34
SCOTTY
The single word somehow makes it past my numb lips: “What?”
Absolutely no sound follows, not until Cooper says, voice sounding distant to my ringing ears, “Sorry?” Brows scrunched, he shakes his head, arms flexing around Ezla as he pulls her even tighter to him.
He appears as if he genuinely believes he misheard our Bonded, and I’m now wondering if I did, too, because surely she didn’t say what I think she did .
. . “Sorry, HC, I think I misheard that. Could you repeat that?”
“You did not mishear.”
Lips parting, he still seems to be struggling to comprehend her words.
“I—I . . .” When I look at Alby for a moment at the noise, forcing myself to check in on him even though every part of me demands I keep my attention on my Bonded, I see his usual blush nowhere in sight as tears pour freely from his red-rimmed eyes.
“She doesn’t mean it!” Tiger blurts abruptly, snatching up her hand without hesitation this time, wide, alarmed eyes darting all over her face as if he’s looking for evidence that his claim could be true.
“Ezzy’s just cruel! I love you cruel, Wifey!
This is just a very . . . very cruel joke.
” His voice quietens, fading, the tremble in his limbs making its way into it.
“I don’t think I like this one, Ez . . . ”
“It is not a joke. I cannot be with you.” There’s nothing there, no emotion when she says this, and that hurts worse than anything.
Tate’s laugh holds no sanity. “Do you really think you can get away from me, my Havoc?”
He lunges for her without warning, hand outstretched as if seeking out her throat, the need to chain Ezla to him completely taking control of him.
I’m moving before I can even process it myself, tackling him. Glass pierces my skin and his as we roll across the taalk, and he roars. It’s not in pain, but in pure wrath that I’ve stopped him from getting to Ezla.
My neck whips to the side painfully as his fist crashes into my jaw. Winding back for another one as I struggle to pin him without hurting him, Tate—
“STOP!”
We both freeze in an instant at our Bonded’s bellowed command, heads snapping her way.
Cooper’s still refusing to let her go, it seems, as she glares furiously at us from his secure hold. “Listen to me. I am not good for you. Any of you. Do you understand? This is who I am. This what I cause.”
“Havoc—”
Throwing her head back, she momentarily looks as out of touch with reality as Tate did a moment ago as she laughs without humour.
Cooper appears completely lost and moves a hand to her head where it’s tipped back onto his chest, dark eyes swollen and overwhelmed by concern as they stay locked on her.
“Havoc . . . Yes, that is exactly what I am. And I adore it. I would not want to be anything else.” Confusion and wariness fill the bathroom, and I let go of a motionless Tate, making my way back over to her at a cautious pace.
Lips curled up at the corner, she continues, “I am not meant for you, I do not think. Am I not destroying you? I do not . . .” The manic light leaves her eyes, and they become worryingly dim. Her voice drops. “I do not want that.”
I start. “You’re not—”
“That part is what really tipped me over the edge. I am . . . It sickens me that I hurt you. But most of all . . . I am sickened by the fact that it bothers me to hurt you in the first place. It is all . . . too much. I cannot do this. I have not been trained for this. I am only used to . . . my father.”
Cooper lets out a pained moan. “Joseph. Joseph, HC. And please . . . please know you deserve more than him. Please tell me you know that.”
She’s silent for a beat, and my throat clogs. “I am not so sure any longer.”
Cooper’s voice hardens in an instant, though another tear escapes him. “I won’t let you go back to him.”
“This is not your decision. I can neither hurt you from his grasp, nor hurt myself with my feelings for you.”
“You—”
“It. Hurts,” Ezla grits out, cutting Cooper off. “I want them out.”
“You want them out . . .” I echo on a shaky breath, realisation dawning on me as I take in the cuts all over her once-unblemished skin.
My insides mirror the sight as if she’s slashed them with the very same glass.
“You tried to cut them out of yourself?” I choke out, eyes welling with tears.
“You tried to cut your feelings for us out?”
“I did.”
Alby’s sob is hardly muffled by the hand he covers his mouth with.
“Fucking hell, Ezla,” Cooper gets out brokenly. “Jesus Christ.”
“You wanted to cut me out of you?” I can’t tell if Tate is more pained or angry.
“You can’t cut me out. I’m yours, and you’re mine.
And look at all these cuts . . .” His voice darkens to pitch black without warning as his eyes rove over every inch of her exposed skin in her underwear, for once not in desire but fury at the thought of anything, even Ezla herself, hurting the woman he loves.
