Chapter Seventy-Four
Feralyn
Helios lunged.
His huge arm wrapped around my waist. Then I was thrown onto the mattress on my back, and he was looming over me.
“Seriously?” His anger huffed across my face. “You’re cut to shit, you trashed your room, your eyes are swollen from crying, and talking is the fucking problem you’re gonna run from?”
“I was running from you.”
“No fucking shit.”
“Stop swearing.” I didn’t give a damn about his swearing.
He drew in a deep breath, and his inhale pushed his chest out enough to make it feel as if he were crushing me.
Then he exhaled like he was fighting for patience.
“Woman. You’re not knocked up, carrying my kid.
Yet. Until then, I am who I fucking am. Any other comments about how the fuck I talk before we discuss you stepping away from me? ”
I turned my head. “No.”
“Good.” The mercenary of my shredded heart brought his face closer to mine like he hadn’t just said what he did about children. “You gonna look at me for this conversation?”
If I turned even an inch, our lips would touch. “No.”
“Fine. Tell me why you fucked up all your shit.” He tipped his chin toward my now-bare walls. “You spent years collecting and framing those pics of you, me, and Ares. Why’d you destroy them?”
“I didn’t destroy the photographs.” Those were fine. Mostly. The glass-fronted frames were another story.
“You know what I mean, sweetheart. Why’d you break them?”
I was back to sweetheart? “Because it fucking felt good.”
For a suspended beat, he didn’t react. Then his very rare, very brief, but very deep rumble of a chuckle kissed my neck and teased the raw edges of my ripped soul. “You’re a fucking menace, you know that?”
Maybe if I were a different person, I would’ve smiled at that. “I know.”
His tone immediately sobered. “That wasn’t an insult, Feralyn.”
Feralyn. “I didn’t take it as one.” I knew who I was. How my anxiety made me come across, how my fears colored everyday activities most people did without a second thought. But that didn’t make me weak.
“No, you took it as me stating it like a fucking fact instead of teasing you.”
“You don’t tease. You haze.”
“Christ, Haven. Is this what we’ve come down to? Broken shit and bullshit conversation?”
“Were we ever more?” I knew we were. But a horrible, awful shade of spite that wasn’t me, that’d never been me, was trying to paint this room and everything in it with a self-sabotaging shade of darkness.
“Don’t give me that fucking bullshit. You know damn well how deep we are. But if you’ve got something to say, then look at me and fucking say it.”
Fighting him, fighting myself, fighting this horrible churning ugliness, I desperately kept my head turned.
He cupped the side of my face. Then that cool gray-blue-eyed gaze of his searched mine, and his voice quieted. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“I’m fucking sorry.”
Tears welled. “I don’t want you to be sorry for kissing me or our night together.” Even if all of it was crushing me right now.
“Not the part I’m fucking sorry for. The past couple days of hell are.
” He tipped his chin toward the bedroom, then glanced pointedly at my hands and feet.
“Seeing how hard it was on you compounds my guilt. But that’s where I draw the line.
I’m not gonna take any bullshit from anyone over us.
You and me together? It’s not fucking wrong.
I’m also not gonna lie. This isn’t going to be easy on you. ”
Those roiling layers of anger churned, but I pushed back. “What about you?”
“I’m not the one who gives a fuck what other assholes think. I’d walk away from every motherfucker on this planet for you.”
“You love your brother.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t cut Ares off if he can’t get over his shit.”
“Helios—”
“This is exactly what we need to talk about, Feralyn. What this is gonna look like. How you’re gonna handle the optics.
Walking out was the wrong fucking move, but the intent behind it still stands.
You need to decide. I already told you I’m not gonna do any half-measures bullshit.
And so we’re clear, this isn’t a fucking ultimatum.
You know keeping our shit behind closed doors isn’t the answer.
Full fucking throttle is. That’s the only way this will work. All in.”
“Or?”
“All out.”
I turned my head.
He turned it back. “Stop fucking hiding, Feralyn. That doesn’t make shit go away. Half of your anxiety is from fucking hiding. I’m not letting you live in bullshit fear.”
Those layers of anger started to boil. “You don’t get to state what I fear, think, or feel.”
“You think I don’t know you? Watch you? See every fucking time you retreat from shit that triggers you?”
“I don’t have triggers.” I’d proved that three nights ago, but that wasn’t the kind of trauma reminder he was talking about, and it was a pointless argument.
“Woman. You’ve got a fuck ton of triggers, half of which I caused. The other half I fucking own myself. So don’t tell me I don’t know what the fuck I’m looking at when I see your shit destroyed all to hell.”
Jerking out of his grasp, I turned away. Then I stupidly asked, “What are you looking at?”
“A beautiful woman who’s angry as fucking hell.”