Chapter 184 187

Chapter 184 187
“I wish you’d stayed today,” she blurts. “I know it’s unfair of me to have wanted you there at all, but—”

“Why did you want me there?” I demand, cutting her off mid-sentence.

She veers back like I’ve screamed at her, though I barely raised my voice above a whisper.

Hurt flashes across her eyes.

“I… I don’t know.”

It’s a cop-out of an answer. She knows it, too.

She has an answer. A real one.

She’s just not willing to be honest with me.

“Maybe you should go and rest,” I tell her dismissively. “You’re obviously emotional.”

She clenches her teeth hard. “I’m fine,” she says defensively.

“No, you’re not.”

“Don’t tell me how I feel,” she retorts, her hackles rising instantly.

I shake my head. “Maybe we should talk tomorrow.”

But even my air of calm seems to piss her off.

“What’s wrong with right now, huh?” she demands. “The night is young. I’m not tired.”

“The word I used was ‘emotional,’” I remind her.

She snaps, “I’m not that, either.”

At last, I turn the rest of the way around to square up with her. “You’re looking for a fight tonight—is that it?”

She squints angrily. “It seems to me that you’re the one looking for a fight. How many drinks have you had?”

I laugh darkly. “I’m not drunk.”

“That half-empty bottle says otherwise,” she accuses, pointing to the bar. “But fine, let’s say you’re not drunk. I do think that you’re drinking to deal with the fact that you’re pissed at me.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask irritably. “And why would I be mad at you?”

She shrugs. “Because you can’t conceive of a world in which a girl can mourn the death of an ex-boyfriend, particularly if that ex-boyfriend was an asshole. Your big alpha male brain just simply cannot wrap itself around the concept.”

I crack my knuckles. “I don’t give two fucks about how you choose to deal with your feelings for Xander’s death.”

She takes a sharp half-step into the light. “My feelings for Xander are not romantic,” she tells me. “If I loved him at all, it was fleeting and weak. I can have feelings about his death without being in love with him.”

“That’s tidy.”

“What exactly is ‘tidy,’ Lucio?” she hisses.

“That explanation. Very neat. Very concise. Very well-thought-out.”

She stares at me and I know my jab has landed.

“I’m trying to tell you how I feel,” she rasps. “None of this is ‘well-thought-out.’ I’m figuring shit out as I go, same as you are.”

“That really doesn’t mean much when you’re lying about how you feel.”

“Jesus!” she says, whirling around and throwing her hands in the air with a groan. “What makes you think I’m lying at all?”

I take an instinctive step forward. We’re still separated by the plush leather couch, and I’d like to keep it that way.

If I get any closer, I’m going to be tempted to shake some sense into her.

Or maybe I’ll fuck some sense into her instead.

“When you were with him, he treated like you shit, didn’t he?” I demand.

“What does that have to—”

“Answer the question!” My voice cracks like a whip.

“Yes!” she cries, squeezing the couch with her dark red nails. “Yes, he treated me like shit!”

“And when it ended, did he treat you much better?”

“No.”

“He used you?”

“Yes.”

“He lied to you?”

“Yes.”

“You knew all this about him?”

“I did.”

“Then why did you answer the fucking phone?” I growl. “Why did you answer his fucking call when I told you in no uncertain terms to ignore him?”

She freezes, her expression twisting with realization as my words land.

“That’s why you’re mad?” she says softly. “Because I disobeyed you?” She sounds incredulous.

“Answer the fucking question,” I insist again.

She glares at me. A vein twitches in her forehead.

Gone is the sadness from the church.

Now, it’s replaced with anger. With fire.

“I wasn’t planning on taking the call,” she tells me. “But he sent me a message…”

“Excuses, excuses, excuses,” I cut in. “You’ve always got one, do you know that? Nothing’s ever your fault—”

“I got a message and I read it. He saw that I was online and—”

“You’ve already given me this spiel. I don’t need to hear it again.”

“He was scared for his life—”

“And that concerns you because…?”

“Because I’m not a horrible human being!” she yells at me. “Because even if I’ve been treated badly, I can’t turn my back on someone who’s scared and asking for help.”

She grabs a fistful of her hair and stifles a frustrated scream.

“Was Xander a dirty cop? Was he a coward? Was he a selfish, underhanded, scheming con artist of a man? Yes, he was all those things. But he loved his parents, too.”

She sobs slightly, but she swallows back the lump in her throat and keeps going.

“He recycled his fucking junk mail,” she continues. “He rescued stray animals. He was abused by his uncle when he was eight years old and he’d been trying to shake off that trauma for last two decades of his life.”

I stand frozen in place at the display of emotion. I’ve never seen anything like this from her before.

It’s flooring me.

“People are not black and white, Lucio,” she whispers as a tear slips down her cheek. “They’re complicated and broken and ugly. They’ve got a little darkness in them and a little light and sometimes one overwhelms the other. But that doesn’t mean they’re bad. It doesn’t mean they’re worthless. So when I saw his text, I knew he was scared. And I knew he was desperate.”

She sobs once more, gathers herself, and continues.

“So I picked up. Even though you told me not to, I had to pick up. Because I know what it feels like to be completely and utterly alone. I know what it’s like to be in trouble and not have a single person to turn to. That’s why I answered his call,” she says.

She’s still trembling over her words, but she’s determined to finish them.

“Not because I’m still in love with him. Not because I thought I could save him. But because I didn’t want him to feel alone at the end. No one deserves that. Not even him.”

Well… fuck.

I stare at her as the swirling silence between us courses with spent energy.

I don’t know what to say anymore.

She holds my gaze for a second before she finally turns away.

She doesn’t leave the room, though.

I realize after a moment that I’ve actively pushed her away today. Maybe I’ve been pushing her away from the beginning and I haven’t seen it until just now.

Because that’s what I do.

I push people away before they decide to leave.

So that when they do leave, I’m expecting it. I’m prepared for it.

It can’t hurt me—they can’t hurt me—because I never let them close enough to do it.

Charlotte looks at me with tear-stained eyes, waiting for me to give her something in return.

I want to give her that something she needs.

The power is in my hands. The ball is in my court.

But I’m not used to giving.

I clear my throat.