24. Nell
This is my mess—and I intend to be part of the cleanup.
I brought it to his doorstep, and now, true to form, he’s taking over. Mr Control. Mr ‘Let me handle it.’
Not this time.
He doesn’t know what Adam did to me. Not really. Not the full extent. So, I get a say in how this ends.
“Don’t fight me on this,”
he warns, his voice like steel.
But if I’m good at anything, it’s ignoring warnings I’ll argue about later.
I knew something was off the second I realised he never came to bed. Sneaky, brooding, stalker-boy routine. Good thing I brought my rolling pin—I had a feeling it might come in handy.
I shove past him, ignoring the low growl vibrating in his chest, and march straight toward Adam. In my head, I look like vengeance incarnate—a hooded reaper descending on the guilty. In reality, I probably resemble a furious child with a kitchen utensil.
No matter. The intent is the same.
“You haven’t got it in you,”
Adam sneers, smirking even now.
“You’re weak. Pathetic. Just a hole to fill.”
I swing.
The rolling pin connects with his shin, solid and sharp. His jaw locks, teeth bared—but he doesn’t make a sound. No yell, no scream. Just a flicker of pain behind the bravado.
I hit him again. Harder this time.
Still nothing.
This is actually harder than I thought.
“Nell—”
Cameron’s voice is behind me now, close and low. But I don’t stop. My swings rain down—shins, thighs, knees, anywhere that will hurt without knocking him out completely.
Cameron dodges one. Then another. Until finally, with an exasperated sigh, he steps in and lifts me by the waist like I weigh nothing at all.
I kick once in protest, the rolling pin dangling from my hand like a warning.
This isn’t over.
Not even close.
He laughs again, watching us from the corner of his eye. There’s a flicker in his gaze—dark, venomous—a look I’ve seen before. Pure hate, dressed in that familiar smirk.
“Don’t worry, Nell,”
he sneers.
“He’ll get bored of you too once you stop putting out. We all do. You’re just a placeholder—you’ll never be the main act.”
Is that it? Is that why he did what he did?
Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’ve never been enough—for anyone. Just a passing distraction, something to fill the silence until something better comes along. Not the reason someone stays. Just… the reason they stop for a while.
I’m the static in the background, the wallpaper they don’t notice until it peels. I fade when they lose interest. A wallflower, melting back into the scenery like I was never there.
Cameron’s still blocking me—his broad frame cutting off Adam, towering above with an aura steeped in storm. But his eyes… there’s no malice there. Just something softer lingering in those chocolaty irises. Pity? God, pity for the girl whose life is too tangled to untie.
Darcy pulled men in with her beauty. I host a never-ending pity party. Maybe that’s why he kissed me. Maybe it wasn’t want—it was guilt.
“See why I didn’t want you in here?”
Cameron’s voice is low, calm like the edge of a blade. But Adam’s words keep coming, pounding into my chest like he’s hammering nails into my self-worth. I falter. And for just a moment, I can’t stop the flicker of shame that crosses my face.
Cameron sees. Of course he does.
He doesn’t hesitate. He turns sharply and stalks back toward Adam, plucking the rolling pin from my grip with chilling ease.
Then he crouches, slow and deliberate, beside Adam’s face.
“You know,”
he says, voice dipped in ice.
“I feel sorry for her.”
There it is. I knew it. Pity.
He tilts his head.
“After all—you’re all the same. Tiny dicks, loud mouths, and rubbery personalities. I bet you never made her cum, bet you never gave her a proper orgasm. Because men like you make up for the lacking bedroom department by making them feel like it’s their fault. Hell, I bet you couldn’t even keep it hard half the time.”
He’s not wrong. But that wasn’t the way Adam used to spin it. Said I didn’t try anymore. Said without makeup, I was ugly. That I’d let myself go.
Cameron’s voice cuts in before I can spiral further into my self-doubt.
“And that’s exactly why men like me get to swallow your footsteps. To show her what it’s supposed to feel like. To remind her what it’s like to be seen.”
He pauses, crouching low enough that his words barely need volume to hit.
“Because when she screams my name,”
he murmurs.
“she’ll finally understand the difference between being fucked by a man and a boy.”
I know he’s only saying it to crush Adam—to strip him down and salt the wound. He doesn’t mean it. I’m not that lucky. As much as I’d love to believe I could be something to him… I won’t be. Not me. A man like Cameron could never want a mess like this.
“Yeah, good luck with that one,”
Adam sneers, clinging to what’s left of his bravado.
“Even her uncle couldn’t get it up half the time—could he, Nell?”
The words hit like a punch to the gut. I should’ve known better. I should never have let him that deep—should never have handed him the parts of me I still wake up running from. That was my biggest mistake; giving a boy like Adam a map to my trauma and expecting him not to turn it into a battleground.
He took everything broken in me and twisted it into a weapon. And the worst part? He’s gotten good at it.
Cameron’s nostrils flare, jaw locked so tight it looks like it might shatter. Before Adam can spew another word, Cameron lunges—pinching his nose shut, forcing his mouth open, and driving the rolling pin down his throat in one swift, brutal motion.
Adam gags, his eyes bulging and watering as he flails—arms twitching at nothing, body convulsing around my favourite weapon.
Cameron leaves him there; writhing, choking, fighting for air like a fish on concrete.
When he rises, his chest heaves. There’s something in his eyes now—something wild and unnameable. Animalistic.
And then he turns, marching toward me with unrelenting force. I flinch, spine pressing to the cold brick, preparing for the worst.
“Can I get that back?”
I whisper, nodding to the rolling pin lodged in Adam’s throat.
