Chapter Twenty-Seven The Dark Stallion #2
“You’ve got until the meeting with that oil company to decide which way you wanna go. And trust me,” I state before leaving, “if you pick wrong, I’m gonna destroy everythin’ you Turners have ever built and I’ll do it in a way that’s gonna make your pathetic father look like a saint.”
I’m going to destroy everything the Turners have ever built anyway. But he doesn’t need to know that. Not until I take everything from them and make them watch as I blow it up and set it on fire.
Literally.
We’re just out of the conference room when Rad grabs my shoulder and pins me to a wall by the elevators. Fisting my shirt, he growls, “He’s right.”
I know what he’s going to say, and I’m really not in the mood to hear it. Especially not when I’m still getting over the jitters from being in an enclosed space again.
“Get off me,” I say as calmly as I can.
“She doesn’t deserve this,” he says, ignoring me.
“Get the fuck off me,” I warn, my hands fisting by my sides.
I don’t want to punch him, but I will if I have to. He pulls me forward and slams me into the wall again. “You know which her I’m talkin’ about, don’t you?”
I try to breathe deep. Try to seal the cracks I feel opening up inside of me. “Rad, I’m not fuckin’ around right now. You need to get off me or I’m not gonna be responsible for what I do.”
“You think I’m scared of you?”
“I think you need to be.”
He scoffs and shakes his head. “You fucked her.”
I stiffen then. Or rather feel the fissures vibrating inside of me.
“Didn’t you?” he prods.
Fuck it. I jerk out of his hold and grab his collar. I spin him around, and then it’s me who’s pinning him to the wall. “What’d you just say to me?”
His nostrils flare with an angry breath. “You fucked—”
I slam his spine into the wall, cutting him off. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
“And why the fuck not?”
“Because I fuckin’ said so, that’s why.”
“Because she’s your wife.”
I slam him into the wall again. “Yeah. So you better show respect or I’ll fuckin’ kick your teeth in.”
He leans toward me and growls, “No matter how many times you say it, it ain’t gonna come true.”
“You—”
“And you better tell her that too.”
I push him into the wall once again. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think it means?” he taunts. “What do you think she’s gonna think when you walk in there with all those pretty dresses you bought for her?”
Heat creeps up the back of my neck, but I don’t let go of him. “She knows what the deal is.”
“Does she now?”
“Yeah, she does. She knows this is bullshit. She knows none of this means anything.”
And it doesn’t. I bought these dresses for her because she needs something to wear, and I’ll be damned if she’ll use clothes to hide herself.
She doesn’t need to hide. She has no fucking need to hide.
She’s too gorgeous for that. Too beautiful.
Too much like the sunrise you can’t look away from, all bright and glowing.
Promising.
Fuck, exactly. That’s exactly what she is.
She is promising, like the morning sun. That makes you think anything is possible.
That makes you look forward to the rest of the day.
That makes you excited for the future. She’s like the morning sun dressed up as a dream.
So I bought the dresses for her because she needs to shine bright like the sun you see in your dreams, not hide away in dark corners like she doesn’t belong.
Nothing more; nothing less.
And yeah, maybe it did look like she was starting to get the wrong impression this morning, but it was probably because of what happened between us.
Last night and again this morning. The mind-blowing fucking; only I get to call it that; no one else gets to use that word in regard to her.
Actually, it wasn’t just mind-blowing; it was life-changing.
It was goddamn religious in its intensity.
Her pussy could be my religion, and I could be on my knees for it, licking it, sucking it, fucking it, worshipping it till the end of time.
But that’s neither here nor there. The point is that it was her first time.
Even I didn’t know how intense it would be so I get that she was confused, which is why I set her straight.
Not to mention, I told her things.
I told her all I could, all the ugly secrets of my soul.
Or at least the ones that I could tell. But they were enough.
Enough to make her understand that there is no future here for her.
And my wife—fuck yeah, she’s my wife, and I dare anyone to contradict me—is smart; she gets it.
She might have slipped up once, but she’s not like her mother.
She won’t be stupid and read into things again.
She knows she needs to leave and build a life for herself, away from all this, away from me.
That every time I think about it, about her leaving in less than three weeks, it makes me want to break things and then tie her to myself is not something I’m focusing on. It’s not something I’m ever going to do. I’ve already ruined her life too much.
“You don’t think it means anythin’ that you spent upwards of three hours in a clothing store lookin’ for pretty dresses for a girl who isn’t your wife, not really, but you keep callin’ her that,” Rad says, interrupting my thoughts.
“When you’ve never, not once, set foot into a mall, willingly, let alone bought thousands of dollars’ worth of clothes. ”
Who the fuck cares how many clothes I bought or how much I spent? I’ve got money, don’t I? I could’ve bought her the entire store if I could carry it in my truck. Or if they had a good selection. Which is why it took so long to get everything.
Which is why I’m so fucking antsy to get out of here, out of crowded buildings and suffocating concrete because I’ve sweated and shaken too much for one day. Not that I’m going to share all this with him, because he’s pissing me the fuck off.
“You need to—”
“And what do you think it means that you’ve been askin’ about her daddy?” he keeps baiting.
“It means,” I bite out, “I’m keepin’ my promise of huntin’ down the man who abused her.”
“What?”
My jaw clenches for a second, just thinking about it. “Her daddy used to beat her. He used to beat her ma too. Not that she was a saint or anythin’. Instead of protecting her, her ma used her to protect herself. Egged on her daddy to beat on Reverie, rather than on her.”
Rad’s brow furrows. “Fuck.”
“Yeah, so my wife grew up getting abused by her monster of a father and I’m lookin’ into him because I’m gonna end his life.”
And I would have by now. But the pissant is in Texas for some ranch business. And given that I can’t leave the state, not when the Turners are keeping such a close eye on me, I’m going to have to wait until he comes back into town.
“You know,” I begin, letting go of his collar and stepping away, “ever since you got up all in your feelings for that girl, you’ve turned into a real fuckin’ pussy. And you know which girl I’m talkin’ about, don’t you.”
I’m not surprised when it comes.
His fist. That he plants on my jaw.
I was counting on that. It was either him laying it on me or me laying one on him, and I didn’t want to. Not after how I used him before. So riling him up was the only solution. Although I wasn’t prepared for what he says next:
“And for a man who’s doin’ all this for love, you’ve got no fuckin’ idea what love really is, do you?”
He’s right. I don’t. I quite possibly never did. Which is why none of this, these three weeks, these dresses, can ever mean anything.