I stare at her, wide-eyed, and she shrugs, unapologetic and unbothered as ever, while we both go quiet, listening to the stretch of silence on the other end.
“Lianna Monroe…”
He draws out her name slowly, and I’m not even surprised that Phoenix’s people know everything about everyone in my life.
“Call me back the second you know anything,” Lianna snaps and hangs up.
I run my hands through my hair, leaning forward until my elbows hit the counter. “I can’t leave him in there, Lianna. I feel useless.”
“You have to trust his friends at this point.”
“What if they can’t get him out? What if this doesn’t go away?”
“No. We’re not thinking like that. I actually like the psycho.”
“Me too,” I whisper, and a tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it.
After sending Lianna home sometime in the middle of the night to get some sleep because I sure as hell wasn’t getting any, and there was no point in both of us sitting around waiting for a phone that clearly wasn’t going to ring—I peeled off my dress, leaving it in a heap on the bathroom floor, and took a shower. I stood there trying to erase the memory of Phoenix being ripped away from me, of his eyes finding mine one last time before they dragged him out of the building, but it didn’t help.
Not the shower or the vodka I poured straight after—it’s all just fucked.
I threw on a pair of sweats and his black T-shirt, which I’ve been holding to my face like some deranged idiot, breathing him in and rocking in my chair like I’m seconds from either breaking down or burning the whole city down to find him.
I’m basically Bella Swanning it.
It’s been hours.
Fucking hours, and I’m still as in the dark as I was when they took him away in cuffs.
I can’t lose him. I won’t.
I feel like some lost girl who can’t function without a man, and that’s never been me. I’ve survived abandonment and betrayal and years of building a life on being fine on my own, but now I can’t even breathe at the thought of him being gone. And if that makesme vulnerable, if it makes me weak, if it makes me everything I swore I’d never be, then screw it.
I’ll take the weakness and the fear and the soul-crushing terror of needing him this much if it means I get to keep him this time, because a life without him isn’t a life I want to live anymore. I had ten years of that hollow, half-alive bullshit, and I’m done.
Chapter 26
Phoenix
I should’ve just snappedhis neck. It would’ve saved a lot of people from having to listen to him scream, or maybe a blow to the ribs, but hard enough that he’d never be able to stand without some kind of help again. I could’ve done that, but all I saw were his hands on her body, and they had to go first. The arm was nonnegotiable, but the jab to the leg was just me being self-indulgent. Hopefully, he’ll remember it with a little limp every time he walks, or even a twinge that’ll make him stop and think back to what happened the night he touched the wrong woman.
My only regret was the look on Shannen’s face.
She wasn’t scared of me.
She wasn’t disgusted or angry about what I’d done.
She was devastated.
Heartbroken.
I saw the exact second her body went rigid when James put his hands on her.She wasn’t okay, and that’s a line no one gets to cross.
If I really think about it, this is all his fault. I’m the victim here because what was I supposed to do? Not break him in half after the way he behaved.That’s just an unrealistic expectation of my self-control.
Being dragged away from Shannen was one of the worst moments of my life. The look on her face when the gun came out—yeah, that one’s lodged itself somewhere permanent in me. I know how fast men like that pull triggers, and I wasn’t about to let her watch my skull split open like a fucking watermelon across the floor. I couldn’t let her watch me die, and that’s the only reason I went quietly.
I've been questioned, sneered at, and told I'm fucked beyond belief by at least a dozen cops, but I trust Cain and Lucien to come through for me because I'd shut the whole fucking system down if they needed me to.
