I walk up the stairs, pushing the half-destroyed door so that it creaks.
The inside has been destroyed as well. The cupboards are smashed in. The couch is torn to pieces with long strips of fabric everywhere. The TV has been completely caved in.
“Hello?” I call.
“We’re back here,” Lucian replies, laughing gruffly.
I ignore the shiver of fear threatening to paralyze me and walk through the house. I go to the very back of the house, following the sound of his laughter. He’s kicked in my bedroom door too.
I walk through the open door and turn.
Lucian leans against the wall with his arms folded, a gun casually dangling from his fingertips. He looks wild, eyes wide, a manic look in his eyes.
“Where is she?” I whisper.
Lucian’s smile is pure glee. It’s the same one he used to aim at me when he pulled some trick on me, showed up some place he shouldn’t. It was always that smile, wide and ecstatic and glowing with victory.
With the hand not holding the gun, he reaches into his pocket and takes out his phone. He presses something, then I hear Mira’s voice. “Elle… I want to say the biggest, happiest birthday in all the big, wide world.”
I close my eyes, almost laugh. The motherfucker.
“When did you download that?” I hiss. “We made all our social media public before, thendeletedit because of you.”
“Oh, I got it a long time before that,” he says, chuckling. “I downloaded it all. Every video. Every post. Every shred of you.”
I shake my head. “I was going to meet you tomorrow, Lucian. Why did you have to spoil it?”
“Can the shit, bitch,” he grunts. “I know what game you’re playing. I had someone in the restaurant today… well, yesterday. They watched you and the cop getting all cuddly, acting like lovers. Do you seriously expect me to believe or accept that you’ve forgiven me for what your parents made me do?”
“I want you, Lucian,” I say, trying with every atom to make it believable.
The smile I force onto my face doesn’t come with as much difficultly as it might. Mira is safe. Whatever else is true in this situation,Mira is safe.
“You want me,” he repeats. “I used to believe that. I used to think if I just tried hard enough to make you see sense, you’d stop playing games with me. I used to think therehadto be a way. But then I went away, and you never visited me. And you tried to hide from me. Andthenyou started playing happy families with a cop. So, what am I supposed to think?”
He’s still got the gun aimed at the floor, not at me, his tone filled with conflict.
“There’s still a chance for us,” I say quietly. “There’s still a way we can be together. But we can’t do that if you’re not going to trust me.”
“Trust you?” he growls. “Trustyou? You talked to the cops tonight.”
“I had to talk to them,” I tell him. “People saw you at my table. But I didn’t tell them anything. I’d never do that to you, Lucian… never do that tous.”
I take a small step forward.
He immediately aims the gun at me. “Don’t,” he says. “Just… don’t. Fucking hell.” He blinks, then looks at me as if seeing me for the first time. “All this time, obsessing over you. And now, standing here, I don’t even know why. What’s happened? What have youdone?”
He sounds even more unhinged than usual, which is saying a lot.
I think I know what happened, though I’m not going to tell him.
When there was a possibility he could have me, or he thought he could, of course he no longer wants me. It was never about being with me. It was about hurting me… and really, it didn’t even have to be me. He just needed an excuse to cause pain, and I happened to walk into his line of sight at the wrong time.
“I’ve done nothing but tell you the truth,” I murmur, struggling to speak as I stare down the barrel of the gun. “I want you, Lucian. I need you.”
He works his jaw. “Prove it.”
“Prove it?”
