Page 50 of Freed
“You make everything feel like survival.”
For a second, I can’t move. The words land too cleanly, too exactly, slicing straight through the rage I’ve been holding together by force. She sees it. Sees all of it. And because she’s angry enough not to care what it costs, she keeps going.
“You know what the worst part is?” she whispers. “A part ofme still wanted you to have a reason. A real one. Something bigger than jealousy or pride or obsession. But there isn’t one, is there? You saw me with him, and it shattered your ego, so you came for me like I was some toy another man picked up off your floor.”
I don’t remember crossing the space between us. One second she’s standing there, breathing hard, eyes full of fire. The next, I have her against the wall of the cabin, one hand braced beside her head, the other locked around her waist.
She gasps.
“Do not,” I say, my voice rough enough to barely sound like mine, “ever compare what I feel for you to wounded pride.”
Her pulse jumps wildly in her throat, but she doesn’t look away.
“Then what should I call it?” she asks, and there’s something reckless in her now, something that wants to wound me as badly as I’ve wounded her. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like a man who only wants what he can’t have.”
That does it. Whatever control I had left snaps.
I kiss her. Not softly. Not gently. I kiss her like I’ve been holding it back for months, for every second since I stepped into that church and saw her in white walking toward another man. My hand tightens at her waist, hauling her flush against me as my mouth takes hers with all the fury, hunger, and ruin I’ve been choking on since I found out where she was.
For one terrible, glorious second, she goes still in shock.
Then she kisses me back. It’s not sweet or forgiving. It’s furious. Her fingers knot in the front of my shirt as she rises onto her toes and kisses me like she hates me, like she wants to bite the breath out of my lungs and give it back bloodied. The taste of her is familiar and devastating and enough to make the whole world tilt. A broken sound leaves me as I deepen the kiss, myhand sliding up her back, her body warm and trembling against mine.
This.
This is what I crossed an ocean for.
This is why I stormed a church.
This is why nothing else mattered.
And then?—
Crack.
Her palm connects with my face so hard my head turns.
Silence slams down between us and my cheek burns.
Elizabeth is breathing like she ran a mile, her eyes wide, her mouth swollen from my kiss. There’s fury there. Hurt. Confusion. And something else she’s trying to kill before it can live. She still wants me.
“Don’t,” she whispers.
I look back at her slowly.
“Don’t do that to me.” Her voice shakes now, and she seems to hate that it does. “You do not get to kiss me like that after what you’ve done.”
I say nothing because if I open my mouth right now, I’ll either say something unforgivable or drag her back into me and make this worse.
Tears gather in her eyes, which is somehow worse than the slap.
“You don’t get to act like there’s still something between us just because you decided to show up,” she says. “You don’t get to make me feel things and then expect that to erase the rest.”
“You felt it.”
It isn’t a question.
Her laugh is small and broken. “I hate that I did.”
