A/N: No Takebacks

APoV

"What can I do to make you know that I'm not leaving?" I asked.

"Marry me," he replied.

And then I thought of how I felt on the outside of my apartment, looking on in shock as my door closes with Christian and Leila alone inside. Taylor guides me downstairs out of my apartment, but instead of returning dutifully to Escala as directed, I rebel and decide to have a drink with Ethan across the way from our apartment.

When I gaze out of the large window of the bar, I spy Leila wrapped in a blanket being carried Christians arms. With all this desperation, I'd never once considered them sleeping together was a possibility. But as I reflect, that blanket was on my bed. It was the only real handmade gift Carla has ever given me. A rag quilt that had probably taken her a few days to make. But when you're starved for love and attention, even crumbs were enough. If I fold. If I say yes. If I cave now to his demands to make him feel safe, I'd be giving in for the rest of my life. I'd become the sub I never wanted to be.

I back away. There are million reasons why this is wrong. Billions, if you think about it. Someone like Christian, determined to have his own way. Secretive, powerful, with a team to back him up. No-one had even told me I was in danger until he wanted me to stay put; he takes away my car, then gives me another. Yet, with a splash of paint, Leila makes it hers. She only knew the car was mine because he's given us all the same one. The submissive special. Only she was his special submissive now.

Has he forgotten she held me at gunpoint in my own apartment? Did he think that a marriage proposal would make any of this okay? Will this be the pattern of our lives? He dismisses me, disrespects me, then offers me a pretty bauble to shut me up. Just like I don't want to be a sub, I definitely wouldn't want to be Carla.

He thinks every man in the world wants in my panties and goes through tremendous efforts to keep me separated from them. And my friends. He doesn't even want to take a chance that I could be tempted. And yet his best friend was his Domme of six years, and his longest contract with a sub resulted in him chasing her across the country, leaving me in Savannah instead of going to dinner with me and my mother. Leila was more important than me then and she is more important now. And now, even Flynn has chosen her over me. Wasn't that a conflict of interest? How could he possibly help us all?

Life with Christian is a crazy carnival ride. Who could blame me for wanting to get off? It doesn't help that he helped Leila to exactly what she wanted.: his attention. Whether negative or positive, he was reinvested in her life. I feel as if I'm playing tug of war, but I feel as if he cheated. Two again one is unfair. Three against one is impossible.

I wonder now if he had sex with her and this marriage proposal was just a hair trigger response to me walking out of his life. He can't have us both, but I'm not sure he knows that. Unfortunately, he has more than enough money to ensure Leila and I could have separate lives running on parallel tracks and never the twain shall meet. Only he wasn't banking on Leila's tenacity. Just like she waylaid me outside of SIP, there's nothing to stop her from approaching me again.

Because he didn't do the right thing; he didn't have her arrested. She's probably laid up right now in some cushy recreational mental palace where they talk about feelings while disregarding motives; they don't want to know why the patients do what they do, they just want them to promise they won't do it again, before giving them pats on the wrist and sending them back into the universe.

She brought a gun to my house. The adrenaline that raced through my veins in my apartment begins to leech away, and I'm left shuddering and shaky. Christian approaches me warily, asking, "Ana aren't you going to answer me. I'm dying over here."

He's dying? I could have died. I could have died. I saw it in Leila's eyes. Before he entered the apartment, anything could have happened. I wonder if she had killed me, would he have covered it up? After all, revealing the real motive for her presence in my apartment would tear asunder his veil of secrecy. People would have a view into his private life heretofore never realized.

I'm twenty-one. Never had a boyfriend before, and now he wants to get married? I haven't even lived life; he barely wants me to have friends while he's supporting Leila and still friends with the bitch troll. Things don't look good.

"No," I whisper. I feel an overwhelming wave of sadness, my heart, cramping in my chest, but I can't say yes. He pulls me toward him. As I take in his musky, masculine scent, I derive no comfort from it. Christian uses sex as a weapon.

"No, as in not now, or you don't want me?" He inquires.

Way to put it out there, Grey, I think scathingly. "No, as in I don't want to get married."

He's already keeping so many secrets; Leila and Elena are probably only the tip of the iceberg. Would I have to worry about him bathing and dressing other women in my clothes and giving away things my parents gave me? Unfortunately, I'm all out of gifts from Carla unless he decides to give her my new work clothes, too.

It boils down to disrespect. If I say yes, I'm saying yes to everything. I'm telling him that I love him and accept him as he is, but though I do love him, I can't accept this. With Christian, it's all or nothing. I'd have to take the good with the bad and, unfortunately, I can't begin to fathom exactly how dark and dirty the bad really is.

"I love you. I don't want you to slip through my fingers," he growls against my skin. He begins to pull off my clothes and I feel numb. My heart thuds, galloping hard. I'm excited, yet hesitant. I understand this is his final gambit and after this it would be time to shit or get off the pot. if I say "no" again, he'll probably wave his magic wand and I'll be out of his life. But I'll be damned if I wake up a year from now desperate for his attention, trying to get him back like Leila. I don't want him to take away my free will and turn me into a ghost. He may think he was supporting her as an fellow human being, but he forgets I've seen him at work, and I know exactly how he treats everyone else.

With very little preparation, he presses deeply inside me. I feel uncomfortably stretched as he attempts to fuck our demons away. But they're only his demons, because he's refused to share them. I'm always playing a game of catch-up. His answer to my "no" is to use my hormones against me to change my mind. I never want to grow to hate him and resolved to accept this last desperate gasp of connection. I cannot remain. He would continually attempt to weaken my resolve and, if for some reason one day I relented, we would grow to hate one another. After all, how far apart are hate and indifference?

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