Page 112 of Toxic Temptation
I blink. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me. When things got real with Vesper, you took the easy way out. Pushed her away before she could get too close.” He feints left, then right. “I had a lot of opinions about you from the jump, Kovan, but I never thought you were scared of a five-foot-seven doctor.”
Something snaps. A thread of self-control, or maybe of self-delusion.
I rush him. I don’t bother with punches anymore—we’re past that. Instead, putting all my bulk to use, I knock his fists aside and go for his throat. In the heat of my rage, it’s all too easy to get an arm around his head. As I start to squeeze, I snarl, “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough.” His voice comes out strangled. “I know you’re hurting her.”
“Kovan.” Pavel cuts through the red haze. “He’s turning blue.”
“Coward,” rasps Waylen. “F-fucking c-coward…”
I should let go. I know I should let go.
But every word out of his mouth is a knife between my ribs, and I want him to shut up, to shut up, toshut the fuck up.I want him to stop saying things that are true.
Because nothing he’s said is a lie.
And for the first time in my life, I don’t have a defense.
Before I can make up my mind, strong hands yank me backward. I release Waylen, but I react instinctively to the others, headbutting Osip hard enough to break his grip, then spinning around ready to do damage to Pavel.
But I freeze when I find Pavel kneeling beside Waylen, who’s gasping and coughing in the center of the ring, hacking up more blood.
What the hell am I doing?
If I kill her brother, Vesper will never forgive me.
I force myself to step back, to walk the perimeter of the ring until my breathing evens out. By my tenth lap, the rage has simmered down to cold, dead ash. I feel fucking miserable.
Waylen looks like he needs oxygen. Pavel helps him sit up. In the other corner, Osip pinches his bleeding nose and scowls.
“Not the first time he’s broken it,” Osip mutters to himself.
“It’s an improvement, trust me,” Pavel calls over to him.
I ignore them both and approach Waylen, who’s still coughing. “You’re out of shape. You need to train harder if you’re going to protect my nephew.”
He pounds his chest, fighting for air. “Does this mean I’m not fired?” he rasps sarcastically.
“I don’t like you,” I tell him honestly. “And I don’t want you here. But… Luka does. He’s lost enough people in his life already. I won’t be responsible for him losing another.”
Waylen leans forward, elbows on his knees. Every inhale looks like it hurts him, but he has a grim tightness in his jaw that says he’ll die before he admits that out loud. “I respect that you want to protect him. That’s all I’m trying to do for my sister.”
With that, the last of the fight goes out of me. I drop to a seat across from him and shuck off my gloves. “Luka’s a child. Vesper’s a grown woman.”
“Doesn’t matter. You love who you love, no matter how old they are.” He meets my eyes. “When Luka’s thirty and six-foot-five, you’ll feel exactly the same way about him as you do now.”
He’s right, and I hate him for it.
I reach through the ropes to grab a water bottle from the bench and hand it to him. He studies it like it might be poisoned before taking it. He drains half the bottle before speaking again. “Vesper deserves better.”
“Than me?”
“Than any of this.” He gestures around us. “She might seem like she has everything together, but at the end of the day, she’s still the same girl who lost her father and never got over it.”
“So you appointed yourself her bodyguard?”
