Page 239 of Face Off

“Stop.”

“No.”

“I said stop hitting me.”

“Then let go.”

“You’ll do it again.”

“Probably.”

Despite the tears, anger sharpens every line of her face. She doesn’t look at the door, lower her eyes, or wait for me to make the fight easier. She stands inside every truth she spent our relationship hiding and dares me to punish her for giving it to me.

“You were mine,” she says.

My grip tightens. “I was, in every way. And you fucking hid me.”

“I know.”

The answer breaks through the anger holding me upright. My chest tightens, and when I force the next words out, my voice cracks beneath fifteen months of trying to forget that I once believed I belonged to her.

“And now, you what? Claim me because there is nothing left to lose?”

“You were mine in every place I was too much of a coward to expose.” Her voice breaks, but her eyes remain on mine. “You were the only thing that ever felt real to my soul, Ryan, and I gave you up.”

The words enter every place I have spent fifteen months protecting.

“I betrayed you knowing exactly what it would cost me,” she continues. “I watched you walk out of that study, followed you to your apartment, begged you, chased every path you closed, and still couldn’t undo that moment.”

Her fingers curl against my shirt. “I did nothing.”

She says it with enough seething hatred to make the word sound violent.

“I did nothing when everything depended on me doing one brave thing. I gave you up, and there is no apology, treatment program, recovered body, or version of myself I can become that will erase it.”

“Then stop asking me to.”

“I am not asking you to erase it!” Her hands twist in my shirt. “I’m asking you to look at me now and understand that I know what I did. Be angry. Hate me. Refuse to forgive me. I will take every consequence that belongs to me.”

Her breath strikes my face as she pulls herself closer.

“But separate my panic and self-hatred from the one thing that was real. I loved you. I loved you when I was too sick to understand how to love anyone without hurting them. I loved you when I hid you, when I betrayed you, and every day after you made sure I couldn’t reach you.”

“Love didn’t save us.”

“No.” Her tear-filled eyes burn into mine. “Trust might have.”

The word strikes the center of everything.

Her hands remain twisted in my shirt while mine circle her wrists. Neither of us apologizes, retreats, or pretends the truth repaired what stands between us. She is still crying, and I am still fucking furious, my blood drying at the corner of my mouth while every wound I asked her to leave closed tonight throbs beneath my skin.

Charm’s gaze slips past my shoulder and catches on our reflection in the mirror.

I feel the change move through her before I understand what pulled her away. The fury drains from her face as her attention drops to the softness beneath the fitted yellow tank and follows the shape of her hips inside the high-waisted slacks. Her fingers loosen against my shirt. Her shoulders draw inward, and the woman who stood here daring me to punish her disappears behind the shame entering her eyes.

My anger doesn’t leave with hers. It splits beneath my ribs, trapping me between the woman who forced open every wound I told her I couldn’t carry tonight and the woman vanishing into a reflection cruel enough to make her forget she survived it. I came to her bleeding because I needed something soft from the only person I have ever trusted enough to ask, and she gave me another reason to hold her instead.

The knowledge should keep my hands where they are. Instead, one releases her wrist and closes around the back of her neck before I can decide whose wound gets to matter first.