was beyond trying to be logical about it.

  Desperation ruled his mind.

  All the way there, she rested her hand on his thigh as he drove, and he kept his lying on top of it but afraid to grip her too hard. He felt terrified he’d harm her.

  Once they were parked at Seth and Leah’s, he turned to her. “We won’t stay late tonight. All right?”

  She nodded.

  He gently caught her chin and leaned in for a kiss. “I love you, sweetheart.”

  “I love you, too, Sir.”

  She waited for him to get out, round the car, and help her out. All the way to the front door, he kept his arm around her, protectively tucking her against his side. Most of their friends knew she was in a battle for her life, but he’d only really talked about it in-depth with Seth.

  In fact, he’d broken down, crying on Seth’s shoulder just last week about all of this, tears he didn’t dare shed in front of her for fear of what it might do to her.

  When they reached the front entrance, he gently eased her behind him so whoever opened the door would see him first and he could hug them and whisper in their ear a warning not to hug her tonight.

  He didn’t want her accidentally hurt by well-intentioned friends, didn’t want her drastic weight-loss being commented on, either, if they felt how dangerously thin she was.

  Here we go.

  He reached out and rang the doorbell.

  Chapter Two

  Three Weeks Later, Early November

  That Monday morning, Mal was not looking forward to today’s joint therapy session with Kel for a lot of reasons.

  The main one being she knew how upset Kel would be at the end of it.

  She hadn’t told her therapist she was doing this. It’d be blindsiding both her and Kel, but Mal had tried everything else.

  She knew the odds if she couldn’t get her shit together.

  Maybe it’d be better this way.

  He can always find someone else if I’m not strong enough.

  She spent the morning gathering her things, packing everything in her room, because she wanted to be ready to check out as soon as possible after the appointment. Either Kel would be taking her home or she’d be calling a cab or…something. Or Niall, Doyle, or Doug would come get her, but she wanted to be out of here.

  The idea had hit her at the Halloween party three weeks ago while she watched their friends playing. The next afternoon, after Kel returned her to the facility in Tampa and she was alone in her room once more, she’d called Doyle. Him, because he’d worked with her early on, not long after her miscarriage and it became clear she was having deeper problems. He’d also been the one to tell her and Kel she needed more help than he was able to give her once it was apparent she was hitting a downward spiral.

  Doyle wasn’t able to talk to her right then, because he’d been about to catch a plane with his husband, but he gave her Niall’s number. Niall was willing to hear her out and consider her request. After a couple of days of thinking about it and talking it over with Doyle and Doug, Niall had agreed they’d take her on as a client—all three of them working together. They all worked out of the same clinic in Sarasota.

  Something had to change, and it could only happen within her. She knew a plateau when she felt one—having been through several already.

  This time was different.

  This would be her last plateau, one way or another.

  She’d spent most of the past three weeks since the party planning and in daily phone sessions with Niall, Doyle, and, even briefly, with Doug, who she hadn’t met in person yet but already liked a lot from her conversations with him. Doug had even jokingly dubbed the three of them her “therapy fairy godfathers.”

  She also hadn’t told her main therapist, or her medical team, about her plans. The men weren’t thrilled with that option, but they didn’t disagree with her logic, that her current medical team would try to talk her out of it and probably even try to use Kel to pressure her into staying.

  Mal made sure she was waiting for Kel downstairs when he arrived, because she didn’t want him up in her room and seeing she was packed. He’d immediately know something was up, and she didn’t want him to have time to formulate a plan to talk her into changing her mind.

  Which was something he had the ability to do, even though she knew it came from a place of complete love and worry.

  Even the way he hugged her when he arrived, as if afraid to touch her, broke her heart.

  I did this to us.

  The way he pressed a tender kiss to her forehead and paused, inhaling, as if desperately glad to have her in his arms but terrified to break her.

  It all shattered her heart. She couldn’t live like this anymore and knew the path to her recovery wasn’t here. She’d done all she could here, with the tools these people provided for her.

  It was time to try something outside the box.

  Once they were in Dr. Susan Abrahms’ office, Mal sat through the therapist’s summary to Kel of how the week had gone, Mal’s stats. When Kel learned Mal hadn’t gained any weight in the past week, only maintained her current weight, Mal could barely stand to see the disappointment flash across Kel’s face, just for him to school his features almost immediately.

  Afraid to show Mal his true emotions.

  Once Susan finished that part of the appointment, Mal took her opportunity before she could chicken out.

  “I think I need some time alone,” she quietly said.

  Kel and Susan exchanged a confused glance. “Right now?” Susan asked.

  Mal shook her head, unable to look at Kel and instead focusing on her hands in her lap. “I mean completely.”

  “What are you saying?” Susan asked.

  Terror filled her, but when she thought about it…she’d never lived on her own.

  Ever.

  Maybe this would be the world’s worst experiment, but she’d never had to stand on her own two feet. Not really. Her parents had died but she’d been denied a normal grieving process by her uncle’s disfunction. Then she’d moved in with Kel, sure, as a roommate, at first, but leaning on him anyway.

