by Kaia Bennett
She had to have misheard him. He wouldn’t say that to her. He wouldn’t deliberately insinuate that she was little more than a cheating whore, just to hurt her. But there he was, doing exactly that. His words were sitting heavy in her gut, making it impossible to be near him and not be sick.
“Fuck you,” she said quietly and deliberately, letting each syllable hang in the air and vibrate with her rage.
She stomped past him towards the bedroom, clipping her shoulder on the doorjamb as she turned the corner, but she didn’t stop moving. She couldn’t get to her clothes fast enough as she ripped off his t-shirt and pulled her tank top on. She heard Flynn at the doorway moments later, which he leaned against while he watched her.
“Oh, c’mon baby, where you going? Thought you wanted to talk it out.”
“You got exactly what you wanted Flynn,” she said as she pulled on her shorts and buttoned them up. “I don’t have anything to say to you anymore.”
What did she mean by that? When she said they didn’t have anything to talk about anymore, did she mean for now, or forever? He couldn’t bring himself to ask even though the question was swirling in his gut, making him antsy as she gathered up her things. It didn’t take long; all she brought with her was her purse and her keys.
She turned around to meet his eyes, to see if he had any remorse for the things he said. His expression was so strange to her. He looked cool and calm, but something in his eyes flickered as he looked at her, something she couldn’t pinpoint because she couldn’t bring herself to look at him for too long. She walked to the door and came up against the barrier that was his body.
“Relationships are real simple, Gia; it’s people that fuck them up and make them more complicated than they need to be. You broke up with him, and that should be the end of it. Period. He doesn’t get to keep cashing in on sympathy points, and you don’t get to ask me to be okay with it when he does.”
She shrugged as if she had given up, but her eyes were dark and blazing. Just as she brushed past him she muttered under her breath.
He was grabbing her by the arm, pulling her back into the bedroom so that he could look down at her face, daring her to speak up.
“What did you just say?” he asked.
Her eyes didn’t waver as she spat out, “I said what the hell would you know about relationships, or love, or trust? It’s real easy to be all high and mighty when everybody you’ve ever cared about has been cut out of your life. Do you even know what it means to care about someone besides yourself?”
Is that really what she thought of him? Is that what he was to her, some heartless island that discarded people so easily? He’d told her about his family, about how the people he cared about that had left him and not the other way around, and this is what she thought of him? All those times he had looked into her eyes, all those times he had poured his heart and his desire into her, did that count for absolutely nothing?
“Didn’t stop you from coming back for more, did it? I’m such an asshole and Luca’s so sweet, but still, here you are.”
He could feel heat flooding his body, rushing through him like her words had. He was backing her up, pushing her into the room by his grip on her arm.
“Let go,” she said. It wasn’t the first time she had said those words to him. But there was neither fear nor the promise of arousal in them now. She just wanted him to stop touching her, stop chaining her down with his words.
“Is that what you really want,” he asked backing her up until he was pushing her onto his bed. “I’m so used to you lying, I can’t tell.”
“I said let go! We’re not playing this game tonight, you hear me?!”
Her purse and keys were forgotten, clinking and thumping to the floor as she turned her attention to fighting him off.
He descended over her and before she knew what she was doing she slapped him hard across the face, kicking and scratching until her foot was able to push him back. He stumbled and released his grip on her arm. She tried to scramble up the bed away from him, but his hands grabbed her ankles and pulled her back down the bed. She wasn’t afraid; she knew now that he would never hurt her. But it was the principle of the thing.
She only forestalled the inevitable as he climbed over top of her, grabbed her wrists, and pinned her to the bed. She tried to turn her face away from his, dodging his lips in a way that was almost comical until he caught them in a bruising kiss. She was panting with anger and the effort it had taken to prolong this forced pleasure.
It wasn’t hard for his tongue to find hers; it was a worthy opponent, twisting and twirling around hers as their anger fueled their kiss. Still she fought him, even as she moaned into his mouth, even as her body arched into his, she struggled to free herself from his arms and the weight of his warm body pressed against hers.
It wasn’t fair that he could do this to her. He made her want him, made her need him even though she was so angry she wanted to scream. Her hips rolled against his in answer to his hardening cock pumping against her mound. Her nipples were tingling, growing taut within the confines of her tank top. The heat from his body pressed hard against hers was intoxicating, and his tongue seemed to lick her moans from her mouth.
Why couldn’t she just turn her body off when she was around him? Why did he have to make her feel weak and hungry for him no matter how much he hurt her? She was so tired. Tired of him steamrolling over all of her thoughts and feelings with his power over her, tired of him trying to impose his will and downplay hers.
Flynn wished he could stop. He’d felt sick at the sight of her pushing him away, dodging his relentless hands with everything she had. From day one she’d been a scrapper. But he never thought he would see her eyes looking up at his as if he were someone she couldn’t stand again. He never thought he would feel the sting of her hand across his face again, or feel her body resisting him.
It made him feel lower than low, and yet he couldn’t help responding to the feel of her underneath him, the softness of her body melting into his even as she tensed and strained and pushed at his thighs with her feet.
