Chapter 34
Chapter thirty-four
Mandie
Waking up was not fun. My body ached like I’d been hit by a truck.
Given the last twenty-four hours, that wasn’t far from the truth.
The sheets were tangled around my legs, damp with sweat.
I didn’t remember falling asleep. One minute I’d been standing in the middle of the room, chest heaving, vision blurred with rage.
Next, I was out. My body had simply shut down.
My arms felt heavy, the black ink of my tattoos standing out stark against my pale skin. I flexed my fingers, watching the tendons move, focusing on that mechanical action instead of the tightness in my throat.
I didn’t want to get up. But the silence was worse than noise. At least noise gave you something to push against.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, hissing as my bare feet hit the cold floor.
I grabbed the first things I could find, a loose tank top and a pair of sweatpants, and yanked them on.
My hair was a mess, black strands sticking to my neck, but I didn’t care.
Let it be a warning to anyone stupid enough to look at me.
The hallway was empty. No cleaning bots. No clatter of weights from the gym. Just the faint, sterile scent of disinfectant and stale coffee. My stomach twisted. I didn’t want coffee. I didn’t want anything.
But I wasn’t about to hide in my room like a wounded animal.
I rounded the corner into the common area and stopped. The massive TV screen was dark. The kitchen counters were wiped clean. The dining table was empty.
The only sign of life was the couch and the man sprawled across it.
Teddy.
He was on his back, one arm slung over his face.
His chest rose and fell in slow, even breaths.
It was a sleep too peaceful for someone who’d spent the last day tearing my world apart.
His hair was tousled, darker than usual against the gray upholstery.
His t-shirt had ridden up, showing a sliver of skin above his jeans.
The helmet, his helmet, sat on the cushion beside him. A silent, accusatory presence.
I should’ve turned around. I should have walked back to my room and locked the door. But my feet betrayed me, carrying me forward until I stood a few feet away, arms wrapped around myself like a shield.
For a long moment, I just watched him. I memorized the shadows his lashes cast on his cheeks, the faint stubble along his jaw, the way his lips parted slightly with each exhale.
He looked younger like this. Vulnerable.
Like the man I’d fallen in love with, not the stranger who’d spent the last two years lying to my face.
Then his fingers twitched. A shift in his breathing. The illusion shattered.
His arm dropped away from his face. His eyes blinked open, unfocused at first, then locking onto me.
A beat of silence. Then, soft, like he was afraid to startle me:
"Hi."
My throat went dry. I should’ve said something cutting. Something that would make him flinch. But all that came out was a quiet echo. "Hi."
He pushed himself up onto his elbows, rubbing a hand over his face. His voice was rough with sleep. "You’re up."
I ignored that. "Where is everyone?"
Teddy exhaled, sitting up fully. He ran his fingers through his hair, messing it up further. "I asked them to leave for the day." His eyes met mine, steady, bracing for impact. "So we could talk."
My arms tightened around my ribs. "I don’t want to talk."
He didn’t look away. He just sighed, long and slow. "How many times do I have to say sorry, Mandie?"
The sound of my name on his lips sent a jolt through me. Not the good kind. The kind that made my nails dig into my palms.
"You think that’s what this is about?" I asked, voice low. "You think an apology fixes this?"
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Swallowed. "No. But it’s a start."
I laughed. It came out sharp, bitter. "A start to what? You lying to me some more? Pretending you give a damn about how I feel?"
His jaw tightened. "I do give a damn."
"Bullshit." The word tasted like ash. "You had two years to give a damn, Teddy. Two years to tell me the truth. But you didn’t. You let me think I was losing my mind. You let me beg you to talk to me, and you just…" My voice cracked. I forced it steady. "You just ghosted me. Like I was nothing."
He flinched. Finally. His hands clenched into fists on his knees. "You were never nothing."
"Then what was I?" I snapped. "A distraction? A liability? Some girl you could fuck around with until your real life got too complicated? Then you would run around with some other woman?"
"Amanda—"
"No." I stepped back like his voice burned. "You don’t get to say my name like that. Not after everything."
He exhaled sharply, rubbing his temples like he was fighting a headache. "I never cheated on you. I never would. You are the only woman I have been with since the day I met you.”
“So you lead me to believe you were cheating on me so I would hate you? That is genius.”