  Niall had also not been thrilled with this option when she’d told him her decision yesterday, but once again, he couldn’t fault her logic that she needed to experience being alone and independent, even if only for a short time. Niall also acknowledged the likelihood that if Kel was living with her he would spend every spare waking moment demanding she return to the facility, or watching her like a hawk and not living his life.

  “I think Kel should stay at the apartment for a little while,” she said. “At night. Not…permanently.”

  It felt like all sound, all oxygen had been sucked from the room, like she could hear Kel’s heart breaking, his soul shattering, and it nearly destroyed her resolve.

  Neither Susan nor Kel spoke for a long moment, and Mal didn’t dare look. She was close to tears already.

  I’m so fucking tired of crying.

  But she hadn’t been able to heal no matter what they tried.

  That meant she was keeping Kel trapped in perpetual purgatory, too, and that wasn’t fair to him.

  None of this was fair to him.

  “Mal?” he finally asked, nearly a whisper. “What’s going on?”

  She closed her eyes and willed the tears back. “I need to do something…different,” she said.

  One of the things she loved about Susan was her ability to keep her mouth shut when necessary. She didn’t interrupt and let this play out.

  Kel’s jagged inhale punctured Mal’s soul but she kept her eyes closed so she didn’t see the wounded agony no doubt filling his sweet brown eyes. “Are-are you asking me…for a divorce?”

  She slowly shook her head. “No. I love you. But this isn’t fair to you.”

  “I deci
de what’s fair to me, Mal.”

  “And you’ll always decide that to the exclusion of what’s best for you.” She finally forced her eyes open and made herself look at him.

  The tears—tears he’d been so careful about hiding from her all this time—now rolling down his cheeks gutted her, but she’d started this.

  “I’m checking myself out and going home. Today. You’re taking me home. I’ve set up appointments with Doyle and Niall,” she added. “I’ve already talked to them. They’ve agreed to work with me, and that they will communicate with Susan to get up-to-speed on my file.”

  Now Susan tried to interrupt. “Mal, this is the first I’m hearing about this. You and I haven’t even discussed this. I’m not sure that’s a wise decision right now.”

  “Either I’m going to beat this,” Mal said, “or I’m not. I know the risks. But my life’s been on hold, and so has Kel’s.” She couldn’t bear seeing the weight of his pain and dropped her gaze to her hands again, where her fingers worked on shredding a tissue in her lap. “This is it. This is my last chance to fix this.”

  “No,” Susan said. “There isn’t a timeline on any of—”

  “I have put a timeline on it,” Mal said. “Now I’m inconveniencing my friends. Friends have stepped in to pay my freaking hospital bills. I love them to death for it, and I know they can afford it, but no. I’m…done. If I don’t do this, and I die, at least Kel can move on.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she watched his jaw drop open. “Mal, I love you. You are my wife. I’m not going to abandon you, or let you give up—”

  “You don’t have a choice, Kel,” she said, hating that her tears were flowing once more. “Please respect my wishes. You can live at the apartment for now. I’m not divorcing you. If I make it this time, then you come home. Because if I can’t make this work…” She shrugged. “Then the house and everything is yours anyway.”

  “You can’t be serious, sweetie. Can we please discuss this?”

  The niobium bracelet Mal wore on her right wrist, her slave collar, no longer fit like it did when he’d first fastened it around her wrist. Now, it was so loose she could easily slip her hand out of it, like a bangle bracelet.

  Choking back her sobs, she slipped it off and handed it to him, unable to look him in the eyes. “I think I was wrong to chew you out a few weeks ago when you brought up maybe dropping our M/s dynamic for a while,” she said. “Maybe we do need a temporary break from this. So I need you to hold on to that for me, for now. When I’m ready, if I don’t end up dead first, I’ll ask for it back. If you’ll still even want me.”

  He wouldn’t take it from her, so she ended up laying it in his lap, where he stared at it.

  * * * *

  Kel could barely breathe, couldn’t process this. “Honey—”

  “I need this,” she said. “Maybe it is the wrong thing, but they’ve said my meds are as stable as they’re going to be, for now. They have done all they can do for me at this point. It’s up to me. I need to be home. If I screw up, then I screw up. But it’s my screw-up to make, not yours. I don’t need you holding on to any more guilt than I know you already feel. This is me, all mine. That’s why I think it’d be better for you to live at the apartment for a while.”

  There was something different about her tone today.

  Calm, but firm.

  Her mind was made up.

  He didn’t want to pick up the bracelet, didn’t want to put his hand on it and feel it still warm from where’d it’d been on her wrist, know that it was really there in his lap, and that this slow-motion horror his life had slid into seemed to have no bottom.

  “We can’t negotiate this?” he asked, already knowing the answer to that.

  She slowly shook her head. “Not this time.”

  “Will you please look at me?”

  She hadn’t been dying her hair, and it was all brown now, a sweet brown he loved that had reddish and warm chestnut tones when she sat in the sun, a little grey here and there despite her not even being thirty yet, but hell, he had grey now, too.

  Stress would do that to a person.

  She’d been keeping it trimmed shorter than she used to, just below her shoulders. It hung like curtains around her face today, because she hadn’t pulled it back into a ponytail. When she finally raised her head, her blue eyes looked like bottomless wells of grief and sorrow when she finally forced herself to meet his gaze.