What was he doing? It was like he was going backwards, to the start of this whole crazy affair. They should be moving forward. They should be feeling closer, but all he could see when he looked down at her was that girl on his table, the one that had hated him so vehemently.
Not much had changed. She still saw him as what he was: heartless, cruel, and selfish. He had warned her. But now that she was seeing the truth for herself he found that he couldn’t take it.
“This shit is so old,” he said, and even he was surprised at the bitterness in his own voice.
He released her wrists as if she were toxic, stood up and stepped back. She sat up slowly, feeling as if her limbs were trapped underwater. She looked at him as if shock and hurt where new emotions, as if her body were about to overload with them. He just picked up her purse and keys and tossed them onto the bed beside her.
“Do whatever you want. I don’t care anymore.” He said it so coldly, with such lack of emotion, that he almost believed the words were true himself.
She tried and failed to form words. She was starting to tremble when she whispered, “So that’s it? That’s how you’re going to—”
“Why are you still talking? I said I was done with you, it’s over.”
His smile was almost kind as he said, “See how simple that was?”
She stared at him for a long moment. Every emotion ran through her gaze, fluid and utterly clear. She was so angry and hurt by his words that he felt his stomach knot, the faint calls of nausea traveling up his throat. First one tear. Then another. He watched, trapped in his own personal horror as she bit her trembling lip and looked down at her limp hands.
And then she broke. He had to look away as the first painful sob tore through her body. She doubled over with it, covering her mouth and then her eyes as his words lodged themselves like splinters in her chest, deep and sharp and too numerous to pull out.
He didn’t realize he was coming closer to her, that he had reached out a hand to touch her hair. Until she was pushing him away as if he were a complete stranger.
“D-don’t… fucking… touch… me,” she sobbed. “I’m going, I’m…going.”
She was bracing her shaking hands on the bed, trying so hard to stand, trying to feel anything other than the pain ripping through her body. She used to think that people were exaggerating when they talked about this kind of thing, about the physical symptoms of a broken heart. She knew now that there was truth to it, and that they hadn’t come close to doing it justice. Nothing had prepared her for this. Nothing.
It was like a shot to the heart, realizing that she thought he was trying to get her to hurry up and leave instead of trying to soothe away his awful words. He recoiled as if burned, real bile rising in his throat. He wanted to touch her, to hold her and say he was sorry over, and over and over again. All he could say was her name, the sound of his pleading drowned out by the sound of her increasingly chaotic sobs.
Gia understood now. She understood what it meant to be bleeding from the inside out, beaten and swollen right down to the soul. Nothing had ever hurt this badly. Not breaking up with Luca; not those first torturous weeks when she realized Flynn had her caught in his clutches.
He’d just released her and she had fallen, cracked into a million pieces at his feet. He didn’t want her, in a few months he would have forgotten all about her. Everything she thought he had felt, every adoring look he’d given her, every touch of his fingers over her skin had been a lie.
She found it hard to walk as she left his room. Every swipe of her hand over her tear-ravaged face grew more and more useless. She was crying harder by the second, and it didn’t help that she could hear him behind her, watching as she broke down. How embarrassing to know he didn’t care at all, while she could barely see beyond the pain vibrating through her body. It was as powerful as the lust and the love she felt for him, and yet sharper. It made her realize just how much she gave him.
With shaking hands she pulled the key he’d given her off her key chain and turned, throwing it at him. The silver key thumped against his shoulder and then clinked to the floor forgotten. He was too busy looking at her as if he were witnessing a car wreck to notice. She knew she must look awful. Her face was covered in saline regret and her nose was running horribly. Still she faced him, gathering her courage before he could take that away too.
She shook her head and her voice cracked as she tried to speak. She swallowed, drawing in a shuddering breath that exited as a sob. Then she looked him dead in the eye, willing herself in these last moments to be strong, to be the girl she should’ve been all along. Her mouth opened and honesty poured out in her final words to him.
“I c-c-can’t…can’t believe…I let myself…f-fall in love with you.”
It seemed as if saying the words hurt even more than keeping them bottled up would have. Her sobs grew louder, her eyes darting away from his as if she couldn’t stand the sight of him. She turned, clawing at the door handle, ripping it open and disappearing before it closed behind her.
Flynn stood speechless, limp, his lips parted in surprise. If he could’ve seen himself from the outside he would’ve thought he looked like someone in a state of severe shock, as if he just lost a limb.
Or someone he loved.
Realization was slow coming, and it prickled over him with growing intensity as his eyes flitted over the door. It wasn’t opening. Her footsteps were gone.
He knelt and picked up the key she’d thrown. It had nicked his collarbone and he could feel the sting of the little cut. He could feel himself grow shaky and ill as he sat down on the couch. He folded his hands around the key and leaned his mouth against them as his elbows jabbed sharply into his knees. He was trying to be still, trying to be calm, but his whole body felt flushed with heat, and it wouldn’t stop. He closed his eyes against the growing inferno inside of him and all he could see was her face.
