28. Mila
MILA
I ’m pacing the living room when I hear a thud from upstairs in the lighthouse.
I pause, listening for any sounds from the lighthouse, but none come.
This is bad.
This feels really bad.
Phantom whimpers, licking my hand.
“I know, buddy.” He’s grown just as attached to our little piece of solitude as I have.
While I wait for Christian to return, I busy myself with putting my clothes away alongside his in the dresser drawers upstairs. I also try not to pay attention to how . . . domestic we’ve become over the course of the last month.
Today was the most fun I’ve had in years. From the fair to the clothes, to the mind-numbing orgasm that left me walking around on shaky legs for the next half hour, I’ve never felt so . . . normal.
No one knew who I was. No one asked about my stepfather or the rest of my family. No one knew of the things I’d seen.
Things with Christian are turning out to be comfortable—even if he is still planning on using me for revenge.
I find myself wondering if his brother has anything to do with it. Why else would Christian hold a gun to his head?
“Oh my God, what if he murdered him and tossed his body in the ocean?” I whisper to Phantom, who cocks his head to the side, staring up at me with his big brown eyes. “You’re right,” I concede, continuing my pacing. “I doubt anyone’s throwing Christian anywhere.”
What if he’s hurt? What if his brother brought more people, and we just didn’t see them? What if they’re here to kill us both, and I’m sitting down here warm in the cottage like a sitting duck while Christian’s bleeding out, in need of my help, upstairs?
“Fuck,” I curse under my breath, running my hands through my hair. “What do I do, Phantom?”
He just cocks his head, staring at me intently.
“You’re no help.”
A thud sounds from upstairs, and my heart seizes in my chest.
“Fine. I’ll go check on him. If he’s okay, I’ll come back here, and we can cuddle.”
No response.
Carefully, I slip out the door, covering my head as the rain pelts down from overhead. I rush to the lighthouse, almost slipping in my sneakers in the wet grass.
A shiver rolls through me, and I rush inside, shutting the door behind me and letting out a deep breath.
I’ve only been in the lighthouse a handful of times, and every one of those times was with Christian. It’s dark, save for the few dim lights along the staircase, and I make my way up, over the beaten cobblestone toward the second floor.
My heart pounds in my chest, echoing through my brain, until I finally reach the top, finding the door cracked.
“Christian?” I ask, tentatively knocking on the old wood, but no sound comes from inside.
Pushing the door open, I peer around. There’s a bottle of whiskey sitting on the desk, the lid off. One of Christian’s guns is sitting beside it. The one he had just pointed at his brother’s head not even an hour ago.
I step inside, the scent of leather, whiskey, and the forest washing over me, bringing about a strange sense of comfort.
Maybe they took a walk. Why they would take a walk in a storm like this is beyond me.
My next thought is maybe they went back to the mainland, though I know Christian would have said something to me before he left.
There’s a folder open on the desk, and I’m about to pass by it on my way back to the door when something catches my eye.
My heart stalls in my chest, and my stomach drops to my toes.
It’s a marriage certificate signed by Christian Alexander. Cross.
The only problem is that the other signature . . . is mine.
I drop the paper like it’s on fire, backing up rapidly. The walls are closing in on me, my throat constricting with each painful breath. My head spins when the room sways on its axis.
This isn’t real.
I suck a deep breath in through my nose, trying to force it out, but it never comes.
No . . . It’s impossible to breathe at all with the heavy presence I feel behind me.
“Mila.”
Awareness slips through my veins, a violent shiver wracking through me.
“You . . . tricked me . . .” I breathe, my voice hoarse. I can’t look at him. I can’t see his face—the same one I’ve fallen in love with all over again—and know that he’s been lying to me for months.
He tricked me.
Horror washes through me at the realization that all this time, I’ve been married to the only man I’ve ever loved, and I didn’t even know it. Horror that he hadn’t even planned on telling me.
I close my eyes, pushing out a ragged breath through my teeth, counting like I learned in the bullshit group therapy sessions my mother made me attend after the attack.
One . . . two . . . three . . .
One . . . two . . . three . . .
Finally, I force myself to turn around and face him. I find Christian standing in the doorway to the office, his expression guarded and dark, shrouded in shadows.
Like a demon watching me from the dark corner of a room.