“Shut the fuck up, Nell.”
It isn’t a warning, it’s a growl, torn from the rawest part of him, vibrating through the air. The words hit so hard they splinter the silence, and for once, my mouth goes slack. No sarcasm. No spitfire comeback. Just heart-thumping stillness.
He closes the distance in two strides, the heat rolling off him like a furnace, stripping off the long black gloves that are covered in blood and discarding them somewhere without an inch of care where they land.
The wall catches me hard, unforgivingly scraping at my back as his body crowds mine, leaving no room to breathe, no space to think.
His eyes—ice cold yet blazing with fire—lock onto mine, wild with something unhinged and electric. Rage, hunger, something bordering on ruin. I barely manage a breath.
Then he’s on me.
His mouth crashes into mine with violent precision, no hesitation, no mercy. It’s tongue, fire, and fury. He tastes like consequence and something darker—like a man teetering on the edge of something dangerous and choosing to fall.
I gasp, and it’s all the invitation he needs. His tongue slams into mine, claiming, devouring, and I’m swept under—no time to brace, no time to question. Just the roar in my ears and the quake in my knees.
His hand fists in my hair. The other pins my hip to the wall. I don’t know if I want to fight him or fuse into him completely. All I know is this—there’s no softness here. Only heat, violence, and the kind of kiss that leaves bruises in its wake.
The kiss doesn’t end—it implodes.
My thoughts scatter like ash in a wildfire, logic ripped to shreds by the sheer heat of him. Every part of my body is on high alert, nerves firing all at once, screaming and sparking like exposed wires. I taste adrenaline. I feel like I’m being devoured from the inside out.
He doesn’t pull back. He consumes. Like he’s trying to erase every word Adam ever spoke—every name I’ve been called, every scar I buried under skin and silence.
I try to breathe, but I don’t want to. I want to fall headfirst into this spiral—into him—and let the wreckage become my religion.
His hand threads deeper into my hair, tugging just enough to steal a gasp, just enough to remind me I’m alive and on fire. I moan into his mouth—half surrender, half defiance. It makes him growl, deep and raw, a sound that feels like it started in me and found its way into him.
My hands move on their own, fists clenching the back of his shirt like I could anchor myself here—but the ground’s already gone. There’s no wall behind me, no past, no future. Just this; the man who tastes like danger and moves like vengeance.
And God help me, I want more.
I’m not kissing him back, I’m clinging, desperate to keep from slipping through the cracks he’s splitting wide open. My skin burns. My bones don’t feel like they belong to me. Every breath is stolen before it even forms.
He groans into my mouth—an unfiltered sound, like he hates how much he wants this, how much he wants me. There’s no finesse. No gentleness. He kisses like he’s furious we exist in the same world and can’t stay away from each other anyway.
His teeth graze my bottom lip, and it’s not sweet. It’s a warning.
I whimper, and the sound breaks something in him. His hand slides down, anchoring at my thigh, hoisting it up without asking. The brick digs into my spine, grounding me as everything else unravels. I think I’ve lost all sense of time. Of air. Of boundaries.
My name leaves him in a whisper, like it slipped out without his permission. Like it’s a sin he can’t help repeating. And in the haze between kisses and gasps, I realise; this isn’t just a kiss. This is war paint. A confession. A claim.
It breaks in an instant. Not a word. Not a plea. Just the sound of me yielding—body first, then breath, then everything else. I don’t remember letting go. I only know that I have.
My hands claw at his back like they’ve given up pretending they don’t need him. I don’t hold him—I anchor to him, like if I let go, I’ll fall straight through the floor.
He groans against my lips—deeper this time, like something in him unravels when I stop pulling away. Like he was begging for this without ever saying a word.
His hands are everywhere now, charting my body like it’s familiar and forbidden all at once. Possessive. Reverent. Wild. His mouth drags down my jaw, and my head tips back, unthinking, just offering everything I have.
I don’t care that the wall is scraping my spine. I don’t care that Adam is somewhere on the floor choking on everything he ever did to me. All I care about is this burn—this reckless, glorious undoing.
Because right here, in this moment, with the air thick and his breath skating across my throat… I want him to take every broken piece of me and claim it like he means to keep it.
Adam’s gurgles fade—swallowed by the sound of my own breathless moans and Cameron’s ragged panting. He moves over me like he’s done it a hundred times in dreams he’ll never admit to. Every touch is possessive.
There’s nothing gentle in it. Just heat and hunger and a control that terrifies me in how familiar it feels.
And all I can see—flashing behind my eyes—is the image of him on that livestream, the way he handled that woman like she was an instrument built for him to play.
Is that what I am now? Just another body. Another outlet.
A warm place to forget whatever haunts him. Somewhere to get his end away and leave me picking up the aftermath.
“We can’t…”
The words barely escape—barely sound at all. Just a ghost of protest against the roar in my veins.
And then his hand slides beneath the hem of my jumper—the one of his I stole like a secret and now wear like a second skin. The fabric lifts, exposing a thin line of stomach to cool air before his palm finds bare flesh.
His touch isn’t rushed. It’s warm. Calloused. Real. My skin contracts beneath it, heat rising in a rush that chases goosebumps in its wake. His fingers splay like he’s mapping me from memory, brushing along the slope of my waist, slow and devastatingly sure.
I forget how to exhale, like a baby trying to take it’s first steps.
The wall behind me feels colder with every inch of me he warms. His thumb slides in the arc of my hipbone, and my muscles betray me—arching, aching into his touch like my body’s no longer mine.
And the worst part? The best part?
I don’t want it back.