Page 92 of Toy No More

Stopping, I stare at him, the anger threatening to completely consume me. As if to counteract that, another emotion bleeds through—betrayal. The cold, prickly sensation of betrayal spills throughout my heart, and ithurts.

“Did those moments we shared really mean nothing to you?” Suddenly, my voice is small.

Kobe twitches at those words, like he’s fighting with himself to look up.

I’m a fucking fool.Shaking my head, I let out a trembling breath and walk away from him, holding my hand over my mouth. Wasn’t it me who kept insisting our meetings had no string attached to them? Wasn’t it me who made sure to say it meant nothing from the start? So why am I here now, feeling so damn…

“I-I never said that,” he croaks, making me turn around at him. That careful softness in his expression should disarm me. I almost want it to. It’s that same softness I’ve seen somewhere deep inside him from the first moment we were close enough.

But I can’t let him get away with the pain he caused me so easily.

No.There’s still too much rage and ache and frustration in me. With a few quick steps, I get right in his face. Kobe shoots his head up with shock, eyes widening. “So did you say what you did just to get on Jasper’s good side? To get to a better position, closer to power like everyone else always wants to?” I poke him in the chest while bracing my teeth in anger.

I thought he was different. He was supposed to be different. I thought he saw me, but maybe…I was wrong. That realization burns a hole through my chest like acid.

“Or did you do it because you’re a fucking coward and you worry about your place at the bottom of the food chain? You enjoy me playing with you and like the entertainment, as long as it doesn’t threaten you in any way?” The stupid tears are coming back, so I raise my voice further, hoping to get over it if I give into the anger instead. “Huh?!” I push into his chest again, but Kobe barely moves. “Which one is it?! Which one of them are you; power hungry asshole or a coward?!”

Finally, he snaps. Something about his face changes and he grabs at my hands, already so close, pulling them together and squeezing them as he leans in.

“Have you considered that I might be doing it for everyone’s benefit and safety?” he pushes through his teeth, voice straining but low. There are emotions fighting in his eyes that I can’t quite read.

Shaking my head, I snort. “I don’t want to fucking hear it! God, I told you at the very beginning that I hate pity! I’m not this— I don’tneedyourprotection, or whatever you think you’re doing that’s supposedly helping me!”

So many times in my life, people would pretend to do things to help me. To shield me from the world or from worse possibilities. But it was always more about them than it was about me. I was never the one at the center of it. Never asked for my opinion, never consulted. Just a little helpless doll being slung around from one pair of hands to the other, perpetually getting torn and tainted in the process.

“Don’t you?” he snaps retorts with a deep frown. I pull back with an unhappy grimace of my own, but he keeps going. “Did you know he recorded everything? Did you, Apollo?!” he presses.

I blink and step away, slipping out of his grasp.

No. No, I didn’t know he recorded…everything?

My expression must be a good enough answer for Kobe. “Right! Not just in his office. I had a look around the Dollhouse. Those aren’t fire alarms in every room, Apollo. They’re cameras.Every – room.He recordseverything. Probably even recorded us when we were…” Kobe’s voice becomes uneasy before it drifts off into silence.

Our intimate moments together. Jasper…saw what we did?

A memory appears in my mind. When I found him with the broken monitor in his office. I thought it was his father, but it wasn’t that at all. Because that same night, Kobe and I were together in the Pink Room. It all clicks. That’s why he was furious.

My cheeks heat up while my veins run with ice in a dizzying contrast.

“Do you not worry about the way everything’s heading? The people he’s pulling in, the things he’s doing?” Kobe speaks with more and more urgency in his words as he reaches for my hands again. Staring ahead blankly, I let him. “You can’t be okay with it. You can’t still—” he pauses abruptly like something tug at him, some invisible leash.

I do. Of course I fucking worry about things. And I sure as hell am not happy about what is going on, but what the hell am I supposed to do about it?

“I can’twhat?”I blurt out, meeting his gaze with defiance. No matter how hard I try to keep that anger inside me alive, though, it’s fading. With his every word, it is fading, and I am being pulled back into him. Away from Jasper. Away from reason. From safety.

Into silly, foolish dreams and ideas that are dangerous as much as they are enticing.

Kobe stares at me, those gentle brown eyes swirling with thoughts.Just say it. Say whatever you’re so afraid to.

“You can’t still love him,” he says, so hesitantly and softly it’s as if a thousand fluttering butterflies come alive in my stomach. He escapes my gaze, drawing his brows together in an expression of inner turmoil. “Not when he speaks about you the way he does. When he—Fuck…”

At first, I want to throw it back in his face—tell him how he knows nothing about my relationship, about Jasper, about my life. But the hurtful words Jasper would let out when we fight start sounding around me. Like low, devilish murmurs that tingle at my spine. I don’t want to believe it, but I know deep down that he must be comfortable saying those horrible things to other people if he says them to me.

“I saw how you looked at me with that body,” Kobe whispers, and the way he does completely pulls me out of my thoughts and back into reality. He faces away from me, tightening his hands into fists so tightly I see the muscles in his arms flex and bulge, and so does the vein running down the side of his neck. “I never… I didn’t want you to…”

The images flash in front of my eyes.

Shaking my head, I suddenly can’t live with the idea that he thinks I fear or despise him. It starts eating me up inside. “I was just…in shock,” I mutter. “I know you aren’t like him.”

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