How could she do this to us?After everything we’d talked about in our sessions. She knew how I was, what I needed in a partner.
Instead of saving herself for me, she let him have her body as though he were worthy. He was not.
Which is why I had to end his claim with the blunt certainty of steel striking bone. He dropped as easily as the rest of them, though I left him breathing only because I wanted her to choose in the end.
She’d learn what I did for her. She’d see the truth, understand, and pick me.
His body was nothing but weight in my arms, as I dragged him through the snow. His blood steaming in the cold, leaving her breadcrumbs to follow and finally find me. The hut welcomed us back, the way it had welcomed me the last couple of nights. There he would wait, a lure to draw her in close.
I should have killed him. The thought circled in me as I left him on the floor, his life thin and shallow but still present. It would have been so easy, and she never would have had to seehim again. Then I could have made my move, swooping in to save the day.
Yet something in me wanted her hand to finish what mine had started. Let her learn what it costs to survive. Let her discover how strong she could be on her own.
I returned to the trees, halting just above the ridge to take up my post once again. Her cries reached me yards away, penetrating the thin plank walls of the hut. They shook me more than the storm had as I stood out in its cold at night. They broke what little restraint I still clung to. She wept, screaming his name, desperate for him to wake. Her voice was a thread tied straight to me, but dipped in poison that spread across my heart.
My addiction expanded, kicking the patience I once held for her to the curb. I couldn’t pretend watching was enough anymore. I wanted her from the deepest depths of my being. Like the night demanded every last ember of fire die to give in to the darkness.
The pull she has on me twisted into something unbearable. I was no longer satiated by her presence alone. She was a hunger gnawing through my stomach lining, a claim I couldn’t release.
I watched through the smudged window as she fought to wake him, as she begged and cursed and broke against the weight of his stillness. I imagined stepping inside and showing her what it meant to be chosen, to be kept, to be mine. But I held back. Not yet. Not until she felt the truth of her own isolation.
He was only the bait. She was my prize.
When I moved again, my boots crunched against the snow, my steps deliberate and slow. I wanted her to hear me coming.I wanted her to know I had returned. The steps bowed beneath my weight, groaning as I entered.
Her scent now engulfed the space I’d been lying my head at night since we arrived. Her sweetness, tangled with the vile rot I’d grown used to. It coated my senses, making the air heavy. Scott was worthless, a heap on the floor, stealing her attention. She was the only thing that mattered now.
“Come out, little thorn,” I coaxed into the darkness, my voice bouncing off the walls in the small space. “I know you’re in here. I can smell your sweetness.”
The thin mattress gives beneath my grip as if it weighs nothing at all. The rough fabric against my skin and the rusted springs don’t matter when the one thing in my way flies across the room. It scrapes against the wooden wall, crashing to the floor in a ploom of dust. It tickles my nose and stings my eyes, but I ignore the sensations because my focus snags on the form beneath the ancient frame.
Her body’s pressed tight to the wall, eyes squeezed shut as though what she can’t see can’t hurt her. She doesn’t know I never would. But she’ll figure it out soon enough.
Her shallow breaths push wispy pieces of light locks from her pinched brows. The essence of sweat wafts through her layers of winter clothes. An icy breeze from the open door presses in around us, chilling the room to an uncomfortable degree, but my body’s on fire.
I smile at my girl. Everything the years have taken from me washes away in this moment, solely from being in her orbit. It’s finally time she knows it.
But then he groans. The sound cleaves through my elation like an axe. Splitting the silence with that pitiful noise that steals my thunder.
She gasps, frantic eyes flying open, bouncing between myboots and the man I shouldn’t have left breathing. She won’t meet my eyes, won’t give me an ounce of the attention I deserve from her.
Rage flickers white-hot. I drive my boot into his side, the impact rolling his body half over. She screams his name. It screeches from her lips like a prayer that has nothing to do with me. Every syllable she gives is a theft.
She wriggles out from beneath the bed frame, her knees scraping wood, her hands clawing at the floor. She doesn’t shield herself from me, doesn’t try for the door. All of her concern funnels straight to him, the man who should be dead.
I fucked up.
Her trembling hands hover over his body, nervous, as though her touch might cause him more harm. She looks at him the way I’ve dreamed she might look at me, and it fills me with something unbearable.
I’m here, standing over them, the night itself at my back. And still she chooses him.
I should have cracked his skull until his breath rattled out for the last time. I should have left her no other choice but me. The thought sinks deep, clawing its way through my psyche.
Maybe I will.
Maybe the only way to make her see me is to extinguish him from her world entirely.
SEVENTEEN
