Page 263 of Vexatious Queen

I took a step toward her.

“Do you think I enjoy becoming the villain in your story?”

“No, I think you will choose to be, because you think you have to be.”

I blinked as I tried to wrap my head around that.

“Nash, I get why you did what you did. But…once again you didn’t tell me,” she whispered. “You let me stand there and watch as Sabastian, someone that I love like a brother, was taken into custody. A spectacle for the whole world to see.”

“I couldn’t tell you,” I said. “Because if you’d asked me not to, I would’ve been forced to lie and say we wouldn’t do it. Nothing was going to stop me from keeping you safe. I did what needed doing.”

“And consequences be damned,” she said, her voice flat.

Tears burned my eyes. I hated that she could do this to me. Stripped bare with nothing but disappointment in her gray eyes. I cupped her cheeks, silently pleading with her to understand.

“I can live with you hating me,” I said. “I can live with you being disappointed. What I can’t live with is you thinking I don’t care about consequences.”

Her voice dropped.

“Then why does it feel like you didn’t even hesitate?”

Because I didn’t. Because the moment Sabastian looked at her and Yuliana like he wanted them dead, something inside me broke clean in half.

“I couldn’t hesitate. I have said it before…I can’t and won’t lose you. I will do whatever I must to keep you safe, or I might as well lie down right now and have you shoot me. If something happens to you, and I could’ve prevented it…I think about Ella and…” I shook my head. “I can’t.”

Ren’s eyes searched my face, and she slowly licked her lips. I wanted to kiss her and hold her in my arms.

“Nash…I need you to understand something,” Ren said. “If you keep deciding things for me, you will lose me. Not today. Not tomorrow. But eventually. At some point, you’re going to cross a line that I cannot justify.”

That terrified me more than prison or death.

“I hear you,” I said. And for once, I meant it without conditions.

She nodded slowly. “Good, because I don’t know how to forgive you yet. I will. But not today.”

“I’m not asking you to,” I said. “I’m just asking you not to shut me out while you try.”

She didn’t answer.

“I’ll go sleep downstairs for the night to give you space.”

Ren backed away.

“Thank you for that,” she said, walking over to the bed.

She pulled down the blankets, then stopped and looked at me.

“Sometimes I really hate you.”

“I love you too, Princess,” I said, with a smirk, and slipped out.

It felt like a win, even though love wasn’t about winning the argument. It was about standing in the wreckage and waiting to see what had survived and what had been destroyed.

Ren telling me she hated me…that gave me hope.

MARCH 15 – SUNDAY 3:03 AM

Nash