by Dee Garcia
“I said I need to go,” I gritted out, a lone tear trickling down my face.
I didn’t wait for a response, or a fare well.
I simply ended the call and fell back on my bed as my entire world began crumbling into tiny pieces.
Everything suddenly made sense.
Ev-ery-thing.
How he always knew where to find me.
How he knew how to press my buttons.
How he always seemed to be two steps ahead of me.
How any mention of Vic always seemed to put him off.
Silent tears sprung free in raging streams as grief and an abundance of self-loathing dispersed through my being. How could I have been so stupid? So naive?
How had I not have caught onto it?
Really, the question I wanted to know the answer to was why?
Why would he fucking do this to me?
I thought he loved me…
Bringing my phone up to my line of sight, I typed out a simple message. It was all I could manage with shaky hands and a shattering heart.
Me: Where are you?
I wasn’t so sure how’d I’d fare seeing him right now, but it had to be done. I had to know.
At the very least, I didn’t have to wait long for his response. It came through within a minute or so.
My King: Our spot.
Me: How much longer?
My King: Until you get your ass up here.
Me: Twenty minutes.
My King: I’m waiting...
And he was.
When I made it to the Panorama, I spotted his Mercedes before I even parked myself. The entire walk to the lift and the ride up to the roof was beyond the point of simply nauseating. Every emotion possible seemed to hit me all at once, and with such speed, too, my head felt like it could spin 360 degrees.
How could he do this to me?
A choked sob grated it’s way up my throat, a sob so hard I found myself gripping the steel railing for support. My eyes watered as realization sunk it’s way a little deeper, clawing into my soul, slowly tearing it to shreds.
It hurt.
It hurt so much I couldn’t see straight. Couldn’t breathe. Never in my life had I felt anything like this before.
Ding!
My heart just about stopped as the lift came to a full stop.
This was it.
The end.
And yet, as shattered as I was about it, the second I saw him at the other end of the building, his broad back turned to me, red hot rage instantly thawed my despair. It took me over. Consumed me. Fueled me.
Like it used to when we first met.
This I could handle.
Hate was easy, welcomed at this hour.
Straightening my spine, I lifted my head high and stalked toward him with renewed purpose. Tears may have streamed down my face, but pure fire burned through my veins.
How could he do this to me?
How could he fucking do this to me?
Those incessant thoughts only made me angrier.
At the sound of my boots clipping against the concrete, he peeked over his shoulder.
A smile sat painted on his face...until he really saw me. Then his entire demeanor flipped. It ran ice cold. His face fell, dark brows bunching together as he spun around entirely.
“Who fucked with you?” he gritted out, skyrocketing my rage to capacity.
He had some fucking nerve.
“You, you lying bastard!” I roared.
And then my palm made perfect, unparalleled contact with his cheek, resounding around us above the sounds of the city.
♫ End Of Me - Ashes Remain ♫
“Why?” she barked, tears rolling down her cheeks, steam all but billowing from her ears. “Why the fuck would you lie to me?”
Face burning, I was taken aback at first, shocked by her abrupt strike and the tornado in which she’d touched down.
But it hit me rather quickly, shooting my heart up to my throat.
Vic.
Despite my warning, despite the fact I’d left him in nothing but a mangled heap, he had to have called her after I took my leave and told her everything.
And if everything included what I thought it did, I was fucked.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, needing her to confirm before I opened my mouth and possibly made shit worse for myself.
“Really? You’re gonna stand there and play the clueless card?” she seethed, narrowing her blue eyes.
“What have I lied about?”
Her head jerked back in ire. “Oh my god, are you serious right now, Roman?!”
Roman.
The way she spouted my name so venomously—it stung more than it should have, nearly knocking the wind out of me.
She had to know…
“Just tell me!” I begged, feeling the ground tremble beneath our feet from a looming implosion.
“You knew Vic this whole time!” she yelled back. “You knew him this whole goddamn time, since you were fucking kids! You were helping him take me out, for fucks sake! Knew he was the stalker, too!”
And there it was.
Out in the open.
Freed from the shadows.
She knew it all.
“I can explain…” I stepped toward her, heart thrashing frantically, but she stepped back holding a warning hand up.
“Don’t. Touch. Me,” she gritted out. “You can try explaining from right there, but I won’t hold my breath.”
If words could kill, I’d have been six feet under right then and there.
Swallowing deeply, I raked an anxious hand through my hair, wondering how the hell I was going to fix this. “It started out that way, yes. But then I fell for you…”
Lux looked at me in pure disgust, lip curled in a snarl and all as she shook her head. “So that’s supposed to make it all okay? The fact that you “supposedly” fell for me?”
“Not supposedly, I did! I fucking love you!” I bellowed, wounded by her use of air quotes as if she didn’t know I loved her with every last facet of my being.
“You expect me to believe that? You’ve had plenty an opportunity to come clean, to tell me about Vic, and you’ve done nothing but lie from start!”
