Chapter 16 #2
I raise the knife higher. “If you think I’m afraid to use this, then you’re out of your damn mind. Back the fuck up.”
“Oh yeah?” He tenses, ready to make a move. “And who’s gonna make me, you?”
“No, I am.” I freeze solid at the sound of a familiar voice behind me. The air turns arctic around us, his anger a sharp blade cutting through the tension, leaving the flimsy walls I’ve been trying to build in ribbons.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Midas steps around me and gently eases me behind him.
My heart thunders in my chest at the close contact.
It’s been months since I’ve been this close to him, and it’s as painful now as it’s ever been.
Goddammit, when will it stop hurting? When will sharing the same air as this man stop feeling like I’m inhaling shards of glass?
My neighbor takes in Midas’s cut, and his eyes get huge. The color drains from his face as he stumbles back a step. “I have no beef with you, man.”
“Yeah? Wanna tell me why the fuck you’re messing with my woman then?”
His words are like a poison-tipped lance through my heart because I know there is no truth behind them. He’s saying it now to spook this guy, even if it flays me alive. I edge away from them both as Midas bears down on him.
“I didn’t know she was yours. I wouldn’t have messed with her if I did,” he whines, stumbling back again, but Midas is quicker. He grabs the guy around his throat and pins him to his door.
While he’s distracted, I open my door with a shaky hand and slip inside, quickly locking and bolting it behind me.
I slide down the door and cover my face with my hands to hide my sobs.
Why does it still hurt like this? I don’t understand.
I thought I was doing better. And then one encounter with him, and I’m back to being wrecked.
I press my hand to my chest, trying to ease the ache in my heart, but it’s useless. I lean back and tip my head up to the ceiling, wondering if there really is a god out there. If there is, I want to know why he hates me so much.
I ignore the yelling and slamming I hear from next door.
The loud music muffles most of it, but I have no doubt that Midas is teaching dickweed about respect.
I could tell him it’s a lesson he won’t learn.
He’ll learn fear. If he’s smart, it will be enough to keep him away from me, but it won’t have anything to do with respect.
The guy will be a dick to the next woman who finds herself in his orbit.
And chances are, she won’t have an MC she could call upon in a pinch.
“Maybe I should get a gun,” I whisper to myself.
As much as I hate Midas being here, things could have turned out very differently if he hadn’t been.
I’d have used my knife, and I wouldn’t have hesitated, but my focus would have been on protecting my stomach.
I have little doubt, even with the guy’s weed-like frame, that he could easily overpower me.
When the music shuts off next door, I wait and listen, but silence blankets the apartment.
I hear my phone chime from my pocket, and a kaleidoscope of butterflies take off in my belly because I know it’s Midas.
No way anyone else is texting me at this time of the morning.
I ignore it, not trusting myself with him this close.
He’s always been an expert at weaponizing my feelings for him, finding ways to make me surrender, and even beg for mercy when I was the wounded party.
I’m done being weak for a man who can’t be strong for me when I need him.
It chimes again, but I don’t pull my cell from my pocket.
I hear a thump and then a sliding noise, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s coming from the other side of the door.
The tears fall freely now, my despair choking me as I turn slightly and press my fingertips to the wood—somehow knowing he’s doing the same thing on the other side.
It’s the story of our lives. It doesn’t matter how close we get to one another.
There is always a locked door between us, one that only opens from his side.
I press my head to the wood, wondering if he can hear my thoughts.
I wish he could. Maybe he’d see the damage he’s doing to me.
We both know he’ll walk away again. It’s all he knows how to do, and he’ll leave me standing in the ruins of us to navigate the devastation alone.
“Legs.” I hear him murmur my name through the wood, and even muffled as it is, I can hear the wealth of pain in his voice.
A part of me revels in it. I want him to hurt like I do.
The other part of me, though, the crying whisper hidden beneath my screaming protests, wants to wrap my arms around him and tell him everything’s going to be okay.
That’s why I can’t open the door. Because it’s not okay, and it never will be.
I don’t speak. I can’t. My voice is buried beneath the lump in my throat.
Even so, I can’t move away from the door.
I keep my fingers pressed to the wood, like an invisible thread wrapped around my wrist holding me there.
I don’t move, not even when my eyes slip closed, and the tears dry on my face.
Though I can’t see or hear him, I know Midas stays there too, right beside me and yet a million miles away, just like always.