15 #3
“You think calling me a bitch does anything?” I asked, my voice low and venomous. “I’ve been called worse by men with better aim.”
His whole face changed. The controlled anger shattered, replaced by something feral, protective, and utterly enraged. “Do not bring him into this.”
“You mean the man you beat bloody in a parking lot because he brought himself into this?”
Easton leaned closer, his eyes wild now, anger pouring through every controlled line of him and vibrating in the space between us.
“He opened his mouth about you like he had a right to anything, and I wanted his teeth on the floor. That does not make me noble, Clarke. It makes me pissed. It makes me stupid. It makes me the guy who learned too late that all those rules you threw at me were not only you being cold.”
My fingers faltered for a fraction of a second, the pressure against the wipe easing. Then I tightened my grip again because faltering was weakness, and we were both apparently allergic to showing any.
“So what? Now you understand me?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I understand that I didn’t know enough to hate you for the right reasons.”
My stomach dropped in one sick, swooping lurch, and I turned it into a harsh, brittle laugh. “That is the most fucked-up thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“You wanted honesty.”
“I wanted you to stop bleeding.”
“You wanted to come in here and prove you could still get close.”
I wrapped fresh gauze around his hand, yanking it snug enough to make him inhale sharply through his nose. “Maybe I came in here because I don’t like owing people.”
His eyes locked on mine, unblinking. “You don’t owe me shit.”
“You hit him for me.”
“I hit him because I wanted to.”
“Because of me.”
“Everything is because of you. That’s the problem.”
The words filled the tiny kitchen and burned through the cold air.
Neither of us moved. His wrist remained inside my hand, my fingers wrapped around him while the tape dangled forgotten from the other.
His chest rose and fell too close to mine, the heat of him a tangible force during one dangerous second neither of us seemed capable of breaking.
I forced myself to look down and finish the bandage, my movements quick and clinical. “Then maybe you should try harder to get over it.”
His laugh came out in a sharp, ugly bark. “Is that what you’ve been doing?”
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
I slapped the tape over the gauze, the sound too loud. “Don’t call me that.”
“You lie every time you look at me.”
I dropped his hand like it had burned me. “You don’t know anything about what it costs me to look at you.”
His expression hardened, but his eyes became hotter and darker, the gray churning like a storm. “Then tell me.”
“No.”
“Still running.”
“Still bleeding.”
“Still deflecting.”
“Still obsessed.”
His nostrils flared with one sharp, involuntary breath.
I should not have said it. The second it left my mouth, the apartment shrank around us, all that bare space and cold air collapsing into the few inches between his body and mine. The baby’s cries, the couple’s fight, and the whole ugly symphony of the building faded into a distant hum.
Easton’s voice came low and lethal, a vibration I felt inside my bones. “Say that again.”
I lifted my chin, defiance acting as a shield. “You heard me.”
“You don’t get to call me obsessed when you followed me up three flights of rusted stairs to play doctor in my kitchen.”
“You don’t get to call me obsessed when you moved out of Hockey House because a couch held a memory of me.”
His hand shot out, not to grab me, but to slam against the counter beside my hip. The sound cracked through the apartment like a gunshot, and somewhere down the hall, the fighting couple went quiet for half a beat before starting again, louder.
Easton leaned in, his body caging me against the counter. “I moved because I was tired of reminders of you.”
My pulse kicked hard, frantic against my ribs. “That sounds like your problem.”
“You were always my problem.”
“You loved it.”
“I hated loving it. That is the entire problem.”
“Bullshit.”
His eyes dropped toward my mouth again, and this time neither of us pretended he hadn’t done it.
The look felt like a physical touch, a brand.
The whole ugly building kept living around us, loud, dirty, and furious, while Easton stood close enough for his shirt to brush my coat and his newly bandaged hand flexed at his side like he was fighting the urge to use it.
I stepped back because I refused to be the first to fold.
My hip struck the opposite counter with a dull thud.
His gaze followed the movement, predatory and intent. “You done?”
“With your hand, yes.”
“With me?”
The question came out mean, a challenge thrown at my feet.
I smiled because I had nothing safer left, the expression sharp and brittle. “I was done with you months ago, remember?”
His face went cold in a way that should have warned me, a glacial mask settling over his features. “That right?”
“That’s what you keep telling yourself, isn’t it?”
He crossed the kitchen so quickly I barely had time to breathe before he stood in front of me again, one hand braced against the counter beside my body, caging me without touching.
His injured hand remained curled at his side, but his good one gripped the laminate hard enough to bleach his knuckles white.
“Don’t do that,” he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.
My breath came too quickly and too shallow. “Do what?”
“Act like you get to come into my apartment, put your hands on me, throw those eyes at me, and pretend you’re above what happens next.”
“What happens next?”
His gaze fell toward my mouth and stayed there, heavy and hungry. “Something you’ll blame me for.”
Heat ripped through me so quickly it felt like anger with a pulse, a live wire sparking inside my veins. “You think I don’t know how to take responsibility?”
“I think you know how to leave before it gets that far.”
I shoved both hands against his chest, one hard, futile push. He barely moved, a solid wall of muscle and tension. “Move.”
“No.”
“Easton.”
His eyes snapped toward mine at the sound of his name, the reaction violent enough to feel physical, a shock wave through the charged air. “Don’t.”
I smiled because I had finally found the bruise, the tender spot, and I pressed. “What, now your name is off-limits too?”
“My name was never the problem.”
“Then what was?”
“You saying it like you wanted me, then treating me like I was nothing.”
“I never said you were nothing.”
“You didn’t have to.”
I hit him then, not hard enough to hurt anything except the air between us, both palms striking his chest because I needed him back, away, closer—something.
He winced when the movement jarred his ribs, and I hated that I noticed.
Hated that my hands wanted to soften at the same time my mouth wanted to draw blood.
“You arrogant asshole.”
He caught both my wrists in his good hand and pinned them against his chest, forcing me to feel how hard his heart was pounding, a frantic, furious rhythm beneath my palms. His bandaged hand remained curled at his side.
“Say it louder,” he said. “The neighbors haven’t heard enough tonight.”
“I hate you.”
His smile was vicious, all sharp edges and no warmth. “No, you don’t.”
I pulled against his hold, a useless struggle. “Don’t tell me what I feel.”
“Then stop making it so obvious.”
The first shove came from me. The first step forward came from him.
My back struck the counter, and his body crowded mine so quickly the breath tore from me.
He still held both wrists in his good hand, his grip careful enough not to bruise and firm enough to make escape something I would have to choose.
I looked at his mouth. He looked at mine.
His bandaged hand flexed at his side, and the sight of my careful work wrapped over the damage he had done for me made something inside my stomach turn hot and reckless.
“Tell me to back off, Clarke,” he said, every word scraped raw with a restraint he clearly hated. “Say it like you mean it.”
I leaned upward until my mouth almost brushed his, close enough to feel his breath and make the vein in his neck jump. “Make me mean it.”
He stared at me for one brutal second, his eyes searching mine, and then whatever thin, furious line still existed between us burned straight through—