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)
But Quinn just waits, patient, her lips curling slightly. Daring me.
This is what I’m here for, isn’t it?
So I do it. Even though it feels like a betrayal. Because it feels like a betrayal. Slowly. Deliberately. I kneel.
The floor is cold beneath my knees. I feel the weight of the moment pressing on my spine. My hands settle on my thighs, fists clenched, every muscle in my body going tight as steel cables.
Quinn circles me, the click of her heels barely audible over the thrum of bass.
“Look at you,” she muses, her voice smooth as silk and twice as sharp. “So eager to run from your pain, you’d rather crawl to me than face it.”
I grit my teeth. “I don’t run.”
She laughs. It’s not kind. Not cruel. Just knowing.
“Then say it.” She stops in front of me, tilting her head. “Say why you’re really here.”
I exhale, slow and measured. “I told you—”
A sharp snap of her fingers cuts through the noise. “No. The truth, Bane.”
My chest rises and falls. The music presses against me, a suffocating rhythm. “I need—”
Another snap. “Not good enough.”
My throat tightens. I won’t give her what she wants. I won’t say it.
But Quinn? She’s a professional. And she’s ruthless.
She crouches down, leveling her gaze with mine, amusement curling at the edges of her lips. “You’re pathetic like this,” she muses, her nails dragging down the side of my face, slow and deliberate. “Look at you, kneeling like a good little submissive, thinking I’ll give you what you want.”
I breathe through my nose, refusing to react.
“Your wife left you.”
Her words are a wrecking ball to my ribs.
I don’t move.
She hums, tapping a manicured nail against my jaw. “Say it.”
I swallow, pulse in my throat. “No.”
Her smirk deepens. “You think pain will fix it? That if I mark you up, break your skin, make you bleed, it’ll drown out the ache in your chest?”
Silence.
She drags that single finger down the center of my chest again, slow, like she’s peeling me open. “You don’t want pain, Bane,” she whispers, eyes locked on mine. “You want absolution. You want someone to tell you this isn’t your fault. That she was always going to leave, no matter what you did.”
I force my breath to stay steady.
“But you don’t get that,” Quinn continues, her voice almost gentle now, almost kind. “No one’s coming to save you from this.” She leans in close, lips brushing my ear. “And you know it.”
My hands tremble. I curl my fingers tighter, nails biting into my palms.
“Say it.”
I shake my head.
She sighs, almost pitying. “What are you afraid of? That saying it out loud will make it real?”
I don’t answer.
She crouches again, so close I can feel the heat of her body, the sharp scent of her perfume. “It’s already real. She’s gone. She left you. She walked away, and you let her.”
Something inside me snaps. My hands slam down on my thighs, my breath rushing out like I’ve been punched in the gut.
Quinn smiles, slow, triumphant. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
My pulse roars in my ears.
“You don’t need my hand on you,” she continues, her voice softer now. Deadlier. “You need to sit in this pain. You need to feel it. Acknowledge it. Stop trying to outrun it.”
She paces around me, taking her time, savoring it. “That’s why she left, isn’t it? You tried to make her something she wasn’t. And when she finally had enough, when she walked, you came here—hoping I’d erase her from your skin.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“But she’s still there, isn’t she?” Quinn crouches down in front of me again, lifting my chin with two fingers. “Every inch of you is still hers.”
I grind my teeth. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Immensely,” she purrs. “Because I see you, Bane. And I know this won’t be the last time.”
I rip my face away from her grip, my entire body tight with restraint.
She leans in, almost gently. “You will sit with this pain. You will feel every second of it. The weight of her absence. The finality of it.” She smiles like she’s handing me my death sentence. “And when you’ve had enough of pretending, when you’re ready to actually face it, maybe then—maybe—you’ll finally understand why she left.”
I breathe hard through my nose, my body shaking with something violent and raw.
“Until then?” Quinn rises to her full height, looking down at me like I’m already broken.
“You’ll be back,” she says simply. “Again and again. Because you don’t want release. You want punishment.” She leans in one last time just to whisper, “But your true punishment is facing the pain inside you.”
Then she turns and walks away, leaving me on my knees, drowning in everything I refuse to say.
FIFTY-ONE
MOIRA
The speedometer needle quivers just under a hundred.
The engine roars beneath me, the whole car vibrating as if even the machine itself is terrified of the way I’m treating it. But the road stretches long and busy ahead of me. Red taillights flicker in the distance. Brake lights flare as I weave between cars.