Page 33 of Velvet Thorns
No.
The answer screams inside me, but I look him dead in the eye and say, “Yes.”
He flinches, and it feeds something dark in me.
“I’d watch her crawl into your lap and kiss your throat whileyou whispered lies in her ear. I’d watch you eat her pussy with the same mouth you just told me you loved me with, and I wouldn’t say a fucking word while you gave it all up to her. I’d keep my mouth shut, and I promise you I wouldn’t feel a damn thing.” My throat aches, but I keep pushing. “Because I don’t care, Phoenix. After tonight, I’m done. I’ll never think about you again, and you’ll be nothing to me—less than nothing.”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and his hands are clenched so tightly his knuckles have gone bone white, his veins bulging across his forearms.
“Baby, don’t push me because I’ll fucking do it. Don’t think for a second I won’t. I’ll grab the first woman who looks at me twice and bring her back here. You want to test me? I’ll fuck her right in front of you. I’ll let her fucking own me while I stare straight at you the entire time.” I can’t speak. I can barely breathe. “I’d hate it. I’d fucking hate every second of it. It would gut me, pretty girl, because when I picture being touched… it’s always you. Only you. And the thought of faking it with someone else just to prove a point?” He meets my eyes, and the agony there is so raw, so devastating, that I almost feel sorry for him. “It wouldn’t hurt you half as much as it would destroy me.”
I hate him. I hate myself for what this has become and for the way my chest is caving in at just the idea of it.
I want to scream at him.
I want to kiss him.
I want to burn this whole fucking room to the ground with both of us in it.
“You want to know what I’ve done? I watched it, all of it.” His eyes are wild, burning with a darkness that he isn’t even bothering to hide. “I’ve watched your dress slide off your shoulders, your bra hit the floor, and your lips call out names that weren’tmine.”
What the fuck did he just say?
“I’ve watched you throw your head back and come for men who didn’t even know what the fuck they were holding when they had their hands on you. And I couldn’t stop, baby. I couldn’t look away.”
So he just sat there like some obsessed little coward and jacked off to it? Oh, fuck him. Fuck him.
“Do you think I didn’t want to smash through the screen and tear them apart with my fucking hands? You think I didn’t fantasize about choking the life out of every man who touched you? I wanted to kill them all, but I didn’t. I sat there and clenched my fists until my nails drew blood, and I watched because that’s what I deserved.” His voice breaks completely. “I failed you, and I loved you enough to keep torturing myself in every twisted way possible so that if this day ever came—if you ever looked at me again—I could tell you that I’ve been dying a little more every day since you walked out of my life.”
I hate him. I hate him more than I’ve ever hated anyone.
But underneath the hate and the fury, there’s this pulsing, jagged ache because I loved him once.
“You watched me intimately,” I whisper, and even as the words leave my mouth, they taste like betrayal. “How do you think that makes me feel?”
“Like I’ve crossed a line, but I’m not sorry, and I won’t apologize for it.”
“Of course you won’t, because when have you ever taken responsibility for the damage you leave behind?”
He bristles, his eyes narrowing. “What the hell do you think I’m doing now?”
“I don’t even fucking know.” I throw my hands up, rise to my feet, and start pacing. “I’ve gone from blissful ignorance with a mild craving for revenge to uncovering shit I wouldn’t havebelieved in a nightmare. I mean, how the hell have you stayed hidden?”
“Because I made it so. Now quit with the questions and let me finish. You need to hear this. I need you to know everything because I refuse to come back to you and begin this as a lie.”
He’s already decided we’re inevitable, and he’s just giving me time to realize it. Like baring every ugly truth is the only way forward, convinced that no matter how badly we break, we’ll always find our way back to each other.
He has no idea how wrong he is.
“If we’re going to do this—if there’s any chance for us—you deserve to know exactly who you’d be letting back in.”
The dread in my stomach turns molten, spreading through my veins, and when I open my mouth to argue, to push back, he shuts me down with nothing more than a look.
“I’ve watched you at home. Sometimes you were alone, sometimes you weren’t.” He pauses, eyes never leaving mine. “The ones who meant nothing to you, I let go. They didn’t even know what to do with you; they couldn’t get you off if their lives depended on it. But the ones you started to see more often and thought might become something real? I wasn’t so lenient. I did my research. I dug through everything—background checks, bank accounts, criminal records, browser histories, social media, and personal messages. If I found even one reason not to trust them, one skeleton in their closet, I made sure they disappeared.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you haven’t heard from Boring Brian because that piece of shit has been fucking his stepmother behind his father’s back for three years, got her pregnant twice, and was still coming to you with those same disgusting hands.” His voice turns lethal. “I couldn’t allow that to continue.”
