Chapter 17
The darkness nearly suffocated me. I lay restrained to the bed, overcome by claustrophobia even though I had plenty of space around me. My bottom and thighs burned, and I focused on the pain so nothing else would touch me.
He’d gone back on his promise.
That still touched me. His words and actions hurt far worse than the whip he’d just unleashed on my body. Even drunk and enraged, he’d held back.
I wished he hadn’t.
I wished he’d broken my body instead of my spirit.
Hot tears soaked the sheet under my cheek, and I didn’t recall the exact moment I dozed off, but I had to pee something fierce when I awoke.
The blackness closed in more with each passing minute, and I had no idea what time it was or how long I’d slept.
I was worried for Eve, especially since the monitor had offered nothing but silence.
He must have shut it off. I didn’t think he’d hurt her, but he wasn’t operating on all cylinders either.
The door creaked open and a sliver of light beamed down the staircase.
He switched on the overhead light, and I blinked several times until the sudden brightness no longer blinded me.
I watched him stomp down the stairs and come toward me.
His eyes were bloodshot, more so than last night, as if he hadn’t slept at all.
He held a bag and my purse in one hand, and he dropped them both before untying me.
“Don’t move yet. I need to check your backside.”
“It’s fine,” I muttered. I got to my hands and knees, turned to face him, but the room spun.
Nausea hit me from nowhere. I shoved past him, sprinting to the bathroom, and my fingers gripped cool porcelain as I retched into the toilet.
After the last dry heave, I flushed away the ugly brown and then relieved my screaming bladder before rinsing the vomit from my mouth.
He hadn’t moved at all when I returned to the room. “Get on the bed. I need to take care of you.”
“What do you mean?” I aimed my gaze at his shoes.
“Don’t ask questions or argue. Just do it.”
I stepped toward him, but apparently I wasn’t moving fast enough. He took my arm and jerked me to the bed where he bent me over the end.
“Stay still,” he snapped.
I squeezed my eyes shut and shivered as his hands slid over my sore bottom. He rubbed in some sort of cream.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice gruff. “I shouldn’t have punished you while I was drunk, but I didn’t leave any welts.”
This time.
He finished and stepped back, and a set of clothing landed by my head on the mattress. “Get dressed.”
“We need to talk,” I said, my voice cracking as I reached for the clothes. I was too close to splitting in two, and I didn’t know if I could handle talking to him right now, but I had to try. I had to do something to relieve this ache in my heart, to make him understand he was wrong.
“We have nothing to talk about. You need to get dressed and leave.”
My eyes widened as I pulled on a pair of jeans. “What?”
“You can take the car, the credit card—take what you want. I don’t care about any of it. Use it as long as you need to, but don’t come back here or call.” He moved to the other side of the bed, as if he couldn’t tolerate our proximity.
“So that’s it?” I said, my voice wavering as I slipped into a T-shirt. “You’re just going to send me away?”
“You’re carrying that bastard’s kid!” Seizing the lamp on the nightstand, he hurtled it across the room. The ceramic busted, echoing its haunting death through the basement. “I hate it, and I hate you. Now get the fuck out of my house and take Eve”—his voice cracked on her name—“with you.”
Numbness stole over me. I couldn’t process. He’d revealed so many sides of himself, so many personalities that all meshed to make up this complex, passionate, cruel, beautiful man in front of me. But this side of him…I hated this side of him as intensely as he now hated me.
“Go!” he screamed. “I can’t stand the sight of you!”
I’d never seen him so livid, so destroyed by what he thought I’d done.
I could have fallen to pieces at his feet, could have begged him to put me back together again.
To make me whole. But I wouldn’t. This was my chance to wash him from my life.
Truly start over. Eve would be fine without him.
I would be fine without him. The baby we’d created together, the one he hated, would be fine without him.
“Okay,” I whispered, forcing my shaky limbs to move.
I picked up the bag he’d tossed on the floor, pulled my purse strap high onto my shoulder, and headed toward the stairs.
I said nothing; he wouldn’t listen anyway.
The man I knew was gone. I didn’t know this stranger who had just cast me aside like I was nothing.
Gage Channing had made me feel a lot of things in the time I’d known him, but never this—like I meant nothing to him.
I clutched the bag, knuckles turning to ash as the pain threatened to choke me.
My whole body was ash. He’d incinerated me.
A month ago, I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I loved him, and his hate almost brought me to my knees.
Devastation welled in my throat, and I grabbed hold of my last thread of strength.
I would not break down in front of him. I wouldn’t.
“Wait,” he said.
My lifeless feet halted on the first step. Slowly, I turned, a pang of hope fisting my heart.
His mouth never strayed from the mean line it formed. “My mother’s ring.” He marched to where I stood and held out his hand. “I want it back.”
I blinked several times as I slid the ring down my finger, and I made the mistake of meeting his eyes as I dropped it into his waiting palm. That seething hatred wrecked what was left of me.
“You’re the last woman on Earth who deserves to wear her ring.” And with a wave of his hand, he dismissed me.
Just like that.
And I didn’t know how I kept from breaking on the spot.