I flinched.
“Don’t.” The word came out low. Controlled. Somehow worse than yelling. “Don’t you dare get in that car.”
Silas stood inches away now, his breath hot on my face. The mask didn’t just crack. It shattered. His eyes went flat. Dead. The look I used to see right before things got bad.
He looked down at the roses still clutched in his fist. Then he hurled them into the snow at the edge of the driveway.
Red petals scattered across the white. Bright as blood. Cold as his heart.
“How could you say something so fucking cruel?”
“It’s the truth. And I need to be crystal clear. I will not take you back.”
He grabbed my shoulders, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.
“Get your hands off me!”
“You’re mine. You’ve always been mine.”
I wrenched free and bolted for the front door, my keys cutting into my palm as I sprinted across the driveway. If I could just get inside, I could lock the dead bolt and call the police.
His footsteps pounded behind me.
“Don’t you walk away from me!”
I jammed my key into the lock.
The dead bolt stuck.
No. No, no, no.
I wiggled the key, my pulse spiking, his footsteps getting closer and closer.
“After everything I gave up for you.” His voice was right behind me now. “I turned down a promotion because you didn’t want to move. I gave you everything, and you just threw it away.”
Lies. All lies. Rewritten history. I was the one who’d been isolated. I was the one who’d shrunk my world down to the size of his approval.
But that was his gift. Making me the villain in my own story.
I twisted the key harder. The lock clicked.
I shoved the door open.
His hand closed around my arm and spun me.
“You’re such an overdramatic bitch—you know that?”
The blur of his hand came too fast to block.
The first thing I registered was the crack of his knuckles against my cheekbone.
The second was the ground slamming into my back. The porch boards bit into my spine.
The third was Silas standing over me, fist still clenched, glaring down at me like I was nothing. Like I had always been nothing.
My face throbbed.
Silas exhaled. Ran a hand through his hair. When he looked at me again, there was something almost sad in his expression.
