Chapter 55 #2
“No one feels something for me,” he continues, voice low and lethal. “No one ever has. And you don’t get to be the exception just because you stood close enough to mistake adrenaline for affection.”
“I know what I feel,” I say, even as doubt claws at me.
“You’re mistaking that,” he snaps.
His face lowers closer to mine, his shadow swallowing everything else.
“And I will not let you keep it.”
My breath catches painfully. “What the fuck does that mean?”
His gaze is merciless.
“It means,” he says, voice deadly calm, “that whatever you think you feel for me—I will get rid of it.”
It settles into me like something inevitable, something already in motion.
The snow keeps falling.
And it’s not fear outweighing everything else, it’s something darker, attraction.
His eyes flicker, not away from me, never away, but down, just for a fraction of a second, tracking something in my breathing, in the way my body betrays me despite my resolve. His jaw tightens. His grip shifts, not loosening, not tightening, but recalibrating.
Good.
That means I’m not the only one losing control.
He exhales through his nose, slow, deliberate, the sound almost a scoff.
“You think this is real,” he says quietly.
“You think what you’re feeling is anything more than chemistry and fear and proximity.” His thumb tugs my lower lip, nearly turning blue at the cold. “I let you get close. That’s all this is.”
I swallow, throat tight, eyes burning, not from the cold.
“You didn’t let me,” I say, the words coming out rough, defiant. “You pulled me in.”
His mouth curves again, that same sharp, humorless edge.
“I was playing with you,” he says.
The words land like a slap.
“From the beginning,” he continues, voice steady, merciless. “You were useful. Curious. Easy to guide. A shiny, intelligent little distraction who asked the right questions and believed she was choosing the answers.”
His knee presses harder into my thigh as if to punctuate the point, keeping me exactly where he wants me.
“You were a toy,” he says. “A plaything. Something to occupy my attention while I handled real threats.”
My chest tightens, anger flaring hot enough to cut through the cold.
“Bullshit,” I spit.
That gets his attention.
His eyes narrow, something dangerous flashing there.
“You think I don’t know when I’m being used?” I continue, voice shaking now—not with fear, but with fury. “You think I don’t recognize manipulation when I see it? I’ve built a career tearing men like you apart word by word.”
His thumb stills against my pulse.
“You don’t get to rewrite this,” I go on, breath coming harder. “You don’t get to pretend I was some passive thing you picked up and put down. I saw you before you ever let me close.”
“Did you?” he murmurs.
“Yes,” I snap. “I saw the tremor.”
The word hits him like a knife.
His hand jerks, just slightly, betraying him.
“There it is,” I whisper, breathless, relentless. “That thing you pretend isn’t there. The thing you think no one notices.”
“It’s insignificant,” he snaps immediately. Too fast. Too sharp. “A neurological response. It means nothing.”
“It stops when I touch you,” I say.
The truth slices clean and cruel between us.
Silence detonates.
His breathing changes. I feel it in the way his chest expands against mine, in the way the snow beneath us compresses further as his weight shifts unconsciously closer.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” he says, but now there’s something raw in his voice. Fractured. “You’re attributing meaning where there is none.”
“You’re lying,” I say softly.
Dangerous words.
His fingers tighten at my throat—choking now.
“You don’t get to tell me what I feel,” he growls.
I meet his gaze without flinching.
“Neither do you.” I whimper.
For a long moment, we are locked like this, breath mingling, snow melting beneath overheated bodies, the world reduced to the space between our faces and the violence humming beneath it.
Then he laughs.
Once.
Short. Bitter. Almost incredulous.
He leans closer, until his forehead nearly touches mine, his voice dropping to something low and dangerous and intimate in the worst possible way.
“I knew exactly what I was doing with you,” he says. “Once I had you, I knew how close to let you stand. How much to reveal. How much to withhold. I watched you rationalize every step toward me like it was your idea.”
My heart hammers painfully, but I know rationally he’s lying. He’s afraid, afraid of what I might do to him if he fully lets me in.
“I used you,” he continues, eyes burning into mine. “Your curiosity. Your empathy. Your need to understand monsters. I fed it to you slowly until you thought you were choosing me.”
My jaw clenches.
“And it worked,” he finishes. “Didn’t it?”
I don’t answer.
Because part of me knows that’s only half a lie.
“And yet,” I say finally, voice quieter now, steadier, “you didn’t have to bring me plants I like.”
Something shifts in his expression.
“You didn’t have to keep me alive,” I go on.
“Didn’t have to protect me. Didn’t have to care whether I understood you at all.
Didn’t have to find the person who’d put the hit out for me.
Didn’t have to sacrifice yourself for me.
Didn’t have to help me sleep, and eat. Didn’t have to fucking fuck me.
And you certainly didn’t have to fucking kiss me. ”
His lips part, but there’s no sound.
“I see through it,” I say. “All of it. The plaything lie. The manipulation. The way you’re trying to crush this before it has a name.”
Snow clings to his lashes now, melting slowly. His breath is uneven. The anger hasn’t gone anywhere—but beneath it, something else is breaking through, something darker than rage.
“Yes, I do fucking feel it. I do feel it all.” he says suddenly.
There it is.
“You think I don’t feel the way my hands stop shaking when you’re near?” he continues. “The way the noise in my head goes silent when you look at me like that? The way my heart pumps faster around you? The way I can only think of you?!”
My heart stutters.
“I hate it,” he says. “I hate what you do to my control. I hate that you make me hesitate. I hate that you make me want things I’ve spent my life destroying.
I hate that I’m melting into something I’m not.
I hate that it makes me realize all the things I’ve lost, all the things I’ve never had, in all those years. ”
His grip loosens—just enough for me to breathe fully again. I choke.
“That,” he says, eyes locked on mine, raw and unguarded for the first time, “is why this ends, tonight.”