I storm up to him and bang my fists on his pecs while shouting, “You’re the one who failed to show up!” I huff in his face. “And for what? The makeup sex was good, but it wasn’t good enough to take it that far.”
“Good?” He laughs a tormented chuckle that exposes he didn’t sleep a wink last night. “The sex wasn’t good, Emerson. It was so fucking unbelievable that it ruined every other sexual experience I’ve had.”
Excitement blisters for half a second before it’s stripped for jealousy. “I’m so sorry to have ruined your ability to stuff your dick into any trollop you meet without having a conscious thought. How dare I crave fireworks so blistering that I couldn’t imagine doing it with anyone else, let alone being upset it could ruin future endeavors.”
“Oh no, because you’d much rather pretend it didn’t fucking happen at all. Wouldn’t you? That and running seem to be your go-to coping mechanisms these days.”
I go to slap him, but he catches my hand before I can, and then he uses the same hand to pull me into his body.
Every muscle in my body tenses when I smell my scent on his skin. Our combined smells expose why the minuscule hours I got last night were so restful, and it makes my insides feel like liquid instead of solid masses.
We slept in the same bed, and one whiff of his heated skin last night had me wanting to forget my anger as swiftly as it does now.
I’d like to blame alcohol for the actions that occurred shortly after I told him he smelled like home, but that isn’t true. By the time Mikhail joined me in bed, I was already halfway sober.
Mikhail’s heated words bound off my cheek when he snarls, “You got off on my leg but didn’t have the decency to look at me after it…again!” His angry eyes bounce between mine. “Spent over a million dollars in under an hour and didn’t buy me a single damn thing. But that is nothing compared to when you walked out of my life without so much as a goodbye after three fucking years, Emerson. Three. Years!” I’m not granted the chance to display my shock, much less articulate it. “What did I ever do to you to deserve that level of disrespect?”
I cringe at the morbid bitterness in his tone. He can’t be serious, can he? He broke my heart. That deserves far more than a snippet of disrespect. I trusted him and believed in him, and when he left, he shattered our dreams and broke all the promises he’d made. He drowned our memories with turmoil and made them warp in my mind like a cruel joke.
He hurt me badly, and the fury of that cracks my tone when I say, “I’m not the bad guy in this situation, and I refuse to let you make out I am.”
“And I am?”
“Yes!” I scream, the hurt of his betrayal too painful not to react. “You’re to blame for everything!”
I thrash against him again, desperate to get free.
The memories are too painful, the hurt still real.
To my absolute horror, I whimper out a moan when my fight to get free of his hold has my leg brushing past his crotch—hisextendedcrotch. It flashes up memories of last night and exposes how he didn’t just watch over me after I stumbled into the owner’s suite. He was in every frame, close enough to catch me if I were to fall but not close enough to intervene in my rebellious streak.
I try to remember my anger and the pain that hasn’t subsided in over a decade while saying, “Let me go.Please.”
“No,” Mikhail says sternly, his voice steady. “I’m not letting you walk away from this. From me. I shouldn’t have let you do it ten years ago, and I won’t let you do it now.”
His shunting of the blame again fuels my anger. I continue to fight, to place necessary distance between us, but he holds on tight.
“You can’t just decide to fight now,” I snap out, my voice rising. “It’s too late.Yearstoo late.”
Even as the words leave my mouth, a part of me is grateful, pleased that he’s finally showing some fight and not letting me go without protest this time.
The memory of Mikhail leaving me at the altar is still fresh, a wound that refuses to heal, but his silence for the past ten years hurts more.
I honestly don’t know if I can go through that again.
“It’s not too late,” Mikhail argues, his tone softer now but still resolute. “We can move past this. We can get over it. Fuck.” His eyes are full of emotions and on me, hot and heavy. “I can’t lose you again, Emmy. It will kill me.”
A twisted mix of emotions hits me at once. Anger and gratitude are most prominent. But hope is there too, and itleaves me feeling conflicted. “It’s too late. You should have fought for us sooner.”
“I know,” he admits, his voice cracking with emotions as his grip on my arm loosens. “I should have demanded answers a long time ago, but I...” His eyes bounce between mine. “I didn’t want to know the truth. I didn’t want to face the fact that we were over. I couldn’t bear the thought of hearing that from you.”
I stare into his eyes, fighting back the moisture looming in mine. As much as I hate to admit this, the hurt in his tired gaze suffocates some of my worry, replacing it with a glimmer of hope.
Maybe, just maybe, there’s something still worth fighting for. We just need to heal the wounds we’re both carrying and rebuild what we’ve lost, and my hungover head is confident it knows the perfect way for us to commence that.
Chapter 26
Mikhail