He’s technically a murderer. Definitely has aggravated assault charges stacked up if anyone bothered to look. There’s blood on his hands, real blood, not metaphorical. And yet here I am, pissed off because he’s seen parts of me I never gave him.
Fuck, I’m a mess. Screwed up in the head. But in the darkest corner of my heart, there’s this sick part of me that doesn’t want him to stop.
I almost stayed at Lianna’s tonight. It would’ve been the sensible thing to do, the safe thing. But I’m not hiding. That’s a slippery slope I refuse to entertain because once you start running, you don’t stop, and I won’t run from Phoenix. Not again.
I’ll take Lianna’s advice. Not because I think it’ll fix anything,but because I won’t keep handing him pieces of myself like he’s entitled to them.
I won’t engage.
I won’t react.
I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he still gets under my skin.
No more playing into the push and pull we both obviously know how to weaponize.
I’m done feeding this thing between us.
You know what they say about a ghost in your house? Don’t acknowledge it. Don’t speak to it or let it know you can feel it because it feeds off your energy.
Yeah, this is like that.
Except Phoenix isn’t a ghost.
He’s real.
Beautiful.
Distracting as hell in the flesh.
And impossible to fucking ignore.
I make my way up to the penthouse, and I’m so close to stopping on Phoenix’s floor, just to see for myself what I was too blind to notice all these years, but I don’t. I go straight up, wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep this day away.
Peace. That’s all I want—just a few hours of it.
But peace doesn’t come easy when he lives rent-free in my head. Even my dreams betray me—his hands around my throat, his mouth at my ear, his voice whispering the filthiest things that leave me throbbing when I wake. My subconscious is a whore for him, and I hate it.
I know he’s here the second I walk through my front door, before I even see him, because I’m hit with the scent that’s been haunting me since I walked out of that hotel room.
I throw my keys on the entry table, slip off my shoes, and slowly make my way toward the dining room. It’s the only light on in the entire apartment, a warm glow spilling into the hallway. As I get closer, I realize it’s not the overhead light at all. It’s candles. Dozens of them are scattered across every surface—the table, the sideboard, the windowsill—their flames dancing and casting shadows that make the whole room feel intimate.
One place setting sits directly across from where Phoenix is waiting at the dining table. He’s lounging in a chair, like this is completely normal, and he didn’t just break into my apartment to orchestrate this entire scene.
There’s one white plate with a neatly folded cloth napkin pulled from the set I’ve never even unwrapped. It still had the packaging on it last I checked. The silverware is laid out beside it, catching and reflecting the candlelight that dances across the room.
It’s beautiful and terrifying all at once, romantic even if you ignore the minor detail that he broke in to create it.
It’s exactly the kind of thing that should have me reaching for my phone to call the police. Instead, I’m just standing here, staring, trying to remember how to breathe, and all of Lianna’s advice has immediately flown out the fucking window.
Don’t engage.
Don’t feed the fire.
Too late.
Because the second his silver gaze finds mine, I’m already burning.
His tattooed hands rest against his mouth, elbows propped on the table like he’s been waiting for me all night.
