Page 75 of Slayin Villain
Like I never had.
“You’re stayin’ with me,” Rome told her when her sobs slowed.“Be mine, Ember.Stay.We’ll figure it out together.”
She nodded, tears still streaking her face.“Okay.”
He turned toward me with a look I’d seen too many times before in too many fights, possession, final and unyielding.
“Doesn’t matter anymore,” he said.“The kid’s mine now.”
I swallowed hard.
For the first time, I didn’t fight.
Because what was there to fight for?
Not Ember.
Not now.
She made her choice.I backed away and leaned against the kitchen counter, gripping the edge like it could anchor me.
“You sure this is what you want?”I asked Ember, the last sliver of hope bleeding out my voice.
She looked at me with a softness I didn’t expect.“You made me feel like I mattered… when I needed that most.But that’s all we were, Villain.Fire and sex and distraction.”
She sniffed, looking down.
“You didn’t love me,” she added.
I said nothing.
Because it was true.
I cared.
But Rachel… Rachel was the one I’d built futures for.The one I’d thought about patching.And I’d ruined that the second I crossed the line with Ember.
“I should go,” she whispered.
Rome wrapped an arm around her and nodded once at me, less smug, more like a man making peace with his enemy.
Then they were gone.
And I was left alone with nothing but the sound of my own pulse, loud and empty.
Chapter 33
Rachel
I didn’t sleep.
After the Broadway lights dimmed and the honky-tonk songs faded into memory, I laid in Eve’s guest room and watched the ceiling fan spinning slow like time dragging its feet.
Ember said she was leaving.And I believed her.
The way she looked told me everything.Maybe she never meant to love him, but she did.And maybe Villain never meant to love her, but he had.
And me?I’d meant it all.Every breathless kiss, every whispered promise, every aching minute of waiting for him to choose.