“I did it to protect you!” The desperation in my voice was clear, but Lux didn’t seem to be affected.
In the slightest.
Crossing her arms, she cocked her head to one side. “Protect me? From what?”
Silence.
I didn’t know how to answer. It sounded so good in my head, all made perfect sense—how I’d so valiantly done it to protect her, but now that I heard it aloud, it sounded more daft than anything I’d ever heard in my life.
What was I really protecting her from?
“That’s what I thought,” she growled, wiping the moisture building in her eyes anew.
The sight of her so clearly distraught, so hurt… I couldn’t bear it, rushing toward her to pull her in my arms. “Baby, please, I swear to you…I never meant to keep it from you this long. It was just so—”
“Save it, Roman.” Her palm, firm and steady, hit my chest, holding me back. “I don’t wanna hear it. I don’t wanna hear none of it. We’re done.”
Those two little words… They immobilized me, rooting my feet to the ground. “What?”
“It’s. Over.” she enunciated, with finality nonetheless.
A finality that crippled me, like she’d ripped the soul she’d gifted me from body.
“Baby, don’t do this,” I pleaded, snatching her wrists in grasp.
“I didn’t do shit! This was all you!” She struggled, trying to wriggle herself free.
“You have to believe me, it wasn’t malicious! I just didn’t know how to tell you!”
“Lying is malicious, you bastard!” she hissed. “I hate you!”
And that right there was where I drew the line.
As marred as I was hearing those three words come out of her mouth, three words she’d told me count
less times when we first met, I drew the line right there.
I refused to go down like this.
Refused to let us go down like this.
She was going to listen to me if it’s the last thing I did, even if I had to sit here all night and explain every detail down to the nitty gritty, like I should’ve done in the first place.
Like we both should’ve done…
“I’m not the only one who’s lied,” I said calmly, abruptly ending her struggle.
“What did you just say?” she asked.
“I know about you and Vic, too.”
Lux’s eyes widened, her face paling just slightly. “I...I…”
“I’m not mad,” I explained, pulling her into me. “I know why you didn’t tell me. Should you have at some point? Yes. But I get it, baby, I really do.”
Time stilled for a moment as we bore into one another. Me, hoping like hell this revelation would turn the tables around for the better.
And her...well, I couldn’t decipher it exactly.
She seemed astounded, and yet, incredulously enraged all in one shot.
It wasn’t until she scoffed profoundly and pushed me away once more that I realized this wasn’t going to change a thing.
“Just like that, huh?” she huffed. “Even after knowing what you know, you’re okay with it just like that?”
I shrugged, trying to remain as level-headed as possible. “You did what you had to do to survive.”
Lux threw her head back and laughed, but it wasn’t amused. “Unbelievable. Un-be-fucking-lievable! You find out I willing slept with him, and that I kept it from you, and you’re standing there acting like you get it. Using this as a ploy to subdue me and sway me right back into your arms. You’re fucking disgusting! she bellowed, shoving me away again.
But I caught her wrists a second time, unwilling to let her go. How could she think that?
“Lux, stop.”
“Let me go,” she gritted out. “You’re disgusting and fucking daft if you think forgiving my indiscretions changes anything for you. I didn’t hide my relationship with Vic for the same reason you did! You were playing me for a fucking fool!”
“Listen to me, please—it’s not a ploy,” I said evenly, tightening my hold on her wrists as I walked us backward.
“Fuck you! Let me go!”
“No, stop. Just listen to me.”
“Let me fucking go, Roman,” she snarled, gasping when her waist hit the roof’s ledge, cars honking and zooming hundreds of feet below us.
“No—knock it off already and listen to me!” I barked.
“Let go!” Elbow to my side.
“NO,” I growled, holding tighter still.
“LET GO!” Knee to my thigh.
“NO!”
“LET FUCKING GO!”
“NO, FUCKING NO! STOP! STOOOP!” I roared at the top of my lungs, the enraged sound carrying through the busy city around us.
My voice fucking echoed. In the city.
That’s how loud I was. How I suddenly angry I was.
And she flinched because of it.
Lux Mercier actually flinched.
Then she froze, her chest heaving, pale blues barely holding back fresh tears. Her stare didn’t falter, though, and what I saw run through there—what I finally saw such clarity—hit me like a bucket of ice water.
Resentment.
Anguish.
Suffering.
Betrayal.
Every emotion was my doing, my fault. I’d truly, truly hurt her, and while that had been the plan at one point in time, the plan became null and void the second I fell for her.
But I’d done it anyway.
I’d managed to fuck everything up.
Managed to fuck us up.
It physically wounded me. Crippled me all over again, worse now than before.
The heart I spent years without, the one she stitched back together, felt like it was breaking.
Shattering.
Imploding.
My grip slipped as indescribable pain lanced right through my being. She tore herself away on a growl and shoved at my chest over and over again until we were in the middle of the roof.
“I hate you, I fucking hate you!” Tears were flowing free one more, slapping me in the face harder with every one that rolled down her cheeks.
