I was livid.
I was fucking livid, and unfortunately for Mystic, she was the only person here that I could take it out on. “So, you just left?!” I yelled. “You didn’t trust me enough to tell me what the fuck they were doing?”
The blank look in her eyes vanished. It was quickly replaced with her own brand of rage.“Trust you?”she screeched, her hands curled up into fists at her sides. “Are you kidding me?”
I could feel my eye twitch with the need to put my hands on his woman. “You trusted me to wrap my hands around your neck and not kill you while I fucked the shit out of you, but you didn’t trust me with that?”
Her face flushed, but I wasn’t entirely sure it was all from anger. “Two weeks, Gage!” she yelled at me. “Two measly weeks!”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I was shipped off to my aunt’s, in Montana, that very night, Gage,” she replied, filling in the blanks of the last ten years. “No phone, no anything. I was so terrified of you being sent to prison, I went. But I hadn’t given up on you, you sorry sonofabitch!” We were facing off like two raging bulls, the poison of the past bubbling over. “It was two weeks before I was able to sneak onto my aunt’s computer to try to contact you. I had some silly, delusional fantasy that I’d tell you what happened, and you’d come for me. I had already made these half-ass plans of what we’d need to run away together.” She was lying.She had to be lying.“But you want to know what happened when I logged onto her computer? I discovered that it only took you two goddamn weeks to erase me from your life. I had been blocked from every one of your social media accounts. I had been blocked from your life!” Her words were cutting deep beneath the surface of all my anger. If she was telling the truth, then she’s not the one who walked away.
I was.
“What the fuck did you expect me to do, Mystic?” I snapped. “From my end, you just up and fucking left. Your dad even handed me the goodbye letter you wrote.”
I realized her anger and pain were every bit as deep as mine when she yelled, “What did I expect?! I expected you to keep your word! I expected you toneverstop coming for me! I expected you to prove all that shit you spewed when we were together. All that shit about how you would never let me go. But you did! You gave up after a whole whopping two weeks, Gage!” Her entire body was shaking. Her chest was heaving, and her face was red with hate. “I left because I was scared. But, more importantly, I left because I refused to be the reason your life was ruined. And you let me go because you’re nothing but a liar!”
I was on her before my mind could fully process what I was doing. I had her slammed up against the wall, my fingers digging into the flesh of her arms. The thud of her body hitting the door could be heard throughout the apartment.
I knew my mind wasn’t right. I knew, in this moment, I was a danger to myself and anyone dumb enough to get in my way, but I didn’t care. I was damaged enough not to fucking care. However, if Mystic was telling the truth…
“I never lied to you,” I raged through clenched teeth.“Never.”
Her eyes were watering, but those were tears of pure, unadulterated rage. “Did you, or did you not look for me beyond those two weeks, Gage?”
We both knew the answer to that question.
We both knew the truth.
And it was a truth that was going to change everything.
Chapter 27
Mystic~
Iwas angry.
I was angry and hurt.
I may have hurt him, but he’s the one who had let me go.
He had let me down, and I’ve been suffering for it for ten goddamn years.
The horrible part about it all? With his hands digging painfully into my arms, I didn’t care about how much I had hurt him or how much he had ruined me. Just like in the conference room at CI, I was catapulted back to that fateful day in the park restroom.
The day that, the boy I feared, had taken what he wanted from me and I had fallen in love with him for it. The day where fear and desire had warred with one another to create a bond forged in vehement fire. Violence had become my religion, and Gage was the temple where I had worshipped.
And staring up at this beautiful, broken, enraged man, I was ready to drop to my knees and rediscover my lost faith. His hands were going to leave bruises and my core soaked my underwear with the knowledge.
This was the hell that embroiled drug addicts, alcoholics, and gamblers. The struggle of knowing something was wrong and unhealthy but being too weak and powerless to walk away from it. Because, even though I’d been the one to leave all those years ago, Gage was the one who had ended us.
“What was I supposed to do?” he asked, regret lacing each word. “You vanished, Mystic. You vanished and everyone close to you told me you left by choice.”
This bastard.
“Since when had you ever given me a choice, Gage,” I tossed back. “That afternoon in the park restroom? Any time after that? The night of Margot’s birthday party? All of a sudden, you believed I was making choiceswithoutyou.” I got in his face because I was done carrying this burden.“Youwalked away from us.Not me.”
