16
Aura
His good hand released my wrists and braced against the counter beside my hip, while the other, wrapped in fresh gauze, hung at his side.
His body stayed locked around mine without touching enough to count as mercy.
Easton looked at me like he wanted to tear the truth out of my mouth with his teeth and punish me for making him want anything at all.
“Make you mean it?” he repeated, the words flat and sharp as shattered glass. “That’s your move?”
“My move was cleaning your hand, but you had to make that unbearable too.”
“You came into my apartment.”
“You let me.”
“You shoved your way in.”
“You stood in the doorway like a tragic blond bouncer and dared me to move you.”
His eyes narrowed, and that pale gray stare went hot enough to make the tiny kitchen feel airless, like the oxygen was burning up between us. “You think this is funny?”
“I think you’re acting like you’re morally superior.”
“I think you’re in my apartment because you feel guilty and want to turn that into my problem.”
I shoved his chest again, harder this time, my palms slamming into the solid wall of him. He shifted back only half an inch, but the countertop behind me rattled. A half-empty water glass tipped over with a sharp clink before rolling off the edge and shattering against the linoleum.
We both flinched at the sound, but neither of us looked down.
The shards glittered between our feet like a warning.
“You don’t deserve my apology,” I spat, my voice rising, raw and scraping against my throat.
His jaw snapped tight, a muscle leaping beneath the skin.
I felt the hit land and still didn’t stop because stopping meant standing still long enough to feel everything I was trying to burn away. My hands flew up, gesturing wildly, my arms cutting through the charged air between us.
“You don’t. Not after all this time making every room we shared feel like a punishment. Not after looking through me, talking around me, throwing girls in my face, turning every party into some twisted little test to see if I’d crack.”
My face burned, heat crawling up my neck and flushing my cheeks a furious red.
“You want an apology for what I did? Fine. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I panicked.
I’m sorry I didn’t know how to be what you wanted.
” I stepped forward, jabbing one finger toward his chest. “But you do not get to act like you’ve been some innocent casualty while you spent all that time making sure I bled in public for it. ”
“I don’t want your fucking apology.”
The speed of it, the sheer cold fury, knocked something loose inside my chest. He didn’t yell. He didn’t need to. The words came out like he had held them behind his teeth all night, waiting for me to hand him a reason to spit them at my feet.
I laughed, a sharp, ugly sound, because it was the only sound sharp enough to survive. “Then what do you want?”
His hand left the counter, and he stepped closer, invading every inch of my space. “Answers.”
“No.”
His mouth curved, mean and mirthless. “You’re so good at that.”
“At what?”
“Shutting down the second I ask for anything real.”
“You don’t get real from me tonight.”
“You got in the car.” His voice snapped through the kitchen, rough enough to make me jerk back.
His bandaged hand slashed through the air before he winced and dropped it to his side again.
“You drove me here. You followed me upstairs. You pushed your way into my apartment. You cleaned my hand while looking at me like you wanted to stab me and climb me at the same time.”
He leaned closer, his face inches from mine, his split mouth pulled tight around the words. “Do not stand in my kitchen and tell me I don’t get real when you kicked the fucking door open.”
My back pressed harder against the counter, the edge digging into my spine. “You think you get answers because you beat Maddox bloody in a parking lot?”
“I think I get answers because I spent a year inside you, around you, under your skin, and you treated me like a toy you could fuck with until it broke.” His voice cracked, raw and brutal, and the bruise near his cheek pulled tight as his jaw clenched.
“Then, when it broke, you acted shocked there were pieces.”
My breath caught in a sharp, audible gasp, and his eyes sharpened on it, gleaming with a horrible, victorious pain.
“Yeah,” he said, stepping into the reaction like he hated knowing where to push and loved that he could still make me move.
His good hand flexed at his side, fist clenched so tightly the veins stood out along his forearm.
“That one hit. Why now, Clarke? Why tonight? You were fine watching me hate you. You were fine watching me tear myself apart. You were fine watching me try to get over you with every girl who looked willing enough to make you mad.”
