Page 142 of Be With Me
The door slammed shut.
A second later, I heard him throwing up.
I pressed my palm over my mouth, muffling a sob.
Vita. Deserved. To. Die.
And so did Alana, but fate had already taken care of that woman.
Even after all these years, what those two had done still haunted him. Still tormented him from the inside out.
If there was some way to take that pain away, I would have done it in a second.
Swiping at my damp cheeks, I paced the room, my body thrumming with restless, helpless rage and the need to make him understand that none of this changed anything between us.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
The retching stopped.
The faucet turned on, then off.
A long moment passed before the door finally opened.
Rom stepped out, his gray eyes locking on mine.
I lifted my shoulders in a small shrug. “I’m still here.”
He frowned, like he couldn’t quite make sense of it. Like he’d expected me to be gone.
Without a word, he brushed past me and went to the window, resting his palm against the frame as he stared out.
I moved to stand beside him. “You’re not a monster, Rom. You weren’t before you told me that horrifying story, and you aren’t now.”
His teeth grazed his bottom lip, like he was thinking about it, considering my point.
I stepped closer. Wrapped my arms around his stony form. Pressed my face into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “About what happened to you. You were eighteen. Just a kid.”
“I knew what I was doing,” was his gruff response. He was stiff. Unmoving.
“You wanted your mom’s approval.” I pulled back enough to look at him. “Your mother set it all up. She didn’t give you a choice. She ordered you to do it. She was the adult in the situation, and she failed you. And let’s not even talk about how wrong Alana was...”
A shudder ran through him.
Anger coiled beneath my skin. “I hope I’m never in the same room as your mother again, because I won’t be able to hold myself back. How dare she? Howdareshe do that to you? Oh, I could kill her.”
His face twisted, a deep crease forming between his brows like once again, he couldn’t understand what I was saying.
“No.” He shrugged off my embrace and took a step back. “That’s not how it was. She’s not blameless, but I was the one who did those things. It was my choice to follow her orders.”
“It didn’t seem like much of a choice. She was your guardian. You lived in her house. You were dependent on her.”
“Even after I was no longer dependent on her, Istillfollowed her orders. For many years.” A shadow passed over his face. “I’ve hurt people. Killed people. And I did it without remorse. I don’t want you to delude yourself into thinking I’m a good person. I’m not.”
“You didn’t follow her orders when it came to me.”
That made him pause. Think.