Despite everything, my heart swells when I see him, only to burst with agony and fear at his secret.
“How long?”
Silence.
“How long, Christian?”
His jaw ticks. “Two years in November.”
“How could you hide this from me?” I breathe, a tear slipping down my cheek. I’m powerless to stop it.
He watches its descent, staring at it with a darkness in his gaze that sends a shiver down my spine.
“You lied !” I screech, the rush of emotion overpowering and painful.
How could he do this to me?
Adrenaline bursts through me and paired with the venomous rage slipping through my veins, I lash out, shoving at his chest. He lets me, but he barely moves, though I gave it everything I had.
He attempts to catch my hands, but I back out of his grasp, the anger in my blood more potent and volatile than anything I’ve ever felt before.
“You left!”
“I kept you alive,” he growls, voice rough and caustic. He reaches for me, but I rip away from his grasp, stumbling back into the desk and sending the folder flying to the ground. The evidence of our tattered and broken love story covering the floor at my feet. “Your stepfather wanted to sell you,” he sneers, his eyes glinting almost black. “Two million for your hand in marriage. I made sure that marriage was impossible.”
“You tricked me into marrying you? Are you fucking crazy?”
“I did what I had to do to keep you safe,” he argues back, his cheeks reddening and his eyes murderous. I’ve never seen him look so deadly. “Who do you think he was going to sell you to? Someone worthy? Because as far as I know, if you have to buy a wife, you probably don’t fucking need one.”
“You’re lying—”
“I did what I had to do,” he replies frostily.
And then it clicks.
“The day you took me to the lawyer’s office . . . was any of that for my inheritance?”
He doesn’t say anything, but his gaze hardens, his eyes burning with an intensity I’ve never seen before.
“Oh my god.” I collapse back into the desk, my head reeling.
Everything makes sense now.
“You saw what your mother’s life was like. Your sister. That the kind of life you want to live?” he challenges darkly, taking a single step into the room. My skin bristles, the hair rising on the back of my neck when he gets closer.
“I think you’re a lying psychopath,” I growl, scrubbing the tears off my cheeks. “I think you were scared after you tricked me into marrying you, and you ran off. Then, you came back because you felt sorry for me,” I scoff, shaking my head. “I didn’t need your pity, Christian. I needed you. ”
“And you fucking had me,” he bites back. “Even when you couldn’t see me, I was right fucking there, watching over you.”
“You’re a monster,” I breathe, shivering at the coldness in his eyes. The eyes of my husband .
He scoffs, pushing away from me. “You’ve got to become a monster to kill a monster, baby.” He paces the room in front of me, his lips curling back in a sneer when he finally meets my eyes. “You think I brought you here for fucking fun? To see how long it would take for you to crack and tell me why you shot me? I know you didn’t fucking shoot me. I’ve had concrete evidence for weeks.”
My breath catches in my throat, and the floor feels like it’s falling out from under me.
I . . . didn’t shoot him?
“So why am I here, then?” I whisper, so quiet, it’s barely audible over the rain pouring outside. “If you took care of it, then why kidnap me and force me to hide out on your little island?”
This can’t be happening. Today was such a good day, and now it’s ruined.
He takes another step towards me, and I back up, my back hitting the desk behind me. My hand bumps into something on the surface of the desk, and instinctively, my fingers wrap around it.
The pistol.
Oh, fuck . . .
“I thought this was about revenge?”
“It is. Someone hurt my wife. I intend to stalk every inch of this planet until I find him.”
I shake my head, my mind spiraling out of control. “This is insane.”
His jaw tightens, his eyes boring into mine. He doesn’t see the gun in my hand when I lower it off the desk and hold it behind my back.
Please tell me it wasn’t all a lie . . .
Imagine my surprise at the next words that leave Christian’s lips.
“The man who hurt you murdered my mother fourteen years ago. I won’t lose you, too.”
“How could you do this to me?” I whisper, and his cold, hard stare is unblinking. “Why couldn’t you just let me go.”
“Because the man who hurt you isn’t dead.”
“Who, then?”
He’s never looked deadlier than when the next sentence leaves his mouth.
“My brother. Sebastian Cross.”
I’ve got to get out of here.
“Mila, get the fuck back here!”