He took another step, forcing me to tilt my head back to hold his gaze. “Then some asshole opens his mouth, and suddenly you care? Suddenly you’re affected? Suddenly you look at me with those fucking pleading eyes like I’m supposed to forget you had all that time to say something before tonight?”
“You don’t know what I was affected by,” I shouted, shoving his chest again. My hands bounced off him, useless.
“Then tell me.”
“No.”
“Then shut up about what I don’t know.”
“You want to know why now?” I screamed, the sound tearing out of my throat.
I pushed away from the counter with enough force to make him stumble back a step.
His ribs caught the movement, tightening his face before he swallowed the pain.
“You want me to explain myself while you stand there calling me Clarke like my first name might burn your tongue off? Fine. I have always been affected.”
His face changed, something flickering behind the fury, but I didn’t give him room to answer.
“I was affected every time you walked into a room and looked at me like I was something you scraped off your shoe.” My voice cracked, wet and ragged.
“I was affected every time you laughed with some girl where I could see it and made damn sure I knew it was supposed to hurt. I was affected when you stopped touching me, stopped texting me, stopped looking at me like I was anything except a mistake you regretted making.”
I trembled now, my entire body shaking beneath the force of the confession. “I have always been affected, Easton. You just loved pretending I wasn’t because it made your revenge cleaner.”
He came forward so fast the air whipped between us, and my back struck the counter again with a jolt. “Do not put this on me.”
“I am putting your part on you.”
“My part?” His laugh was vicious and broken. He raked his good hand through his hair, leaving it wild. “You mean the part where I got tired of being your midnight secret?”
“You were never just a secret.”
“You made sure I was.”
“You don’t fully understand why I had rules.”
His eyes flashed, wild and desperate. “Rules I never followed and you never cared about with me.”
The words hit wrong, sharp and sideways, and my mouth snapped shut for half a second before anger forced it open again. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you threw rules at me like they were walls, and I spent a year learning every crack in them because you wanted me to.” His chest rose and fell rapidly, his voice cutting harder now, every word a hammer strike.
“No names, no lights, no staying, no feelings, no morning, no anything that looked like it might matter. Then you let me say your name. You let me touch and see what you told every other man was off-limits. You let me keep the lamp on and acted pissed when you didn’t hate it. ”
He leaned closer, his breath hot against my face.
“I moaned your name over and over again. You fell asleep with my hand on your stomach, Clarke. You held onto me in your sleep. You wore my shirt around your apartment all damn day and thought I wouldn’t hear about it from Bliss.
” His voice dropped into a seething whisper.
“So don’t stand here and tell me I never followed the rules like I was the only one breaking them. ”
Heat tore through my face in a scalding wave of humiliation. “I wanted no rules with you!”
His expression locked, all the fury freezing into something stunned and deathly still.
I heard what I had said only after I said it.
The whole apartment seemed to snap still around us. Easton’s voice went low and dangerous. “Say that again.”
I shook my head, wrapping my arms around myself. “No.”
“You don’t get to throw that at me and run.”
“I wanted no rules with you because you took control so I could breathe.” The words exploded out of me, furious, humiliating, and too loud.
I threw my hands out, gesturing wildly at him and the space between us.
“You arrogant, infuriating, beautiful asshole, you took the decision out of my head when I handed it to you, and for once, I didn’t have to watch every second for the moment a man turned my yes against me.
I didn’t have to brace for the grab, or the joke, or the thing I would have to survive after. ”
My voice broke. “With you, I could stop fucking thinking, and that terrified me more than any man who ever hurt me.”
Easton stared at me like I had slapped him. Then his face hardened so brutally, his features twisting with fresh, deeper rage, that I almost wished I had.
“Oh, that’s rich,” he sneered, the sound ugly. “Pretending I ever did anything you cared about enough to look deeper at it.”
I shoved him with both hands, one full-bodied, desperate push. “All I did was get deeper, East.”
His nostrils flared at the name, a raw, physical reaction.
I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. My hands curled into fists at my sides, my entire body trembling with the need to hit, hold, or scream.