  “Has someone asked you to do this? Talked you into it?” He needed to know the truth.

  She sadly smiled and shook her head. “No. That first therapist was full of shit,” she added. “I know that. But there was one thing she was right about. I’ve bounced around reacting instead of taking control of my life. I used unhealthy coping skills when I was a teenager, and I never learned healthy ones.

  “Now, I know the healthy skills, but I’m too busy leaning on you and worried about what this is doing to you to actually work on me. If I spend my life keeping myself alive only because you’re ordering me to, that’s putting unfair responsibility on you for my health, and it’s taking accountability away from me.”

  “But it’s my job to take care of you! I love you!”

  “I love you, too. Before I realized how broken parts of me are, I would have totally agreed with you about it being your job.” She took a deep breath. “I refuse to turn you into Kaden, Kel,” she said. “I refuse to have you be Seth, worried about every breath I’m taking, hyper-vigilant and with your life completely on hold and every ounce of energy you have devoted to me. That’s not a healthy relationship. Maybe it worked for them, but it doesn’t work for me. I can’t handle that guilt.”

  “That’s not your—”

  “Yes, it is, Kel.” She blew her nose. “It is my decision to make. I get it, what Leah went through in her life is totally different than what I went through. I don’t fault her or Kaden or Seth. What they have works for them, and more power to them. But I can’t live like this anymore. Either I need to make it, or…” She shrugged. “I’m done.”

  It felt like he’d stepped off a cliff over a bottomless, black abyss and just hadn’t started the fatal plunge yet. “No,” he said. “I don’t agree to this. I won’t leave you.”

  Her sad smile gutted him. “I’m still your wife. I still love you. But I’m killing both of us at this rate, and that’s guilt I cannot bear. I need to try something different. If I can’t do it on my own, you trying to manage everything I do will kill not only your soul, but our marriage. I want to be your wife and your slave, and I want to figure out how to live. But I’ve let you carry this weight for too long and it’s time for me to do this.”

  Susan looked rattled, and that scared Kel even more. “Mallory, I don’t agree with this plan. I think it’s a mistake to check yourself out at this time.”

  She motioned at Susan. “I’m pretty sure a lot of you aren’t going to agree with this. You can keep monitoring my case through Niall, Doyle, and Doug. I’ll set up a series of appointments with you and my medical team, if I need to. I’ll drive up, and—”

  “You can barely walk!” Kel said, beyond desperate now. “How are you supposed to drive?”

  She steadily met his gaze. “Then I guess I’ll need to get my act together, won’t I?” Her quiet, calm tone terrified him.

  It almost felt like the more he tried to protest, the stronger her resolve grew.

  “Can we at least talk about this? Or, okay, you want to come home? Then come home for another visit, or start coming home on weekends, and let’s see how it goes, and we try working on things together, huh?”

  “Have you talked to Ted or anyone since I lost the baby?” she asked. “I mean, more than just once or twice? Outside of our joint therapy sessions. Have you really worked on processing losing her?”

  Heat filled his face. “This isn’t about me.”

  “Exactly. None of this has been about you, and that’s not fair to you.” Tears limned her eyes again. “You got lost in all this.
She was ours. But you had to shove everything into a closet because of me and my health, and you’re afraid to even talk about her around me outside of this office. Again, not fair to you.”

  She wiped at her eyes. “Our little M&M. Melissa Michelle. You cry every time you walk into the nursery, and I can’t even open the damn door. I haven’t set foot in there since before we lost her. Last time I was home, for the Halloween party, you were afraid to even touch me. We won’t survive this as a couple if I can’t get a handle on my eating disorder, because you’re afraid to break me. The truth is, I’m already broken.”

  “No, sweetie, you’re not, you’re—”

  “Stop!” She blew her nose again. “Stop saying I’m not broken, when duh!” She motioned to her body. “I know you love me. I know you’d die for me, but you can’t walk this path for me. You’ve been determined to carry me, and I’ve been willing to let you, and that’s not healthy for either of us. It’s holding me back now, and it’s never going to let me figure out what I need to do to stay alive.

  “If it was just as simple as eating healthy meals three times a day, don’t you think I’d do that? Don’t you think I know I have a problem? I’m beyond the denial, Kel. I’m past that point. I accept I have a problem, and I accept I have to do something. But until I can figure out how to form healthy new habits that stick, my life is still in danger from my own disordered brain.”

  Susan tried again. “Mallory,” she gently said, “I know you’re in pain, but—”

  “We’ve tried doing this the way everyone said to do it,” Mal said. “I’m not getting better. I agree that yes, the meds are helping, and there was progress for a while, but I’ve hit another wall. Again. And this time, I know the only way over that wall is for me to climb it on my own. I want my own home, my own bed. I want to be near my baby.” She choked up. “I’m taking over my life.”

  Mal dug a piece of paper out of her purse and handed it to Susan. “That’s a signed records release form, to send my records to Niall and Doyle, and to give anyone here on my medical team permission to talk to them, or anyone from their facility, about my treatment.”