Chapter 154
NATHAN’S POV
I don’t look at her. I can’t look at her.
:
But I hear the tremor in her voice, the hesitant, disbelieving, “What?”
I inhale, and agony burns through me. Pretty sure Lucas–that fucking bastard–bruised my lungs.
Those awful, hideous four words hang in the air between us like poisonous gas.
I’d rather eat shit.
“Nathan.” I flinch when April grabs my arm, unknowingly pressing her fingers against a bruise. “What?”
God, I want to hold her. I want to take her in my arms and kiss her till we both forget our names. Till we forget the ugliness of everything.
But my wanting her is what got us into this mess in the first place.
“You heard me.”
“No.” She shakes her head, and the scent of her lavender shampoo hits me. She smells so good. She always smells so good.
“No, I must not have heard you. Because I’m pretty sure you said-” She inhales sharply, cutting herself off.
The words must still hurt, five years later.
Good.
That means they’ll achieve what I need them to.
50
“I said…” Fuck, everything hurts. “I’d rather eat shit than marry you.”
Her hand slips from mine, and I have to clench my arms really tightly around myself to keep from reaching out and holding her.
“I…you–I mean. We-” She stops, inhales. Inhales again.
“Why would you say that?”
I shrug. My deltoids scream with pain. “Because it’s true.”
She makes a sound–incredulous and confused. “The fact that you’re joking right now is one thing, but that you would choose to use-”
“It’s not a joke,” I say. And then force myself to look at her.
I regret it immediately.
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Chapter 154
Her gorgeous face is a mosaic, reflecting different versions of the same emotion.
Bewilderment. Perplexity. Befuddlement. Confusion.
50
Did she look like that when Lucas propositioned her? When he groped her in the ballroom right under my fucking nose. When he cornered
her in the forest?
Or was she scared? Frightened? Terrified?
1 tear my eyes away from her, unable to look at her without seeing his hands on her. Without seeing all the ways I failed her.
I know you’re fiercely protective–you’ll do anything to protect those you care about. April said that to me when she was trying to convince me that I wasn’t a total piece of shit.
But she was wrong. She’s the only thing in the world I care about, and I couldn’t protect her. I let him-
I dig my fingers into a bruise on my rib cage, and the pain is so swift, so biting, that it distracts me from the sudden urge to scream.
“I don’t…I don’t understand,” April is saying, her voice sounding smaller with each word. “I–you… You proposed to me. You asked me to marry you. What is happening?”
1 force myself to scoff. “Yeah. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”
And that’s the fucking truth.
What the hell was I thinking? Why did I believe we could escape all this?
My family is a black hole, and everything and everyone that comes into contact with them gets sucked into oblivion, into darkness.
I was naïve to think I could escape it.
But she… She can.
“Nathan. Look at me.”
I glare at my feet.
Suddenly, her hands are warm on my cheeks, guiding my head toward hers until she fills my vision–until she’s all I can see.
Fuck, she’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like her before–strong and smart and brave and-
He tried to do it to me.
I move, tearing her hands off my face.
“Don’t touch me!” I don’t mean to be loud or harsh. But I’m so aggravated that my words come out so, and she flinches.
I see it–the moment she realizes that this isn’t some sick joke. I seem to mean what I say,
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Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
