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“Krispy Kreme,” he said. “Only the best for my future wife.”
I swallowed and sighed, closing my eyes again. “This is wonderful. Do you know how long it’s been since I tasted one of these? It’s heaven.”
“It looks like heaven,” he said, something in his tone prompting me to open my eyes. There was such a dark, sinful expression in them that I almost choked on the donut.
“So,” I said after I swallowed. “Why are you trying to fatten me up?” He didn’t say anything, just kept looking at me. I went for another donut. “To have that heir of yours?”
“You’ll make a great mom.”
I stopped with the donut halfway to my mouth.
“Why?”
“Because you’re soft. You’ve always been soft. Stubborn, but soft and innocent. Protective even.”
“Probably courtesy of my own mom,” I said wistfully. No matter how hard the times were, my mom has always been soft and protective.
“She’s probably the kind of mother that my siblings and I’d have killed for.” His words had me pausing. It was the first time I’d heard him mention his mother. Not that we had many conversations about our families. In the beginning, I was pining and stalking. At the end, I was scheming my revenge.
Then, it all went to hell.
“She wasn’t a good mother?” I asked slowly.
He scoffed. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“I’m sorry.” I reached over and put my slightly glaze-sticky hand over his. “But your father… he was there for you. No?”
“Her cheating ways and pill-popping addiction, among other things, got him killed.” I froze, and he let out a dry chuckle at my expression. “I told you my world ruined everything and everyone, Sienna.”
“You did,” I rasped. “But why do you… want to marry me, then?”
He looked at me. “You’re not a cheater. It’s not in your DNA.”
“And yet, you’re jealous.”
He shrugged. “Maybe paranoid.”
“But what about the other thing?” I asked slowly. “Don’t I scare you with my… pill-popping?”
The truth was that I knew it was a problem. Maybe I wasn’t ready to admit it out loud, but deep down, I knew. It wasn’t normal to only find rest with pills and alcohol. My kidnapping and the things I’d witnessed during it weren’t normal either, though.
“No.”
“Maybe it should, Tyran.”
“If you’re trying to get out of my world, Sienna, it’s too late now.”
“It is,” I agreed. I lowered my eyes to my donut, my appetite gone.
“I just pray my world doesn’t finish you off. It’s ruined a lot of people.”
“It isn’t only your world that ruins people. It’s everywhere.” I didn’t point out to him that he should want to finish me off. After all, I’d cost him five years, but maybe we should be looking to the future rather than the past. “My biological father was cruel to my mom.” My eyes were still on the donut, but all I could see were images of my mom crying in the dark when she thought we were all asleep. “She hid it, but I remember. The screaming matches. Furniture crashing. My mom’s bruises. She was always so strong, but she’d break when she was alone, only to pick herself up and start again.”
I looked up at him, my hand still on his, and I squeezed it. “It’s not only your world that ruins people.”
“So young yet so wise,” he murmured, his eyes locked on my lips.
“Thorns of youth and force of experience, I guess.” He leaned forward and licked the corner of my mouth. “W-what is that for?”