He’d promised her they would make this work and he had lied to her. He was shaking his head as if he were a spectator, as if he weren’t the one that had done the stupidest thing he could have done. The heat was unbearable, the nauseating ruminations growing stronger. He inhaled and bit his lip, wanting to go out and follow her, wanting so badly to say he was sorry. He found himself standing, pacing, and running his hands through his hair. His mind was racing, his hands starting to shake. Why was he having trouble breathing, why couldn’t he seem to think?
“FUCK!!!”
His hand lifted the coffee table and all the contents came crashing to the floor, the table itself flying towards the wall. It left a jagged dent in the plaster, crashing into the lamp sitting on the small table there. He stood for a long moment, seeing but not seeing, feeling but not feeling. She’d said she loved him. She’d said she regretted it.
He closed his eyes, wincing at the pain throbbing through his temples. He should be going after her. He should be stopping her. He should be saying anything to take back the sting of his words. Instead he stood idle and shaking, his heart beating faster and faster within his chest. The seconds ticked by, taunting him, letting him know with each passing heartbeat what he had done.
She was gone. He had let her go.
And she wasn’t coming back.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Gia took the steps one foot at a time, heading towards Luca’s old room where he had been holed up for the last half hour. His mother asked her to go and talk to him, and the thought occurred to Gia that perhaps Luca hadn’t made it clear to his parents that they had broken up, or if he did they didn’t think it would last. This wasn’t her job anymore. She wasn’t his little life raft, but she couldn’t say no to the red, weary eyes of Mrs. Caprielli, eyes that told her where Luca’s beautiful gaze had come from.
She passed by the hall mirror on the way to his room and paused, stunned by her reflection. It wasn’t the modest but pretty black dress she wore that caught her attention. And it wasn’t that her hair was down around her shoulders, having grown a few inches in the three months since she had known Flynn. She looked modest, elegant and fit for a funeral, but that wasn’t what caught her attention.
It was the hollow eyes staring back at her that made her feel she was prepared for the somber occasion. She was startled by her expression and felt guilty because of it. The blatant sadness there had little to do with Luca or his loss and everything to do with her own. She looked down, turning away from her reflection before she started to cry. As she walked to Luca’s door she inhaled, put on sympathetic smile, and knocked softly.
“Come in,” he said.
She opened the door quietly, peeking in before stepping inside altogether, leaving the door slightly ajar. Luca was laying on his bed with his arms folded behind his head, suit jacket flung over the edge of his desk chair. He was staring up at the ceiling and didn’t stop until Gia sat down on the bed next to him.
“How you holding up?” she asked.
A shake of his head was his response. That alone gave her the answer, since Luca was nothing if not vocal.
“They’re missing you downstairs, you know.”
“Let them,” he said.
He sat up and rubbed his hands over his face, with a tortured groan.
“It’s all the same anyway. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ ‘My deepest condolences.’ And then they stand around stuffing their faces and pretending to be sad. I get sick just looking at them, knowing that half of them don’t really care anyway.”
“They do care, Luc,” she said softly, surprised by the bitterness in his voice. “I care.”
“I’m not talking about you,” he said, looking at her. “Next to family you’re the realest person down there, ba—Gia.”
She turned away, trying to ignore the awkwardness of him almost using his favorite term of endearment. Babe. Not what Flynn used to say. He had always called her “baby” so softly that it melted her.
The pain must have been clear on her face. He misinterpreted it when he said, “Sorry, force of habit.”
They sat in awkward silence for a moment, their eyes darting around the room, at the hands clasped in her lap or at the elbows leaning on his knees. Everywhere but at each other.
“I’m glad you came, Gia. Thank you.”
She nodded and forced a smile. “I know I’m not much help. I don’t know what else to say but that I’m sorry.”
His body moved, pausing in hesitation for just a second before his hand reached out and clutched hers. He looked up at her then.
“God, I missed you. I didn’t know how much until Grandpa passed. You were the first person I wanted to call.”
She should be saying “Don’t Luca. Don’t start.” But what the hell did it matter now? The person she would have said those words for didn’t want her anymore. So she let him stroke her hand. She let him sit up and look at her full on. She let herself bask in the glow of being wanted, pale as it may be compared to the way it felt to be wanted by Flynn.
He searched her eyes, asking for permission to do what he wanted to. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t stop him. When his hand lifted to her cheek and cupped it, she closed her eyes tight. She wouldn’t cry. She would not cry. And she wouldn’t remember the way another pair of hands had touched her in just this way. She would stay still and let what was meant to be, be.
She felt him sliding his hand around to the base of her neck, his fingers stroking through her hair as he shifted. He was coming closer, leaning in to press his lips to hers. She pressed her hand to his chest, feeling his breath as he kissed her cheek.
“I missed you so much, Gigi. So much.”
How nice to be missed, to be wanted and needed. It was like balm for her wounds. His breath was at the edge of her lips. They trembled under the weight of his words. Her fingers curled in the crisp white cotton of his dress shirt, scrunching up his black tie.
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