I grabbed her hand and held it to my chest. “Can’t you feel how my heart fucking beats for you?”
She opened her eyes then, a storm brewing. She tried to yank her hand away. I tightened my hold.
“You’re sick. You don’t care for me. You don’t fucking l-love me. You said it yourself. You’re fucking obsessed!”
I nodded. Perhaps she was right. But it didn’t make my feelings for her any less real.
“Let me go, Roman. Please. I won’t tell anyone.”
“I can’t,” I rasped out. And how fucking true that was. Perhaps there had been a moment when I would have been able to let her go. If such a moment existed, I didn’t know about it, and it had long passed now.
“Why?”
“Because I can’t leave you alone.” My thumb glided from side to side underneath the tender skin below her eye. “Fuck, why can’t I leave you alone?”
The last part was said more to myself than to her.
I didn’t know what it was about this girl that I couldn’t let go.
I wanted to own her.
I wanted to take her and keep her. I wanted to protect her as much as I wanted to hurt her for making me want her like this.
I wanted to hurt her for making it so that I hadn’t belonged to myself for the last two years. Even when I hated her, I didn’t belong to myself. My thoughts had been preoccupied with her and her alone.
Fuck if I didn’t want to be all those things to her.
So lost in my own thoughts, I didn’t even see her move.
That was my mistake.
A flash of movement caught my attention, and I turned just as Ryleigh came at me, a small knife in her hand.
Where the fuck had the knife come from?
I knocked on her wrist, hard enough for her to drop the knife, but not hard enough that she would bruise.
But I had underestimated just how badly she wanted to hurt me, and just how quickly she moved for such a tiny little thing.
She caught me on the shoulder.
Blood started seeping out from the cut flesh, but I barely felt it.
The wound was superficial, and I might have hurt her more than she hurt me.
She grabbed her injured wrist and looked at me with wet, accusing eyes as the knife clanged to the floor. I ignored that and grabbed hold of her wrist.
It showed how fucked my mind was. I didn't even realize she had it on her body. Where did she get it? The kitchen, perhaps, when my back was turned.
I should have paid closer attention to her.
I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“Why the hell did you do that?” I asked, trying to ascertain just how badly I had hurt her. I didn’t think I did any damage, but there was something…breakableabout her just now, and I wondered if I had used more strength than needed.
“To get away from you,” she hissed out, trying to pull away from my grasp.
I clutched her chin with my other hand and lifted it until she met my eyes. “That was stupid. I could have hurt you.”