My chest heaved wildly like I’d been running a mile.
She hated me and I hate this.
I hated me.
“I’m sorry!” I yelled it, clenching my hands, swallowing down the tsunami of emotions threatening to break free. “I’m fucking sorry!”
“You’re sorry?” She yelled back incredulously. “YOU’RE SORRY? That means absolute shit to me, Roman! Look what you’ve done to me! You’ve ruined me, completely fucking ruined me, and not just for other men, but for everything! EVERYTHING!”
I was two seconds from uttering something that would probably only dig me a deeper grave when she started toward me on another growl, shoving me back again repeatedly.
“I opened up to you.” Shove.
“I trusted you.” Shove.
“I gave you my fucking heart!” Her voice cracked. “And what did you do with it? Played it like a fucking violin, then smashed it into millions of pieces and sprinkled it around like confetti with your fucking bullshit lies. I fucking hate you!”
“Baby, please. Please listen to me,” I croaked, falling to my knees in front of her.
Bowing at her altar.
“Just stay away from, Roman,” she hissed, tsking at my blatant display of weakness. “Just stay the fuck away from me like you should have done in the first place.”
But what was a King without his Queen?
♫ Elastic Heart - Sia ♫
I thought I’d been low before, thought I’d experienced pain of great magnitude before.
But I’d never been this low.
This broken.
This torn.
So completely shattered to the point only slivers of me were left.
A part of me died the night Roman’s betrayal emerged from the shadows, and although the other half of me was drowning in a deep depression, begging to be saved, I had no intention of rising the stupid bitch from the dead.
After all, she’s the reason why I fell for Roman in the first place.
She wanted love, happiness, all the things I knew weren’t meant to be a part of my life.
But I listened to her anyway.
I let her cloud my better judgement, let her convince me destiny couldn’t be overruled. Let her convince me that what Roman and I had was real.
I let her kill me.
So now, she could rot in hell for all I cared.
The same went for Rome.
Thinking about him was both excruciating and infuriating, a maddening loop that went on day in and day out, even after the relentless phone calls, voicemails, and text messages stopped.
One second, I missed him with every piece of my mangled being, wishing we could rewind time and do it all right from the get-go, and the next I hated him again, wishing him an eternity in satan’s fiery playground as punishment for making a completely and utter fool out of me.
We were going on almost a month of this shit and I was losing my goddamn mind.
I couldn’t take it anymore, had to expel these soul-sucking demons somehow.
Suki and Ramsey didn’t know what to do with me either. They’d tried on more than one occasion to pull me free from the darkness, to help me move on with my life, but their attempts were feeble.
Nothing worked.
Nothing helped.
Except the thought of destruction, of raising hell on earth so everyone could suffer along with me.
Selfish, perhaps, but this agony within me, the malevolent blaze that had festered because of it, demanded mayhem.
I craved it.
The ideas presented to me were insane, deranged, and yet, the thought of bringing them to fruition promised me peace.
A semblance of sanity.
Whether that was a result of the devil’s work or not, I was willing to try anything at this point. I’d sell what remained of my soul to feel anything but this godforsaken torment.
Which is why I found myself outside of Noir Coast one night with two plastic canisters of gasoline in my trunk.
I hadn’t told a soul in fear they’d try to talk me off the ledge.
Consumed by rage, my vision had tunneled on one thing and one thing only, that fucking building. It may not have been solely his, but he’d put his name on it, had helped Vic build the company from the ground up, and that was enough for me.
He wanted to play me, to fuck me over, right?
Well now, I was really going to fuck him.
Inexorably.
Everything he’d acquired and built upon since arriving in Miami was about to go up in sweltering, ruthless flames.
I smiled victoriously.
Heinously.
The mere thought of his demise brought me that inept sense of peace I’d been seeking, one that allowed me to take a deep breath and collect myself before I unleashed the gates of hell.
And should anyone get in my way while I did so, they’d be thrown in the wreckage, too, left to burn alive while the world around them turned to ash.
I took one last look at the solidarity of the darkened building. In about five minutes, it wouldn’t be so dark anymore. Another smile drifted across my face. To be a fly on the wall when he received a call his micro-empire had gone up in smoke…
Stepping out onto the gravel, I shut the driver’s door softly and walked around to the rear end of my truck, popping the trunk open. Inside were the two plastic canisters I’d filled to the brim with gasoline on my way over here. One would be carefully poured around the lower level while the other would drown the entirety of his office upstairs. I wanted everything he owned as decimated as he’d left me—his database, his files, his contacts, his fucking art work.
Everything.
He’d have nothing left by the time I drove off the lot.
I wasted no time after picking the lock and forcing my way inside, pouring stream after stream of gas all over the different stations that made up the ground level. When that canister spilled its last drop, I tossed it in the middle of the room and started upstairs with the other container in hand, taking care to shed a trail behind myself. All the while, every moment Roman and I had shared played in an unsought repetitive loop that made me impossibly angrier.
