Page 118 of Misrule
“Wait a goddamn minute, Knox. Don’t bring Outlaw into this when he’s not here to defend himself. As for Mortician, what the fuck didyousay or do to make him even think of this stupid shit?”
Knox reddened, the flush creeping from his neck and into his face spreading like a poison ivy rash.
“Confess now, motherfucker, or forever hold your peace,” she demanded.
He huffed out a breath. “Fine. I didn’t want to propose to you! They forced me to do it. Why pay for something that I was getting for free? I regret asking for your hand, given your allegiance to them and not to me.”
Roxanne listened to Knox’s bitter words and let them sink in. He must’ve been some kind of a motherfucker in his refusal to marry her if Mortician had gone through the trouble of making sure they lived apart until after the wedding. “What kind of a motherfucker let another motherfucker force them to do shit they don’t want to do?” she snarled. “Cuz, motherfucker, if your fucking ass didn’t want to marry me, all you had to do was say so. Instead, you propose to me out of what? Fear? Pity? Just why the fuck did your ass propose, Knox?”
“Oh, so I’m Knox again and not motherfucker, huh?”
“Answer the goddamn question!” she ordered. “As far as I’m fucking concerned you can be Santa Claus.”
“Yeah, exactly,” Knox shot back. “That’s what I am to you. Santa Claus. You saw me and you saw money. You saw a younger man you wanted to lead around by his dick and force your degenerate friends on, thinking I’d just jump to your wishes. I’m sure it comes as a surprise to you, Cougar, that this cub has a brain of his own. I fucking resent having to follow another man’s wishes and that’s all I’ve been doing for weeks where you’re concerned. Well, it stops now. Either you’re doing this my way or I’m out. You can live the rest of your life in wretched loneliness, without me or my money.”
As Knox’s tirade ended, Roxy saw light beginning to filter through the trees. That meant, if she saw him, he saw her. Her devastation. Her humiliation.
Her tears.
Try as she might, she couldn’t withstand the onslaught of Knox’s venom. What little self-worth she had after Duke had finished with her, the man in front of her, the man she loved so completely, destroyed what was left.
He narrowed his eyes. “My way,” he started, “includes you signing a prenup. Another issue Mortician had, as if it is any of his business. He wouldn’t know what to do with wealth. He’d squander it on you and Bailey.”
Roxy blinked and swiped at the tears sliding down her face. She’d lick her wounds later. At the moment, she had to put a motherfucker in his place.
“First of fucking all, fuck you. I wouldn’t fucking marry you if my goddamn life depended on it. Second, it’s nobody’s fault but your dumb ass that you didn’t have the fucking nuts to tell Mortician you wouldn’t marry me.”
“How could I when that psychopath was there, threatening my life in tandem with the rest of those criminals?” He stepped closer to her. “It was a fucking conspiracy. You knew I’d never marry you as long as you stooped low enough to drive the car Outlaw gifted to you, so you got to them and had them threaten me,bullyme, into marrying you.”
“Back the fuck off me, Knox,” she told him, refusing to budge. He’d invadedherspace.
He stood taller. “And what’s going to happen if I don’t?” he sneered. “You’re going to call one of your guard dogs? Hmmm? Or what? Cry louder since your silent tears aren’t working? Get down on your knees and beg me to move?”
“The day I beg you, motherfucker, is the day Satan rises from hell and shoves his pitchfork up your fucking dick. I don’t have to call one motherfucker to protect me because I’m perfectly capable of protecting myself.” She threw him a look, then yanked the engagement ring he’d given to her off her finger. “As to all that other shit youthinkyou know, I’m not bothering to educate you. I have a good fifty years of living left and I don’t intend to spend it schooling you on shit you know nothing of. Besides, it would be a waste of my breath like your goddamn brain is a waste of your head space.” She held the ring out to him. It took everything in her not to release a heartbroken sob. “Take it, Knox.” Her voice wobbled, so she paused and cleared her throat. “I don’t want to marry you. As a matter of fact, I never want to lay eyes on your uppity ass again.”
He stared at her as if he’d never seen her. Suddenly, his beautiful amber eyes widened and the color dropped from his face.
“Roxanne,” he started, holding his hands up. “I didn’t mean—”
“Stop, Knox. Just stop. You meant every fucking word you said, otherwise you wouldn’t have said it.”
“No,” he protested, shaking his head. “No. I’m just…I’m just…I love you. I miss you.”
“Either you’re a fucking fool or you think I am,” Roxy spat, dropping her hand since Knox refused to take the ring. “I get enough of that bullshit from Duke. I don’t need it from you, too.”
“I’ve never called you ignorant.”
“A fucking oversight on your part, since you implied it by talking about my ride. Youdidcall me a gold-digging, lonely, criminally-minded, old bitch.”
“Roxanne—”
“Shut the fuck up, Knox. I’m not interested in hearing anything you have to say ever again. Even if you hadn’t called me those names—”
“I didn’t call you anything of the kind.”
She glared at him and huffed out a breath. “Excuse me. Even if you hadn’timpliedthose things about me, I wouldn’t marry you because I would never sign a fucking prenup. So anyway it goes, take your fucking ring and shove it.”
Instead of holding it out to him again, she shoved it in his shirt pocket, turned on her heel, and marched away.
