“Because you don’t care about me or what I feel! Plain and simple!” He slammed his coiled fist into the steering wheel before his hand flew to his hair, brushing and tugging it harshly.
“Oh, shut up with your lines that nobody cares about you! It’s getting old already!” I snarled at him before I ejected my seatbelt and inched up nearer him.
My hand coiled into a tight fist as I raised it to throw a punch at his buffed arm. His muscles tightened, but he didn’t stop me from hitting him.
“You think I don’t care about you? You think I don’t feel anything for you? Look at me, Riley! Why do you think I’m still here?” My frustration and anger mixed together made me throw another punch at his arm.
“Because you have nowhere to go.” He answered in a low voice. He was looking at me with a pained expression.
And my hands tightened into fists, out of frustration, but I didn’t punch him anymore and instead dropped my hands on my thighs as I leaned my head back, closing my eyes.
I needed to control my outburst.
“Is that why you think I’m still here?”
“I don’t know. I’m a fucked-up man. How can you stay with me? I messed up all the time. But don’t take it wrong, I don’t want you to go. I don’t fucking care what your reason for staying is, just stay.”
This man is so complicated. I didn’t know what to say anymore.
He’s hot, and then he’s cold. But regardless of what state he was in, I always got burned.
“I’m jealous of Benedict. I’ve never been this jealous in all my life. I was hoping you’d choose me and stop linking with him, but you chose him.”
“Riley... It was never like that.” I sighed in frustration.
“Was he too important for you to ignore me?” His voice was too low.
I snapped my eyes open and saw him resting his forehead on the steering wheel.
I grabbed his shoulder, pushing his body back to lean on his seat before I mustered up the courage to crawl to his lap and straddle him.
“Look at me, Riley.” I cupped his face, urging him to look into my eyes. “I will tell you everything that I told Benedict, but look at me first. I want you to listen to this. Because this is important.”
I swallowed hard as my eyes met his piercing blue eyes. The pain was flitting into them, and my heart ached for my mate, for us. When will we ever get over this?
“Riley, I love you. I’m here because I love you. A sane person should have run away and left because there’s a part of you that still scares me. I’m scared that I will just wake up one day and you will tell me I can’t leave the house anymore or that I’m not allowed to talk with anyone. But I’m not sane. I’m crazy. Totally crazy for you. I want you, Riley. All of you. The good and the bad. I will take them both if it means I can have you. And that’s the biggest reason I’m still here because I love you.”
“Do you still love me after you found out what I did to Andrea?”
“You’re not easy to un-love if there is such a word like that.”
His hand flew to my cheeks, caressing them before he pulled my head and rested our foreheads together.
“I’m sorry about everything. I’ve done too many things wrong, and I keep doing them. I don’t even know now what I was saying sorry for.”
“But at least you’re getting good at saying sorry now.” I chuckled, enjoying the sparks dancing between us.
“Nadia... Please don’t make me jealous. I don’t like that feeling. It makes me want to do bad things.”
“I’m sorry. But it was something I had to handle on my own.” I pulled my face away from him as my hands rose to his collar, fidgeting around them.
“You could have asked for my help, but of course, you didn’t want my help.”
“Because it was something I was not proud of.”
“Tell me.”
“Promise me you won’t judge me.”