I can just make out the roar of Christian’s voice over the wind rushing overhead. I don’t stop, running until my legs feel like they’re going to give out in the mud that’s collected under the grass.
It was all a lie. All of it . . .
“Leave me alone!”
How do I tell him I hate him for how he looks at me? How all I can think about is that dark look in his eyes when he sees me. Darker than anything imaginable, as if he wants to cherish me and degrade me at the same time.
As if I’m something important to him.
I come to a screeching stop right at the edge of the cliff, the jagged rocks below beckoning at me. The pistol in my hand feels impossibly heavy and slippery with the water sluicing down my body.
Tears swim in my vision, hot against the cold of the rain, and I finally turn around to see him standing a few feet back, his eyes flashing with the steady pulse of the lightning in the sky behind me.
“ Mila, don’t take another fucking step ,” he growls.
I laugh bitterly, the rain soaking through my clothes and freezing against my skin. “It was all a lie, wasn’t it?”
A shot of adrenaline races through me at the look in his eyes. Unhinged, pure animal instinct.
He’s so handsome, it hurts to look at him.
That’s how the devil gets you.
“Mila, what the fuck are you doing?”
I suck in a deep breath—
God, this is going to hurt .
—Then I raise the pistol, pointing it at his chest.
His eyes darken past recognition, a demon taking over his features. Devastatingly handsome. Deathly sinister.
He chuckles wickedly, the sound dripping with malice, and for a single second, I almost back out.
I blink back the tears in my eyes, forcing myself to meet his dark gaze head-on.
“Who are you?” I whisper, voice barely audible over the racing of my own heart pounding in my ears and the thunder rumbling over the ocean.
“Mila, you know who I am.” It’s quiet. Resolute.
Why do I believe him, even when everything up to this point has been a lie between us?
“Do I?”
Christian doesn’t say anything for a moment, and my heart bottoms out, cracking open like a fissure in the earth. Broken and desolate.
“Did you help him?” A traitorous tear slips down my cheek. He watches its descent, his gaze burning before it slips back to mine.
The air between us seems to cackle with electricity as that look in his eyes morphs into something inhuman. Demonic.
“Pull the trigger, Mila.”
I let out a shaky breath, a quiet sob breaking from my throat as my body trembles. A rush of emotions swirls through me like a tornado touching down in the middle of the city, wreaking havoc in its wake.
One, though, burns brighter than all the others.
I can’t fucking do it.
“You think I could watch someone rape you?” His voice is cruel, tinged with disappointment and disgust. “Slice you open and watch you bleed? Hear your pain and not want to fucking put a bullet in my head?” His eyes flash with venom, his lips pulling back in a snarl.
I close my eyes, desperately trying to push those voices out of my head, but it’s no use. His hands are on me, grabbing me. His knife is in my skin. His smiling, plastic face burned into the backs of my eyelids, taunting me.
Born from the same blood as the man in front of me. My savior.
“Pull the fucking trigger,” Christian grits, his voice deeper and darker than anything I’ve ever heard.
“You forced me to marry you.”
“Yeah, I fucking did,” he concedes, a wicked gleam in his eyes as he stares down the barrel of his own gun. “You know why?”
I shake my head, closing my eyes against the sound of his voice. The same voice that brings safety and comfort. The one who makes me feel like a real human being and not a defective replica.
Like a man fully disturbed, he takes a step towards me. I back away from him, but he doesn’t stop. He steps into me until the barrel of the gun presses right to the center of his forehead, and my heart shatters at the sight of it glinting against the skin.
“I’m so fucking sick of pretending like you’re not mine,” he grits like it’s ripping him open just as much as it is me. “You can hate me all you want, but he’s still out there, and I promise you, he’s a whole lot more fucked up than you or I could ever imagine. I’ll be fucking damned if I let him get to you again. If that makes me the villain in your story, then put a goddamned bullet in my brain right here, little devil. Make sure I’m fucking dead this time.”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out but a quiet whimper. Tears cloud my vision, and though I hate them, I’m powerless to stop their descent.
“It’s fucked up. It’s toxic. I don’t give a fuck. If craving you so fucking violently that I can’t live in a world without you in it makes me the bad guy, shoot me.”
