“You want me?” My voice sounds distant, like it’s coming from underwater.
She lifts her shirt sleeve, showing me her wound, and starts to cry. “In case you’ve forgotten, Jax, my dad almost killed me. And when life flashes before your fucking eyes, something inside of you snaps. It changes. Callum and Zephyr are totally okay with this arrangement, but you…”
My jaw clenches as I stare at her, rage simmering in my chest. “I know you almost died, and I would’ve taken that bullet for you in a fucking heartbeat, Tigerlily. I did everything I could to fucking protect you.Everything!I went to your house every single fucking night since the––”
She presses her palms into her eyes and squats down to the ground. Her chest starts shaking, so I fall to my knees beside her.
“Tiger?” I say, placing my palm on her back.
She pushes my hand away. Then she stands quickly and hits the top of her head on my chin. Her wet eyes meet mine as she rubs the top of her head, and then she runs out of the bathroom.
I find her on the couch at sunset a few days later, knees pulled to her chest, watching the sky bleed orange and pink through the window.
She doesn’t acknowledge me when I sit down, maintaining a careful distance between us.
“Callum made your favorite for dinner,” she says after a while.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re never hungry.” She turns to look at me then and her eyes are rimmed red. “This is killing me, Jax.”
Good, I think. Then immediately hate myself for thinking it.
“Then fix it,” I say instead.
“How?” Her voice cracks. “Tell me how to fix this, and I will.”
“You know how.”
She shakes her head, sharp and immediate. “If you’re asking me to choose between you—”
“I’m not asking you to choose between us.” The words feel like they’re being dragged out of me with hooks. “I’m asking you to pick me completely.”
“I did pick you completely.” She’s crying now, tears tracking down her cheeks in the dying light.
“But not all of you.”
“No.” The word is barely a whisper. “Not all of me. Because all of me includes wanting them too.”
My gut sinks at those words.
We sit in silence as the sun disappears. The sky goes purple, then indigo, then black. I can’t help the racing thoughts in my head. Is this just lust? Is it more? It’s fucking killing me.
“I can’t do this,” I say finally.
“Can’t do what?”
“Watch you with them. Know that they’re touching you. Kissing you. Having pieces of you that should be mine.”
She’s quiet for so long I think she’s not going to respond. “So what happens now?”
I stand, look down at her small form silhouetted against the stars. “I don’t know.”
The breaking point comes the next morning at breakfast.
I walk into the kitchen to find Tigerlily sitting on the counter, Zephyr standing between her legs, feeding her pieces of fruit. Her fingers are wrapped in his shirt and she’s laughing at something he said, and the intimacy of it—the casual, comfortable intimacy—makes me see red.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
