RONAN
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
NOW
My heart races in my ears, the scene I just witnessed playing over and over inside my head.
She knew I was there. If she cared about me even an ounce as much as I care about her, she would have made him stop. She would have done something to save me from watching her be fucked like a fucking animal against a car in the middle of the night.
I may not have been able to tear my eyes off them, but I couldn’t stand to stay and watch them in their afterglow.
Not when those are some of my favorite memories of Chloe.
Tangled in my sheets, her body flushed with pleasure, her eyes filled with love and adoration every time she met mine.
We would talk for hours, imagining a future, talking about our hopes and dreams in a way we couldn’t with anyone else.
It was all a dream, of course, because our lives were set out for us from the day we were born. We each had a duty to the family, and we were just lucky to be allowed to have one another.
At the time, I don’t know what I would have done if Dad ordered me to marry someone else, because I couldn’t even look at another woman without feeling a deep sense of guilt, let alone marry one.
Even after she left, it was years before I could stand to go on a date.
But it’s fucking clear to me that Chloe didn’t feel the same way. Because if she’d ever loved me even an ounce of how I love her, she wouldn’t have done that to me.
Bursting into the room, I flick the lights on and find Damon sprawled across his bed, thanking a god I don’t believe in that he’s at least wearing boxers.
The motherfucker loves sleeping naked, and I’m in no mood to see his junk right now.
He grumbles, pulling his pillow over his face, which I quickly tug away.
“Get up,” I snap.
He cracks an eye open, staring up at me like I’ve personally offended him. Which I kind of have because there are few things Damon values like he does his sleep.
“What’s crawled up your ass?” He lifts his head enough to look at the clock between the beds. “It’s three in the morning.”
“I just watched that asshole bodyguard fuck Chloe against her car.” I grind out the words, the image permanently etched behind my eyelids, ensuring that’s all I’ll see every time I close my eyes from now until forever.
That seems to wake him up because a second later he’s perched on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees.
“I’m sorry, you watched him fuck her?”
Pressing my eyes closed only to snap them open again when the image returns, I suck in a breath. “She knew I was there. She fucking knew I was there and let him fuck her anyway.”
“Once a whore, always a whore,” he muses, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to defend her the way I always have. Even when I thought she ran away with our baby, I still defended her. Every time he or Dad would insult her, I was the first person to come to her defense.
But I was stupid, and they were right the whole time.
Everything they thought about her was right, and now I can’t help but think maybe she was lying to me at the hospital. Maybe she is the snake they warned me she was.
Did love really cloud my judgment so spectacularly that I couldn’t see she was using me?
I thought it hurt when she left, when I found out she was pregnant and didn’t bother telling me, but watching the woman you love fuck someone else hurts more than almost anything else.
“What’s your plan to get her away from the bodyguard and back to Miami?” I ask.
Damon smirks. “This is going to be so much fucking easier with you on board.”