He steps forward, and the candlelight catches in his hair, turning the black strands metallic as they fall across his eyes. When he reaches the table, he braces both hands on it, shoulders drawn tight, his body angled so I’m trapped between the wood and him.
“Move,” I grind out, my jaw locked, “or you’ll never get those two kids you want.”
He doesn’t flinch.
He doesn’t blink.
“You used to let me get this close to you,” he murmurs, and my spine stiffens. “Do you remember? You used to lean into my touch.”
I remember being too young to name what burned in my chest when he looked at me. I was too naïve to understand that the way I craved his presence wasn’t innocent and that the safety I felt in his arms was laced with something far more dangerous.
“You’re so fucking beautiful.”
He’s violent.
“So beautiful, I forget how to breathe when you look at me like that.”
He’s hurt people.
“One day, I’m going to kiss you again, and when I do, you won’t even remember what hate feels like.”
He’s killed people.
“One day, you’ll change your name again. Only this time, you’ll beg me for mine.”
He did it all for you.
“You’re deluded, Phoenix.”
“Maybe,” he says softly as silver eyes sear into me. “But you built the monster. You fed him year after year when you wrote those letters, letting him taste what he couldn’t have. So tell me, pretty girl, what did you think I’d become?”
“I honestly thought you’d be married to some brainless cheerleader by now—knocked her up a few times, have a whole litter of mini assholes running around. You’d probably still have that stick wedged so far up your ass you forgot how to be a human being.Not this obsessive, unhinged dickwipe who can’t take a fucking hint.”
The insults feel like glass in my throat. But I need him to hate me as much as I’m trying to hate him.
He suddenly laughs—actually fucking laughs—which makes me dig deeper and search for the words that will finally land and hurt him the way I need him to hurt so he'll let me go.
“You think this is funny?” I lean in, making sure he hears every word despite the slight guilt pooling in my stomach. “Let me paint a picture for you, since you’re clearly delusional. One day—maybe next year, maybe in another ten—you’re going to watch me walk down the aisle in the most beautiful white dress as I smile at another man.A better man. You’ll watch him slide his ring on my finger and kiss me at the altar. And then you’ll go home alone to whatever sad, empty existence you’ve built, and you’ll finally realize you wasted years obsessing over a woman who never wanted you.”
His expression shifts, and the laughter dies on his lips, fading so fast it’s like it was never there at all.
Good.
This is the Phoenix I want.
I can fight this Phoenix.
I can’t fight the boy who used to kiss my bruises.
“Say that shit to me again.”
“I will fall in love one day, Phoenix.” My chin lifts even as my heart screams at me to stop talking and take it back. “One of these days, I’m gonna date a guy who actually treats me like a queen, and you won’t find anything on him. No record, no dirt. Nothing you can twist in that sick little head of yours.” He straightens, rising to his full height, and I have to crane my neck back to hold his eyes. “And then what? You gonna sit in your dark little room,watching me and jerking off like a fucking pervert while another man gives me everything I’ve ever wanted?”
“That depends… You still gonna be thinking about me while he’s inside you?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
