“Peachy.”
“Okay, what is going on?” She plants her hands on her hips, that silver flash brightening the green of her pretty orbs. “Are you being a dick because you’re in pain, or just in a shitty mood?” She yanks the scotch from my palm, slamming the bottle to the table. “And for the love of God, stop self-medicating. It fucks with your healing. You had a severed artery.”
“So we’re giving commands now, viper?”
She glares. “If it keeps you alive? Yes.”
“And we share everything?”
Sighing, she looks to the ceiling exasperated. “Of course, we do. Why? Think I’ve been talking to someone else?” Those eyes fall to mine. “No one compares to you.”
There’s a part of me that wants to needle her about that. Dig for gold and hear all the ways I’m the only man for her. But that icy rage in my gut won’t relax.
Standing, I tower over her form, one hand planted on the table to keep from grabbing her. “Then tell me. Were you ever going to tell me about your lessons with your father?”
She flinches so deeply, like I laid a hand on her. My heart shatters and I step close, but she retreats.
“Who told you about that?”
We’re already in this. I’ve picked the scab, opened the old wound and forced the issue. Time to own it.
“Simon.” I jerk my chin toward the door. “He’s dead, by the way. Hope you weren’t too close with him.”
She lets go of a strangled laugh and a tear falls down her cheek. “Hardly.”
“I told you,” I begin, voice hoarse, “about my family. Where I come from.” I hold up the ring, the blue so dark it looks black in the shadows. “I gave you something no one else has touched.”
“Hayes—”
“You don’t trust me, is that it?” I release her hand.
“That’s not it at all.”
“Then explain it, Collins. I told you shit that could destroy me if anyone found out.” My family name. My abuse. The terror I grew up with. “You seemed to have trusted me when I was between your legs.”
It’s a low blow, we both know it.
But she doesn’t cry at the unfairness. She steels her spine, this tiny, vengeful woman, and pokes my chest.
“It has nothing to do with you.” She seethes, shoving at my chest. I don’t move, incensed and hurt but desperate to understand. “Do you know what it’s like to be locked in a torture room, watching someone be brought to the brink of death, and then you’re forced to bring them back?” Her eyes water and I’m stuck. “Do you know how that can change someone? The power, the control of holding a life in your hands?”
“You know I do.”
She scoffs. “You understandhowto kill. IbecameDeath.” She glares, seeing through me to a memory I’ll never know. “I was a child and I had the ability to bring a man to Death’s door, and thenbring him back. It fucks with you. It makes you hungry.”
Hungry for more. For that high. To spit in the face of Death, enjoy the pain of almost destruction, and then live. To win against the laws of nature.
“I broke down their spirits,” she says, hiccuping, but no more tears fall. “And Ilikedit. I started to cope by enjoying their pain. Pops liked it—so I did. And then, the lessons stopped.”
“He was breaking you.”
She nods. “I didn’t know it then, but I do now.”
I don’t dare tell her why. I’m cruel—but not soulless.
“So, no Hayes,” she whispers, pushing her hair over her shoulders, “it’s not because I don’t trust you. I didn’t want to relive it. I didn’t want to hear their last words. Feel their blood on my hands. It’s easier if I don’t think about it.”
The need to avenge her—dig up her father’s corpse and stab him all over—rears its head. I want to take all those horrible memories from her, wash her clean of her sins and steal them for myself, so she’d never hurt again.