I hate him . I hate him for who he is. How he can be the monster in the dark that comforts me. I hate myself for still being so in love with him, it aches in my chest. I hate that I can’t outrun my past.
“I trusted you,” I breathe.
“You can’t do it, can you?” he rasps, pressing harder against the end of the barrel until I stumble backward, my sneakers slipping in the wet grass.
Christian doesn’t care. He’s too far gone.
“You can lie to everyone else, Mila. You can even lie to yourself . . . deep down, there’s a part of you that fucking knows I’d chop off my own dick before I’d ever hurt you. I can’t fucking do it.”
“That’s not true.” I shake my head, but he cuts me off with a quiet chuckle.
“You think I left you because I had a choice? Because I wanted to?”
A shiver rolls through me at the air of a threat in his tone. Or maybe it’s the way his eyes lock onto mine, and they don’t leave. He could take the gun from me, and I’d be dead in the blink of an eye. Still, he’d rather I make the choice.
“I hate you . . .” I whisper, blinking back the tears in my eyes. I shouldn’t have. It only makes it easier to see the ruin in his eyes, and my heart aches uncomfortably.
“Then pull the trigger. End it. You think I had something to do with that? I’m better off dead, anyways.”
Something in me breaks, and I screw my eyes shut at the onslaught of the voices, overpowering every one of my senses.
How’s it feel to be used like the worthless slut you are?
Smile for the camera, little whore. Show everyone how much you fucking love this.
Everything goes silent when I turn the gun on myself.
The cold steel against the side of my head should terrify me, but right now, it’s like holding a Hail Mary in the palm of my hand. A last chance to get out of this nightmare once and for all.
Christian’s eyes follow the movement of my finger.
“I don’t want to remember anymore.” The sob that rips from my throat is painful, stealing my breath and making me tremble.
“Mila . . .” Christian’s voice is tight with blackness. So cold it would freeze hell over. “Look at me.”
I keep my eyes screwed shut, clenching my teeth as the tears spill from the corners of my eyes.
“Look at me, Mila,” Christian orders, and I blink my eyes, forcing myself to meet his gaze through my tear-stricken one. His presence is overbearing, forcing me out of my own darkness to meet his . “Is he here right now? Is he in control of you?”
I shake my head, a sob breaking from my lips. “It’s not that simple.”
“It is, Mila. You’re the bravest fucking woman I know—”
“I’m not—”
“ You are ,” he grits.
I don’t want to listen to him. I don’t want to hear him tell me I’m strong. A fighter. That’s what everyone says, and it’s never been true before. It’s not now.
“You want to hate me, go ahead, but don’t be a fucking coward.”
I grit my teeth, my mind screaming at me to do it. Pull the trigger, and the voices will stop. Shut them up for good.
“Please?”
It’s silent. So silent, I barely hear it, but when my eyes open again, Christian’s mask has slipped, and it’s not just the anger I see in his gaze.
It’s desperation. Helplessness.
The gun slips from my fingers, falling to the grass with a deafening thud.
I can’t do it.
Maybe because deep down, I know what he’s saying is true.
Christian would rather die than hurt me . . . and I would rather live with the pain than let it all go.
The moment our worlds collided, there was a part of me that knew I would follow Christian Cross to hell if it meant I could spend eternity in his darkness.
Now, I’m finding his darkness is my light.
I stumble back with the weight of the gun out of my hand, slipping on the side of the bank.
In a flash, Christian grabs me, one hand on my waist to haul me back towards safety, the other around my throat, his fingers tightening over my racing pulse. A shiver of fear rolls through me, and even though I know he won’t hurt me, the look in his eyes is fucking terrifying.
Cold, dark clarity. Like a man who’s just realized his favorite toy is broken and now he has to throw it away.
“Why am I here, Christian?” My voice breaks when his fingers constrict, stealing what little air I have left.
“I let you go once, little devil,” he murmurs, his voice dripping in venom. His other hand comes up, brushing the wet curl off my forehead, covering my scar. His eyes burst with something akin to annihilation. Like I’ve awoken a sleeping demon, and now it’s come to collect my soul. “I won’t make the same mistake twice.”
His dark gaze burns into mine. My breath catches in my throat when he leans forward, pressing his forehead into mine, his breathing as ragged as my own from the adrenaline coursing through us.