“Where are those tablets?” he barks abruptly.
Tiger whips up. “Our Bonded bedroom! I’ll get them!” he rushes out unsteadily, sprinting from the room as fast as he can before anyone can process it.
“I am perfectly fine—”
“No, Love,” I interrupt her firmly. “No, you’re not. But we’re going to help you. We’re going to get you through this.”
“We are not together—”
“Yes, we are,” Tate growls.
“No, we are not. I have already explained—”
“Your explanation was a load of crap,” Cooper snaps, fired up again in an instant with a clear argument breaking out.
“Cooper,” I scold him. “Her feelings are valid—”
“I never said they weren’t—”
“Got them!” Tiger rushes back in with a glass of water and the tablets, and we all snap our mouths shut.
Ezla eyes them.
Not missing a thing, Cooper says lowly, “You’re taking one, Ezla. If not willingly, I’m not above shoving one down your damn throat.”
Grimacing, I can’t chip in there. I’m not above doing that either in order to heal the woman I love.
“You cannot make me—”
“Tiger,” Cooper says evenly as he moves a hand to grab her jaw.
Eyes huge and full of panic, Tiger hugs the water and tablets to his chest as Ezla slams her head back at once, the crack!
of bone breaking splitting through the air along with Cooper’s shouted curse.
Blood sprays from his nose, and he instinctively brings his hand to it before it snaps back down to squeeze Ezla to him as she rages about.
It’s only a mercy that she’s too beside herself right now to think clearly enough to use proper technique as she completely loses her shit again. “GET OFF! GET THE FUCK OFF ME!”
Before she can land any other hits with her swinging arms, I snatch up her wrists in my grip, chaining them together. Tate grabs her legs again with the same thought in mind, and her furious screams only get louder, forcing me to raise my voice to be heard over them. “Ezla— Love, stop!”
“Let me go! Let me go! I hate you! I hate you all! I should have killed you all weeks ago—”
“You don’t mean that!” Alby sobs, trying to get a grip on her too in attempt to do something, anything, to help.
“Stay fucking still, Vengeance! I just want to heal you!” Cooper shouts, blood leaking into his mouth from his broken nose. That has to hurt like hell, but he only cares about helping Ezla.
“Please, Ezzy!” Tiger cries, stepping closer now, quivering hands shifting the container of tablets and water away from his chest and hesitantly her way. “Please take one! I love you so much—I can’t stand seeing you hurt!”
“No you do not! You do not! No one can love me!” Ezla bursts into tears.
Everyone freezes.
“No one can love me,” she repeats in the ensuing silence, no longer thrashing about but her body now shaking with her sobs. “No one but him.”
My mouth opens, but I’m stunned speechless.
Head hanging in a defeated way I’ve never seen from her before, a way that guts me, she shifts it subtly from side to side. “You must—you must only believe you love me. Or you do not understand who I truly am. I cannot be loved.”
Cooper is the first to find his voice again, rough and quiet. “You don’t really believe that, Vengeance. Tell me you don’t believe that. You know he doesn’t love you. What Joseph feels for you isn’t love. It’s sick and twisted and—”
“And he is the only one who knows all of me,” she puts in. “How can you love me if you do not know all of me?”
“W-we know enough,” Alby whispers shakily with a sniffle.
“But you do not understand me—”
“Yes, we do, Ezla,” I say firmly but gently, hold on her wrists easing up.
A stab of guilt slices into me as I take in the angry red marks left behind, and I softly rub the pads of my thumbs over them, but she jerks away when I go to place a tender kiss to the hurt skin.
Jaw ticking, I push past the pain that blooms in my chest and repeat, “We do. We understand who you are, why you are the way you are, and we love all of you. Whatever bits and pieces we haven’t yet learned about your past, we don’t need to know them.
” Cooper’s mouth opens to speak, brows dipping, but I continue before he can, “Of course we want to, but you’ve already given so much.
We know who you are, Ezla—it’s Joseph who doesn’t. ”
“I am my father’s creation. I am exactly who he wanted me to be. You cannot hate one and love the other. We are . . . Are we not the same, him and I?”
“No,” Tate rumbles. “You’re nothing like him.”
“I-I never thought of y-you in relation to h-him, Ezla,” Alby tells her shakily, quivering hands clenched in his lap where they never had the courage to find her. “Y-you’ve always been s-separate from him in my m-mind, e-even before I m-met you.”