The Substitute Wife He Destroyed

Maeve pov

The first night after I walked out of the psychiatric facility, my fiancé hooked his fingers into my lace underwear.

"Spread your legs. Good girl."

"Do you know," he said, his voice gone rough, "from the moment you walked into that bar, there's been exactly one thing on my mind?" His fingertips grazed between my legs, and my knees nearly gave out beneath me.

In the room's dim light, his eyes were dark as deep water, saturated with want. One glance was all it took — my heart slammed against my ribs.

"What?" I asked.

"Your lipstick. What it tastes like."

His lips brushed the corner of my mouth. "Citrus. Sweet and tart."

I could feel him — hard, burning hot — pressing against my lower abdomen through the fabric of his trousers.

"What's your name?"

The question sent a thin thread of bitterness through me. He hadn't recognized me. Of course he hadn't.

This man had grown up alongside me since childhood. Three years ago, he had become my fiancé. Theodore Thorne was now treating me like a stranger he'd picked up at a bar.

When I was in the restraint room, the electroshock treatments had left me incontinent, the pain so severe I'd bitten through my own tongue. I'd lain there staring at the cracks in the ceiling and silently recited Theodore's phone number. Once. Twice. Three times.

By the tenth time, I had started to hate him.

By the twentieth, I had started to miss him again.

By the end, I could no longer tell the difference.

I said nothing. Instead, I reached around and pulled Theodore down against me by the waist, his muscles hard and burning beneath my hands. He let out a low grunt at being yanked forward and kissed me harder.

Three years. The reality of it felt like something I couldn't quite hold.

Had I really left that place?

He didn't give me time to think. One hand hooked into my underwear and dragged it down to my knees. Then his fingers pushed inside.

"You smell like disinfectant," he said, fingers moving slowly deeper, deliberate, heavy.

"It's an interesting smell."

He was watching me, his gaze patient and amused, waiting to see how long I could hold out.

I didn't hold out. A moan escaped my throat before I could stop it.

He seemed to have been waiting for exactly that. He flipped me over to face the wall. I heard the sound of his belt buckle — metal striking metal, sharp and cold.

Then he was inside me. Every thrust was deep and heavy. His sweat slicked from his chest onto my back, hot and sticky.

My body was too dry, like a piece of dead wood being split open by force. It hurt — not the tearing kind of pain, but something deeper, a grotesque sensation that seemed to crawl out from between my bones.

I closed my eyes.

The smell of disinfectant. A room with no windows. The burning lash of the strap across my skin, again and again across wounds that had never healed. I had heard my own flesh split open, a sound like tearing raw meat, warm liquid running down along my spine.

Over and over. Blood drying on my back until it became a second skin.

The restraints on my wrists were iron. The slightest movement drove the metal into my flesh. The rust made my wrists fester and swell, giving off a smell I couldn't escape.

Every afternoon, the doctor came at the same hour to treat my wounds — ripping my clothing away from where it had adhered to the sores, tearing off my second skin.

The "doctors" there called this treatment. They said I would get better soon.

By the time I could no longer speak at all, I still hadn't gotten better. But Bronwyn had come to collect me.

"You're crying," Theodore said. He didn't ask why. He simply lowered his head and brushed the tear from my cheek with his lips.

Then he shifted, drew me against his chest, his heartbeat against my back — heavy, steady.

It had been a very long time since anyone had held me.

But in that moment, this man's warmth, his breath — they kept telling me the same thing.

I had left that place. I was still alive.

When I woke the next morning, sunlight fell at a slant across my shoulder blades. Theodore's hand rested at my waist — loose, the way a hand rests on something its owner doesn't intend to touch again.

I sat up carefully without disturbing him and looked down at my own body. My abdomen was hollow. I measured my waist with both hands — they nearly met. Three years ago, there had been soft flesh there that Theodore used to rest his palm against. The medications had made it impossible to eat. Now there was nothing left but bones holding up skin. No wonder he hadn't recognized me.

I went to the bathroom, washed up, and put yesterday's clothes back on. It was the only outfit I had — the same one I'd been wearing when I was admitted three years ago. My brother Bronwyn had delivered me himself and brought no luggage. As though he hadn't planned on ever bringing me back out.

When I came out of the bathroom, Theodore was awake, sitting up against the headboard, watching me directly.

"You look like someone I know," he said.

"What's her name?" I asked.

He didn't answer immediately. A long silence passed before he spoke. "Maeve."

My own name in his mouth. Light as a feather. And yet it landed on me with the weight of something suffocating.

"She—" My voice came out before I could stop it, and I heard the trembling in it. "Who is she to you?"

Theodore rubbed a hand over his face, as if trying to scrub something away. "My ex-girlfriend." He paused for a long moment. "She got sick. She was sent to a treatment facility."

A treatment facility.

He was calling that hell a treatment facility.

"You seem sad," I said, not understanding where the emotion came from. I had to ask: "Why?"

And then, before I could stop myself: "Did you ever go to see her?"

"I couldn't go." He looked up at me, his eyes rimmed red. "She had a mental breakdown. If I visited, it would only have made things worse for her."

Every word landed like a needle being pushed back into a wound I had only just managed to close.

I thought of three years ago. I had knelt before my brother, before my parents, telling them I was not ill, that I had been falsely accused. My brother had grabbed me off the floor and dragged me from the house to the courtyard. My trousers had shredded against the ground; my knees were bleeding. And I had still been forced into the car.

"Look at me," I said, steadying my voice. "Do I look like someone with a mental illness?"

Theodore blinked, clearly caught off guard, but answered politely: "No. Not at all. You seem perfectly well — just a little thin."

"What I think," I said, "is that three years ago, the one thing your ex-girlfriend needed most was to hear someone say exactly that."

Theodore went still. His hand slowly tightened around the bedsheet. I watched his face — the confusion, the pain, the bewilderment — and something he didn't dare name began to surface in his eyes. His lips moved. No sound came out. He seemed to be on the verge of confirming something he was afraid to confirm.

Then the doorbell rang.

This was my hotel room. He probably assumed I would answer it.

But I didn't move. I already knew who was at the door.

The bell rang again. Theodore finally stood, walked over, and opened it.

It was Bronwyn — the one who had collected me from the psychiatric facility yesterday and told me to rest here for the night before coming home with him.

Theodore's broad shoulders blocked me from view. Bronwyn hadn't seen me yet.

"What are you doing here?" I heard Bronwyn's surprised voice.