“I would rather you hate me and be alive than to love me and be dead.”
I stared at him. Really stared. The man who’d held me through nightmares. The man who knew exactly how I took my coffee. The man who knew the precise spot on my neck to kiss to make me surrender.
The man who had broken every promise he’d ever made me.
"Why’d you even choose to be a superhero?" The question came out of nowhere, but suddenly, it was the only thing that mattered. "Was it worth it? Losing everything?"
Teddy went still. His brown eyes darkened, storm clouds rolling in. He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers.
"It’s complicated," he said quietly.
I barked a laugh. "Complicated. Right. Everything with you is complicated."
His head snapped up. "Because it is," he shot back, voice rising. "You think I wanted this? You think I woke up one day and decided, hey, I’d love to lie to the woman I love, push her away, and watch her hate me? This was something that had started since I was a kid."
The words hit like a punch to the gut. I staggered back. "Love?" I echoed, disbelieving. "You don’t get to say that. Not now."
He stood up so fast the couch creaked. "I do get to say it," he said, low and fierce. "Because it’s true. I loved you then, and I love you now, and every damn day in between, even when I was too much of a coward to admit it."
My chest was so tight I could barely breathe. "You have a funny way of showing it."
"Yeah?" He took a step toward me, then stopped, afraid to close the distance. "You want to know how I showed it? By staying away. By making sure no one could use you to get to me. By letting you think I was an asshole, so you’d hate me instead of being in danger every second of every day."
I shook my head, vision blurring. "That’s not love. That’s control."
He paused, looking around the room in frustration. "This… Capital Punishment. He knows me. He knows me really well. That is why you are so important to him. He knows that if I had to choose between saving you or saving the world, I would save you every time."
The admission took my breath away. It hung in the air between us, terrifying and absolute.
"So you push me away?" I whispered. "That makes a lot of sense."
He looked at me, his eyes raw. "I thought pushing you away was the only way I could save you."
Teddy sat there on the couch, his shirt still rumpled from sleep, his stupidly perfect hair somehow still in place despite everything.
I wanted to slap that smug, apologetic look off his face. Or kiss it. Fuck, I didn’t even know anymore. My hands were clenched so tight my nails bit into my palms, the sting grounding me.
“You don’t get to just say you love me and think that fixes everything,” I snapped, my voice raw. Six months of silence, of feeling like I was losing my goddamn mind, and he thought a few pretty words would make it better? “Love isn’t just some fucking excuse you pull out when you’ve been caught.”
“It’s not an excuse,” he cut in, standing up so fast the couch creaked. His voice was rough, like he’d been swallowing glass. “It’s the reason. The only fucking reason I did any of it.”
He stepped closer; his scent was like gunpowder and rain. My traitorous body remembered that scent, remembered the way it clung to me.
No. No.
I shoved him. Not hard, but enough to make him stumble back a step. His eyes flashed, not with anger, but with something worse, hope. Like he thought this was progress. Like he thought I’d rather fight than walk away.
“You don’t get to touch me,” I hissed, but my voice cracked. “You don’t get to look at me like that.”
His jaw tightened. “Like what?”
“Like you miss me.” The words tore out of me. “Like you have any right to...”
I didn’t finish. He lunged forward, not to grab me, but to kiss me, his mouth crashing against mine with a desperation that stole my breath.
I should’ve bitten him. Should’ve kneed him in the gut.
But my body had its own fucking ideas, melting into him like wax under a flame.
His hands gripped my waist, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and I let him.
I grabbed him back, fists twisting in his shirt, yanking him closer as our teeth clashed. He tasted like sin and coffee, like every stupid fantasy I’d tried to burn out of my head.
“Fuck you,” I gasped against his lips, but my hips arched into him anyway, my body already betraying me. “Fuck you for making me want this.”
His groan was low, guttural, vibrating against my chest. “Then take it,” he growled, his voice a dark promise. “Take whatever the hell you want from me, Mandie. Punish me. I’ll take it. Just don’t walk away again.”
That was it. The last thread of my control snapped.
I shoved him again, harder this time, and he went down onto the couch with a grunt, me right after him.
My knees straddled his hips, my tank top riding up as I ground down against him, feeling the hard ridge of his cock through his pants.
He hissed, his hands flying to my thighs, fingers sinking in.