“I hate you,” I whisper because even if I don’t actually hate him. I want to.
I want to hate him for making me . . . feel like this. This desperation. The desire to lose myself in a man like him. This need.
“And I’ve been fucking dreaming of you,” he grits, his fingers gripping my hip with bruising strength.
And then, the barricades holding back months of anger collapse.
Tears sting in my eyes, and I shake my head. As if fighting them will make them stop. I almost laugh bitterly. I’ve cried so much over Christian Cross that it’s a wonder I can cry at all.
I should be numb to it, but even now, hearing him say those words, my heart flutters painfully in my chest.
“You left. No word on where you’d gone. You just . . . vanished. And now you show up here expecting the same girl you knew before.”
“You’re still that girl.”
I shake my head, a bitter laugh slipping past my lips.
“I’m sorry to burst whatever perfect bubble you’re living in, but that girl is clearly gone.” Even saying it, I want to break down. Tears clog my voice, the rush of adrenaline making my head spin. “Same with any feelings I had left for you.”
“Bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
How dare he.
“Bullshit,” he repeats, eyes flashing menacingly. “You can’t fucking hide from me, Mila. I know you.” He reaches up, brushing his knuckles down the side of my face, and a quiet whimper slips from my lips. I close my eyes as a tear breaks free, slipping down my cheek.
In a surge of anger, I hit him in the chest with everything I have. I may as well be beating up a brick wall. He doesn’t even try to stop me.
Still . . . it feels so damned good, I do it again. And then, again. He takes my anger like it’s nothing more than a lover’s caress.
“I hate you!” I screech at him, and my legs wobble beneath me, threatening to give out as the sobs rip from my throat.
I hate this place. I hate him. I hate myself.
—I think I hate myself the most.
I hate my mind for what it can’t tell me. For the secrets, it’s hiding. I hate my body for reveling in his touch when I know he’s not who he says he is. I hate the scars that cover every inch of my skin, even if some of them aren’t visible to the naked eye.
I hate that even though I shouldn’t, every fiber of my being craves his.
Christian catches my wrist before I can make contact again, and he tugs me against his chest, holding my arms down.
Every ounce of moral clarity I had before shatters.
When he tries to twist my arm back behind me, my lips crash against his. His kiss is ruthless, a deep feral groan rumbling in his chest against mine when he pulls me against him. We’re teeth and nails and anger, swirling to create a vortex that I’m sure will either kill me or make me come without him even touching me.
Christian kisses me with a ferocity I’ve never felt before. With searing desire, demanding I give him every piece of me, even if those pieces are scattered and broken.
Deadly heat travels down to my core when his hand slips down my back, gripping the curve of my ass, and he lifts me. My legs lock around his hips, and neither of us breaks the kiss as he stumbles toward the cottage.
He drops me at the front door, pushing me back against the wall under the awning, and I’ve never seen him look so depraved.
“What do you want, Mila?” he grits between his teeth, and a shiver rolls through me.
“You,” I breathe. And before he can even tell me to use my words, I fill the silence for him. “Fuck me.”
“I can’t be gentle with you right now, Mila. You’ve pissed me off.” His hands vibrate against me, the vein in his forehead bulging with his heartbeat. I try to push his shirt up over his abs, but his hands catch mine.
“Right now, you need me soft. You need me to be patient. I can’t fucking go there with you, Mila. The thought of you being afraid of me fucking terrifies me.” Despite the rough growl in his voice, a tenderness blooms in my chest.
In an act of defiance, I reach between us, fisting him through the wet denim of his jeans and his jaw clenches. His hand comes up, dragging my head back at an almost uncomfortable angle to force my gaze to his.
My tongue darts out to lick the water off my lips. He watches the movement with dark clarity.
“Your darkness has never scared me, Christian,” I whisper, still stroking him despite the bloom of pain in my scalp. It only eggs me on, stoking the fire of the infernal burning need swirling in my stomach. “Only your absence.”
“Please?”
His tongue slides along his teeth, his eyes boring into mine like he can melt me where I stand.
“You remember your safe word?”
My stomach clenches, and I reach for the button on his jeans.
“Yes,” I breathe.
He catches my hand, stopping me. “If you need it, use it.” He nods towards the door. “Get inside.”