Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
I blink but try not to let him see he’s just punched the air out of my lungs. Love. Oh god. He’s told me he loves me before, but just that once. I think he’s afraid he’ll scare me if he says it too much. Because I haven’t ever said it back.
I force myself to laugh caustically. “Love?” Meanwhile, I’m dying inside. “Whoever said anything about love? I thought we both knew what this was. We were both just using each other.”
His face darkens, and his voice drops dangerously low. “You’re a coward.”
I inhale sharply, then point in his face. “You knew exactly who I was since the moment you met me. It’s not my fault you made up some fairytale about a pretty, helpless maiden who needed saving. Because that was never me.”
“I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, but you’re in trouble, aren’t you? Who was that woman with you in the bar?” His voice softens just slightly, rough with desperation. “Let me help, Moira. Let me in.”
I shake my head wildly, stepping back. “I don’t need help.”
“The hell you don’t.” His eyes flick over my face, searching, pleading. “You love me, Moira. Say it. Because I love you. See? I’m not afraid.”
I steel myself against the panic that’s like a thousand bats screeching and flapping in my ribcage.
Then I raise my chin.
For once in your goddamn life, Moira, don’t fuck this up.
He always did love it when I hurt him.
So I devastate him.
I lean in. “I don’t want you, Bane. You’re nothing to me.”
Bane flinches like I just carved the words into his flesh.
His grip on my wrist goes slack, and I take the opening, pulling free. The moment I step back, his whole body changes; his face goes blank, his posture is locked in rigid control, and the Bane that loves me disappears behind a mask of cold, impenetrable steel.
It’s working. Now, I need to make sure it sticks.
“I used you,” I continue, voice sharp as a blade. “You were a fun distraction. But I’m done now. I don’t want you anymore.”
He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move.
I push harder. “You’re too intense. Too much. And frankly, it got boring.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. But still, he says nothing.
Good.
“Go back to your perfect little church house,” I snap, turning my back on him. “Find some sweet, devout thing who’ll let you own her like you want. Because it’s not me.”
Silence.
Then, softly, so quietly I barely hear it—
“You’re a liar.”
I walk away.
I force one foot in front of the other, my vision blurring, my chest a gaping, open wound. He doesn’t chase me anymore. He doesn’t call my name.
I break him and leave him standing there.
It’s for the best.
But then why does it feel like I just killed the only thing that ever made me feel alive?
FIFTY
BANE
What do you do after the love of your life stomps on your heart and leaves you broken on the floor?
I begged her to stay. I put everything on the line. I fought for her. Told her I loved her. Looked her in the eye and would have sworn I saw it in her eyes, too.
But was she right?
Was she just a story I made up in my head?
Was the real Moira just a body inhabited by my dream woman for half a year before she stepped back out of the Pygmalion version of her I’d shaped in my mind? Far too real to ever be caged by my foolish imagination?
Far too wild.
Far too magnificent to ever truly want me.
She volunteers at the women’s shelter because she loves people. Because she sparkles from the inside out. Whereas I volunteer at the prison to purge my soul. Because it was where I should’ve ended up if my father hadn’t stepped in. Because I am and always will be a privileged little prick. My path always smoothed before me.
No one ever says no to me.
Until her.
And here I am again.
The entitled little shit. Sad boy. All alone.
Like my father, who could buy the whole world, but there’s still not an actual soul in that world that genuinely loves him. Like father, like son.
At the end of things, I’m back at the beginning.
So I do the only thing I can think of because drowning myself in a bottle of whisky is so fucking cliché I can’t even bear to crack open the bottle.
I don’t want to feel numb.
I want to hurt.
I go to the club. And I stomp in with a purpose.
The club is alive.
Not in the way a church is alive—breathing with whispered prayers, the rustle of hymnals, and the gentle clinking of a chalice.
This place pulses. It throbs. It beats like a second heart, its rhythm discordant with the one already hammering in my chest.
The bass rattles the walls.
Bodies move in the dark.